A concrete application of blockchain tech: the food supply chain

As far as I understand the concept of blockchain, the revolution lies in the fact that you don’t have to rely on and/or trust a third-party that will keep track of transactions.

As a concrete example, the numerous crises in the food supply chain partly originate from the far too many opportunities for actors of the supply chain to cheat (lack of trust) and the failure of third parties to do their job properly (lack of traceability systems or controls).

Blockchain could provide the food supply chain with less opportunities to cheat and more reliable traceability thanks to its intrinsic characteristics (absence of third-party and immutability, among others).

However, heading in this direction means that the whole food supply chain will have to operate on the same system or on different systems that are interoperable. Building such environment will necessarily take time and rely on private initiatives and a great deal of coordination among public actors.

Individual initiatives are already looking into disrupting the food supply chain, including Walmart, IBM, Chinese retailer JD.com and Tsinghua University National Engineering Laboratory for E-Commerce Technologies' [Blockchain Food Safety Alliance] (https://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/53487.wss) announced late last year.

In the meantime, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has set up a [Technical Committee] (https://www.iso.org/committee/6266604.html) which is currently working on the standardization of blockchain technologies and distributed ledger technologies. 31 participating countries and 14 observing members are involved in the work of the Technical Committee.