BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY FOR AGRICULTURE: APPLICATIONS AND RATIONALE

The use of data and information becomes increasingly crucial for the agriculture sector to improve productivity and sustainability.

- Alekh Kumar Sahoo

Introduction

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) substantially increases the effectiveness and efficiency of collecting, storing, analyzing and using data in agriculture. It allows agricultural practitioners and farming communities to easily obtain up-to-date information and thus make better decisions in their daily farming.

Definition

Blockchain is a distributed database existing on multiple computers at the same time. It is constantly growing as new sets of recordings, or 'blocks', are added to it. Each block contains a timestamp and a link to the previous block, so they actually form a chain. The database is not managed by any particular body; instead, everyone in the network gets a copy of the whole database.

Old blocks are preserved forever and new blocks are added to the ledger irreversibly, making it impossible to manipulate by faking documents, transactions and other information. All blocks are encrypted in a special way, so everyone can have access to all the information but only a user who owns a special cryptographic key is able to add a new record to a particular chain.

Blockchain is a digitized, decentralized ledger of all transactions. The transactions are replicated across multiple computers and linked to each other to make any tempering with records virtually impossible. This immutable way of managing records eliminate the need for any central entity managing the transactions. Blockchain should not be confused with the bitcoins. Blockchain is the platform while bitcoin is just one of the many applications that uses Blockchain platform just the way internet is to email.