Agriculture-Food Supply Chain Management Based on Blockchain and IoT: A Narrative on Enterprise Blockchain Interoperability

TLDR

Agriculture supply chains are global, complex, and opaque, leading to fraud, trust erosion, and financial losses, while consumers demand safe and sustainable production, prompting interest in blockchain for transparency. The study aims to develop an efficient, reliable trading environment by proposing the Agri‑SCM‑BIoT architecture that integrates blockchain with Industry 5.0 technologies to address storage, scalability, interoperability, security, and privacy challenges. Agri‑SCM‑BIoT combines blockchain with IoT, big data, RFID, NFC, and other Industry 5.0 tools, classifies IoT security threats, and outlines blockchain‑based defenses, detailing the architecture’s features and future work.

Abstract

Modern-day agriculture supply chains have evolved from sovereign and autonomous local stakeholders to a worldwide interconnected system of multiple participants linked by complicated interactions, impacting the production, processing, transportation, and delivery of food to end consumers. Regular instances of fraudulent acts reveal a lack of openness in agriculture supply chains, raising worries about financial losses, eroding customer trust, and lowering corporate brand value. To develop an efficient and reliable trading environment, several fundamental modifications in the present supply chain architecture are required. There is broad consensus that blockchain can improve transparency in agriculture-food supply chains (agri-food SCs). Consumers now demand safe, sustainable, and equitable food production processes, and businesses are using blockchains and the internet of things to meet these needs. For enhanced responsiveness in agri-food SCs, new concepts have evolved that combine blockchains with various Industry 5.0 technologies (e.g., blockchain technology, big data, internet of things (IoT), radio frequency identification (RFID), near field communication (NFC), etc.). It is critical to cut through the hype and examine the technology’s limits, which might stymie its acceptance, implementation, and scalability in agri-food supply chains. This study presents Agri-SCM-BIoT (Agriculture Supply Chain Management using Blockchain and Internet of things) architecture to address the storage and scalability optimization, interoperability, security and privacy issues security, and privacy of personal data along with storage concerns with present single-chain agriculture supply chain systems. We also discussed the classification of security threats with IoT infrastructure and possible available blockchain-based defense mechanisms. Finally, we discussed the features of the proposed supply chain architecture, followed by a conclusion and future work.