Blockchain for Certification of Local Food Products
Résumé
In Europe, and particularly in France, there is growing interest in short food circuits, particularly local food systems (Augère-Granier, 2016). These systems involve the distribution of food products in a very restricted geographical area (Paciarotti and Torregiani, 2021). This interest is reinforced by new regulations aimed at promoting the consumption of local products to stimulate the local economy and reduce carbon emissions. Large-scale distribution sector is actively engaged in this movement by seeking ways to certify and promote products from these local systems. In this context, our study aims to propose a blockchain-based solution to ensure traceability, real-time monitoring and certification of products from these local food systems. Our study focuses on local food systems, where we recognize the retailer as the sole intermediary between producers and consumers. We impose a maximum distance threshold between these actors to qualify as a local food system (in our case, we assume that it must not exceed 80 km). To guarantee the origin of the product sold in supermarkets and allow traceability and tracking of orders in real time, we have developed a front-end application with two user interfaces: one for producers and retailers, and another for consumers. On the one hand, our application allows producers and retailers to enter order details and track their progress in real time. When registering, they must provide their SIRET (“Directory Establishment Identification System”) numbers and the addresses of their operational sites to calculate the distance between them. This information is crucial to verify if the product comes from a local food system. On the other hand, consumers can scan the QR code present on the product packaging to access its details. Order data from producers and retailers is automatically stored in a database. To protect against data falsification, we propose securing them with blockchain technology. This technology, recognized for its transparency, traceability and security, has effectively responded to the traceability challenges in agrifood chains. Its integration into our solution improves security and transparency (Sunny et al., 2020). For this, we have opted for the Ethereum blockchain, a public platform widely adopted by researchers and industrials (Buterin, 2014). A smart contract was developed to automate the anchoring of orders in the blockchain, ensuring that all data from producers to consumers is recorded securely and immutably. After each transaction, the smart contract sends the transaction hash and TX data back to our front-end application, serving as proof of transaction completion in the blockchain for transparency and traceability. Using a public blockchain platform allows consumers to verify transaction execution by accessing transaction hashes. Additionally, we provide the Application Binary Interface (ABI) generated during smart contract deployment, allowing consumers to verify the accuracy of the data retrieved by our frontend application against the data anchored in the blockchain. We have developed a proof of concept (PoC) to certify products from local food systems. This PoC includes a common application for producers, retailers and consumers, with user-friendly interfaces accessible to all. The application is connected to the public Ethereum blockchain and we have implemented a smart contract to securely and immutably store product data. This improves transparency and visibility within our solution. Our study stands out for its originality in the field of traceability and certification of products from local food systems through the use of blockchain technology. Although existing scientific literature explores blockchain-based solutions for traceability in food supply chains (Wang et al., 2019; Bumblauskas et al., 2020; Ferdousi, Gruenbacher and Scoglio, 2020), to our knowledge none have specifically addressed the certification of local food systems using this technology. Additionally, our research reveals that there is limited exploration of traceability using smart contracts, often with insufficient technical details and IT implementation information (Burgess et al., 2022). Our contribution aims to fill this gap by providing a practical demonstration of how blockchain can certify food products from local food systems. In collaboration with Grandis, a subsidiary of Carrefour, we have developed a concrete application which presents the implementation of our blockchain-based solution in a real context.