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Subjects:
Agricultural Economics & Policy
Competitive agri-food supply chain (hereafter, AFSC) is an important component of AFSC. In a competitive environment, more and more AFSCs use blockchain-based traceability services (hereafter, BBTS) to improve the traceability level of agricultural products.
- high-quality agri-food supply chain
- blockchain-based traceability service
- perceived quality and safety
1. Introduction
With the dramatic development of China’s economy and the improvement of people’s living standards, consumers’ demands for agricultural products are developing in a greener and safer direction. However, several produce scandals have occurred in the past decades, such as horse meat being found in several ground beef products in Europe in 2013, and 100,000-tons of expired meat being confiscated by Chinese authorities in 2015. In 2018, 44% of Canadian seafood products were mislabeled [1]. These quality and safety issues concerning agricultural products have seriously dampened consumers’ confidence in the quality and safety of agricultural products [2]. At the same time, it also stimulates consumers’ demand for quality traceability of agricultural products from farm to table [3,4].
To reduce these harmful food safety issues, the European Union, the United States, Australia, Canada, Japan, China, and other countries have issued laws and regulations to require the agri-food industry to build traceability service systems [5]. However, for traditional traceability systems, the information is not safe in the storage process. Because the data managers are also members of supply chains, when adverse data are found, they may modify the data. So, the credibility of the traditional traceability service is not high. As a distributed data structure, blockchain technology can share data on peer-to-peer networks [6,7]. In the blockchain environment, data were converted into digital code and stored in a shared database, with higher transparency and limited risk of deletion and modification. Blockchains cannot be usurped [8]. Blockchain technology has received extensive attention in the agricultural product traceability area [9].
2. Operational Management of Competitive AFSCs
This research investigates the investment decision of competitive AFSCs. Dai et al. [11] studied the coordination and pricing of a competitive supply chain. They divided the competition of the supply chain into three models: upstream competition, downstream competition, and a mixed supply chain model with both upstream and downstream competition. They then designed a mixed competition mode to study the effect of traceability and product recall in the supply chain. Based on this mode, Dai believed that traceability investment is always beneficial to manufacturers, and the impact on retailers depends on the cost of traceability. Niu et al. [12] designed a co-appetitive supply chain model composed of a multinational firm located in a high tax region and an e-tailer that purchased and resold the multinational firm’s products. Choi et al. [13] designed a game mode of duopoly competition, and studied the effect of product information disclosure, based on blockchain technology, on the supply chain of rental service platforms. This study indicated that risk attitude is an important factor to accurately describe the impacts brought by blockchain technology.
In the field of AFSC, Ganeshkumar et al. [14] through a critical review of the literature in the field of AFSC management, divided it into three categories: policies affecting the segments of AFSC management, individual segments of AFSC and performance of supply chain segments. Joshi et al. [15] collected data from 1100 supply chain entities. It was found that low adoption capabilities and lack of uniform sustainable agri-business policy were the major factors influencing adoption of sustainable agri-business. Wang and Chen [16] studied the decision-making problem of portfolio contracts in the fresh supply chain and designed a model for concluding contracts for suppliers and retailers. They found that option prices have diverse impressions on supply chain members’ income. Wang and Zhao [17] also studied the investment decision of cold chain investing in fresh supply chains. Their results suggested that cooperative cold chain investment and collaborative pricing are the dominant strategies of the supply chain.
3. Application of Blockchain Traceability Service in AFSCs
This paper’s research involves the application of blockchain traceability service in supply chains. In recent years, with the promotion of national policy and consumers, the notion of a traceability service has gradually become an important part of AFSC management [18]. Rejeb et al. [19] analyzed big data in the context of AFSCs. Their findings indicated that traceability can improve food safety and bring sustainable AFSC benefits. Badia-Melis et al. [20] summarized the technological development of traditional traceability services, such as RFID, NFC, isotope analysis and DNA barcode, but did not show the development of blockchain technology. The above traceability services have deficiencies in traceability information security, transparency, and credibility.
