FOODBITE - Sustainable Transports and Consumption in the Food Value Chain

Foodbite aims at investigating the potential in using blockchain technology as a potentially useful technology to create safer, more efficient and more sustainable food value chains with a specific focus on the distribution aspects. Blockchain technology is a way to ensure reliable and trustworthy transactions among loosely coupled agents, actors and systems interacting in networks that show potential to meet sustainability challenges. Recently, blockchain technology has been suggested as a promising technology to ensure safe food and sustainable distribution systems in the food sector. However, as of yet, there is a shortage of research in the area supporting some rather bold claims.

The phenomena under investigation are blockchain technology and food value chains and they are investigated using a case methodology combined with experiments and agent-based simulation (ABM).

The overall research question that this project addresses is: In what ways can blockchain technology be utilized to enhance safety, efficiency and sustainability in the food value chain? Given this overall focus the project centers on three specific issues related to transports and distribution in food value chains:

• What is the impact of a technology such as blockchain on the greening of a food supply chain?
• How can it be used to ensure efficient and sustainable transports and distribution of foodstuff in the food value chain?
• How can blockchain be used to enhance end-user knowledge on whether foodstuff has been distributed in a sustainable way or not?

Foodbite is part of the Center for Sustainable Business | CSB research node CSB Value Chain. The project engages researchers across the School of Business and Computer Science departments and is carried out in partnership with Blockchain specialist company Youcal AB.

Expected results are new models and conceptualizations of the food value chain based on distributed control and management, a prototype demonstrator of using blockchain technology to enhance information on how foodstuff have been transported and an experiment on how end-users may benefit from such information.