Revolutionizing Agriculture with Blockchain Technology on the XDC Network

Agriculture is an inherent and integral part of human civilization that plays a critical role in ensuring food security, economic growth, and environmental sustainability.

Agriculture is the primary source of food for the entire world’s population and is a key player in the economic development of many developing countries. Agriculture not just feeds people with food but also acts as a major employment sector that provides livelihoods to millions of people.?

Apart from economic development, agriculture is one of the most effective contributors to environmental sustainability. We have seen the whole world rising against the protection and promotion of a sustainable environment, and it is important to preserve organic forms of agriculture to prevent soil erosion, water quality and quantity, and most importantly, biodiversity.?

Agritech, short for "agricultural technology," refers to the use of technology in agriculture to improve efficiency, productivity, and sustainability.? It involves using the latest technologies, such as artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, and robotics, for the welfare of the agriculture sector. Effective usage of these technologies helps farmers get better crop yields, automates tedious manual efforts, and promotes sustainable agriculture practices.? Technologies such as artificial intelligence and seed studies have provided positive results such as precision agriculture and the production of new crop varieties that are able to withstand natural calamities to some extent and provide a better yield and profit to the farmers. In this article, let's explore how Blockchain as a technology helps the Agriculture sector.?

Supply Chain Management: Agriculture is a complex industry that involves multiple stakeholders, including farmers, processors, distributors, retailers, and consumers. With the growing demand for transparency and traceability in the food supply chain, blockchain can provide a secure and immutable system for tracking the journey of agricultural products from farm to table. Recording information such as plantations of seeds, fertilizer cycles, and harvest dates in the blockchain’s decentralized ledger helps the processors, distributors, and retailers track the journey of the product and ensure its quality and safety.

Payment Infrastructure: ?We have seen a lot of news recently where the farmers are paid with post-dated cheques and often get delayed payments, which makes them struggle for their livelihood. Blockchain can be used to facilitate secure and transparent payments between farmers, processors, and retailers. Smart contract-driven Blockchain technology can automate the payment system, which will trigger the payment on the happening of certain events. Example:? Upon the submission of the harvested crops to the distributor, the payment is immediately settled with the farmer according to the quantity and quality of their products.?

Providing exchanges for the farmers to convert the cryptocurrencies to fiat currencies or providing a marketplace for the farmers to get services and products using cryptocurrencies will go a long way.?

Certification and compliance: While we talk about the quantity and quality of agricultural products, it is important to create a decentralized system for certification and compliance. Farmers can record their compliance with various regulations, such as organic or fair trade certification, on the blockchain, and this information can be verified by third-party auditors. This can help reduce the cost and complexity of certification and ensure compliance with regulatory requirements.

Sustainability: The practice of organic agriculture has a direct impact on environmental sustainability. Blockchain technology as a tool can be used to promote sustainability in agriculture by allowing farmers to record information about their use of water, energy, and other resources on the blockchain. Agriculture helps in carbon offsetting, and we have seen many projects helping farmers offset carbon by following regenerative farming.?

Farmers are incentivized for the amount of carbon being offset and thus promoting regenerative farming and improving environmental sustainability.?

Plugin’s Blockchain Projects on the XDC Network for the AgriTech Sector:?

Plugin opens up diverse, modern, technical-oriented services to the agriculture sector across the globe with the Plugin Crop Loss Compensation Initiative. Natural calamities affect agriculture and the farmers to a greater extent, and it is important to protect them with some kind of compensation mechanism so they can confidently continue to practice agriculture and feed people. Plugin’s Crop loss compensation project uses blockchain technology and a decentralized oracle network to record real-time climate changes and ensures automated compensation to affected farmers, guaranteeing continuity in agriculture.

In addition to facilitating supply chain and payment infrastructure, blockchain plays a crucial role in monitoring agricultural products, providing end consumers with information about what they consume and its quality

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Kapil Khurana Vinod Khurana Andrea Frosinini Srinivas Mahankali Karthick Gnanasekaran Thani Alketbi XDC Foundation XDC Network Plugin (PLI), XDC’s Decentralized Oracle