Blockchain and agricultural supply chains traceability: research trends and future challenges

Blockchain is today one of the most interesting and debated research topics. Blockchain technology was implemented for the first time in the financial sector a few years ago. However, it is currently used in many other areas, such as: healthcare, smart cities, smart contracts, energy markets, government sector. The success of this technology mainly lies in the following properties: reliability, transparency, immutability. In this study, we collect and analyze the main contributions in the literature about the application of blockchain in the agricultural sector, focusing on food traceability issues. Considering the quick growth of this technology and the high number of published documents in recent months, there is a need to catalog the different methodologies, proposed by the various scholars. Our aim is to detect the current research trends and possible future challenges. In the agricultural context, the need for an adequate traceability system is motivated by several bad habits and problems, such as the wide use of pesticides and fertilizers in fruits and vegetables, which are extremely harmful for human health. Moreover, in the last few years, the consumers’ attention about the quality of agricultural products has considerably increased. The present study shows that the blockchain technology is still in its early stage. Although there are several proposals in the literature, still a limited number of applications have been put into use in the real context. From the point of view of scientific research, only some countries are investing in this technology: China and United States are among the most active, but Italy is also very involved in this phenomenon. Overall, the blockchain technology appears very promising, but still many efforts are needed to reach the maturation stage.