Due to its traceability, digitalization and security, many scholars have studied how supply chains use blockchain technology [8,21,22,23,24,25,26]. Alkhader et al. [27] studies the adoption of blockchain to improve the traceability of products produced using additive manufacturing, guaranteeing the credibility of the source of transaction data and ensuring stakeholders’ trust. Yang et al. [28] used blockchain technology to design the supply chain traceability system for fresh agricultural products, which improved the transparency and credibility of supply chain information and made up for the shortcomings of traditional traceability services in transparency and credibility. Sun and Wang [29] studied the purchasing decisions of supply chain buyers considering traceability and found that buyers were more likely to purchase from suppliers with high traceability. Collart and Canales [30] believed that future research should focus on traceable economic sustainability data and the economic feasibility of blockchain technology, based on a case study of high-quality AFSC. Casino et al. (2020) [31] designed a traceability system of agricultural products based on blockchain, and evaluated the feasibility of the model through a specific study of a real dairy enterprise. Griffin et al. [32] used distributed ledger technology to detect cotton quality, track cotton data and coordinate supply chain management. Salah et al. [33] designed a traceability system for soybeans using blockchain and intelligent contracts. Through a survey of the wine supply chain, Saurabh and Dey [34] studied the factors that decision-makers were most concerned about in the adoption of blockchain technology.
At present, blockchain technology has been applied in business. The most famous case is the mango traceability system jointly developed by Walmart and IBM, which can greatly shorten the traceability time of mangoes. At the same time, Walmart also uses this technology for pork traceability [10]. IBM has also developed beef chains to track where beef comes from, and the technology is certified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture [35]. Based on blockchain technology, Carrefour has developed a traceability system for poultry agricultural products, like Walmart, which improves the traceability of chicken and eggs. Internet technology companies, such as Amazon and Oracle, have also developed blockchain traceability services [36]. Some Internet technology companies have developed blockchain traceability service platforms, and their agricultural product supply chain purchases blockchain traceability services from the platform. Ant Group developed Ant Chain, and Zhizhen Chain developed by JD Group can provide blockchain traceability services for agricultural product supply chains.
Through the above literature, it can be seen that many scholars have designed different blockchains for different AFSCs. To trace the origin of pork and mangoes, Walmart developed the pork chain and mango chain, respectively. The cost of developing different blockchain technologies for AFSCs is so huge that AFSCs cannot always afford it. The blockchain traceability service is based on the online blockchain platform, which can meet the traceability needs of various agricultural products. With the help of the platform’s blockchain traceability service, the cost of developing blockchains in the supply chain is reduced. Therefore, more and more agricultural product supply chains have adopted BBTS, such as Wuchang rice and West Lake Longjing tea. Therefore, building a BBTS platform suitable for a variety of agricultural products, and purchasing BBTS from the agricultural product supply chain, has become a future development trend.
4. AFSCs Investment Decision Based on the BBTS
Niknejad et al. [9] used bibliometric analysis to study the research and development of blockchain technology in agricultural supply chains in recent years and found that more and more scholars are interested in this field. The research shows that research on blockchains in the field of agricultural products is mainly divided into traceability system, blockchain technology and the benefits of blockchains.
Blockchain traceability system improves the traceability of agricultural products. The literature shows that traceability can increase the perception of product quality and enhance consumers’ confidence in agricultural products. Consumers have a higher willingness to pay for this kind of product [4,37,38]. Research shows that the main cost of supply chain investment in blockchain technology lies in variable costs, and the fixed cost of investment has little impact on the supply chain [39]. The research of Chen et al. [40] showed that consumers are sensitive to price and the selling prices of agricultural products are low. If the price of agricultural products significantly increases, due to the increase in the cost of anti-counterfeiting and traceability services, the sales volumes of agricultural products are reduced, which is not conducive to the profits of the supply chain. In the field of agricultural product supply chains, P. Liu et al. [41] considered freshness and greenness, and designed an agricultural product supply chain composed of a manufacturer and a retailer to study the integrated application of big data and blockchain. The research showed that when the investment cost was within a certain range, it was conducive to the profit of the supply chain. Stranieri et al. [42] studied the impact of blockchain technology on performance in agricultural supply chains, and argued that blockchain technology can bring profits and benefits to the supply chain, enhance quality attributes and improve supply chain management. Zhao et al. [43] believe that the application of blockchains in high-quality AFSC can improve traceability and quality safety. Wu et al. [44] studied the coordinated pricing problem of investing in blockchain technology in the fresh food supply chain, and designed a three-level supply chain model consisting of suppliers, third-party logistics and retailers. Their study found that whether to invest in blockchain Technology was related to consumer acceptance, cost sharing, and product deterioration.
This entry is adapted from the peer-reviewed paper 10.3390/foods11192981
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