Figure 2: Use of Blockchains For Agricultural Sustainability23
The issue of land registration, at first glance, does not seem to have a
significant bearing on food safety. However, in many developing
countries, the existing land records available are poorly administered.
Blockchain technologies, such as those hosted on the Ethereum blockchain
offer the possibility of improving the land registration process and
ensuring tenure rights. Blockchain technology also has been recommended
as a way of improving food security by ensuring increased transparency
and improving efficiency24.
This is an important social issue and indeed, by developing individual
blockchain solutions for different agricultural sustainability aspects,
it could be possible to develop a full-stack blockchain-powered
agricultural sustainability framework.
Some of the common blockchain scalability challenges include scalability25,
tradeoffs between blockchain security and computational efficiency20(including identifying blockchain frameworks that minimize energy
consumption while meeting the project goals), intellectual property
issues20among others. Arguably, developing these conceptual frameworks and a
critical comparison of the different blockchain frameworks
(proof-of-stake vs proof-of-work consensus, permissioned vs
permissionless blockchains, smart
contracts)26is vital for enabling the scaling-up and mainstreaming of blockchain
technology for supporting deforestation-free agricultural commodity
sourcing. Qualitatively identifying the most energy-efficient
alternative to the computationally demanding Bitcoin proof-of-work (POW)
by comparing the ability of less-energy consuming Proof-of-Stake smart
contract-based frameworks (such as those provided by Ethereum or
Cardano)14,
Hyperledgers for creating immutable records of agricultural commodity
provenance and sourcing conditions27(in this case, the deforestation footprints underpinning the sourcing
farms). Indeed different parts of the agricultural commodity supply
chain could lend themselves to different blockchain technologies (figure
3).