Blockchain in Agriculture: A PESTELS Analysis

Abstract

Blockchain (BC) represents a disruptive technology that has been extensively used to ensure immutability of digital transactions. Starting as an underlying mechanism in the digital currency sector, it has been applicable in a wide range of sectors and application domains. Agriculture represents a sector of significance for overall sustainability challenges that is benefiting from digitalisation and technological evolution and the enforcement of Industry 4.0 paradigm shift towards precision agriculture. Introduction of Internet of Things, and Cyber-Physical Systems increase overall complexity, with Big Data analysis and Machine Learning technologies providing innovative applications. BC appears to be a promising technology for agriculture providing mechanisms for tracing of products and overall agricultural SC (SC) management from the farm to the fork. Authors investigate the challenges and open issues for the application of BC in agriculture performing a state of the art analysis along the PESTELS framework. A large number of challenges including technological ones, create big research potential for the evolution of the area.