Ensure Traceability in European Food Supply Chain by Using a Blockchain System

TLDR

The authors propose a generic blockchain‑based agri‑food traceability system that implements the EU “from‑farm‑to‑fork” model, integrates existing traceability rules, and lets consumers reconstruct product history via QR code. The system is built on Hyperledger Sawtooth with permissioned access for legitimate participants and developed using an agile ABCDE methodology, user stories, and UML diagrams to ensure high software quality. Operators can identify all participants across the supply chain, enhancing trust and enabling autonomous management of activity sequences.

Abstract

This paper proposes a generic agri-food supply chain traceability system based on blockchain technology implementing the "from-farm-to-fork" (F2F) model currently used in the European Union, which can integrate current traceability rules and processes. The proposed system allows the consumer to reconstruct the product history up to the origin in order to verify product health and quality by simple QR code scan. The blockchain chosen for this purpose is Hyperledger Sawtooth, issued with writing permissions and rules to guarantee access only to members recognized as legitimate participants in the process. The whole system has been realized according to an agile methodology (ABCDE), recently devised for designing a general blockchain system with software engineering practices by mean of User Stories and UML diagrams, in order to obtain a higher software quality. All of the involved operators are able to identify any participants along the entire supply chain, increasing the degree of trust between organizations and individuals, with autonomous management of temporal sequence of activities.