A Top-Rated Food Trading and Supply Chain Traceability Solution: Foodchain™

Foodchain™ is a digital platform that leverages blockchain, AI, and smart contracts to program business logic to disrupt the current outdated and costly food trading, traceability, and distribution challenges in the food supply chain. It helps to solve the challenges faced by farmers and retailers in the global food ecosystem and facilitates price discovery, fair and just prices, faster payments, production advance and complete transparency and traceability that enhance and improve the efficiency through which food products move through the supply chain from the time the food is produced, packed and shipped, to when it reaches the consumer.

Blockchain and AI ensure efficient supply chain traceability management, facilitating greater automation and scalability by increasing the connectivity across food production and supply networks and improving traceability in commodity movement. The technology creates a better experience for every stakeholder from the farmer to the packer, distributor, wholesaler, and consumer.

Foodchain™ developed a supply chain traceability and trading solution using blockchain technology to improve the current inefficient food distribution process that causes higher prices to consumers, lowers revenues for farmers, and causes food waste in the supply chain. Foodchain™ can achieve these main objectives by implementing cutting-edge technologies to disrupt the food supply chain from farmer to consumer. The traceability platform traces all types of food products from field to consumer, building bridges with production, harvesting, packaging, transport, logistics, finance, buyers, countries, and all actors, public and private, involved in the traceability, supply chain management, and food ecosystem. Not only does it trace the physical food products and certifications but also provides the users' alarms and alerts on product food safety issues and problems throughout the food ecosystem to notify the appropriate entities to take immediate corrective actions.

Foodchain™ through its fair and transparent transaction methodology will improve the socioeconomic status of farmers and alleviate poverty in the sector by digitizing the current chaotic processes, obtaining better markets, eliminating intermediaries that provide no value, and identifying serious buyers that will pay the farmer more for their food products. As farmers reduce their transaction costs, receive more money, and are paid faster, they can expand their food production and reduce the fallow periods between production cycles, which are often caused by lack of liquidity, allowing them to produce more food into the supply chain, and increase their incomes.

Blockchain technology provides a digital ledger, which is error-free, immutable, and safe for holding transactions. Organizations can digitize physical assets and create a decentralized transactional record for greater transparency and visibility. It helps eliminate the production, packing, and shipping delays, reduce fraud and errors, and improves management and oversight. Food has value and to help provide liquidity to farmers, we can tokenize the value of the food product through our Food Token and use the tokens to provide funds for food production and increase the much-needed cash flow required by farmers to produce more food.

Foodchain™ aims to position itself as the leading digital platform for food trading, traceability, production solutions, and financial services/payments for the different agricultural value chains and food ecosystems, starting with Latin America and the USA. Our objective is to expand within the Latin American region more efficiently, at lower costs, with faster penetration, and with greater reach. To achieve these objectives, we have developed an aggressive growth strategy of partnering with various entities in the food ecosystem that facilitate access to the Latin American agricultural and food community (multilateral organizations, cooperatives, farming associations, financial institutions, ministries of agriculture, and others).

With the help of our multilateral partners, we began implementing the strategy of public-private partnerships with Latin American governments, starting with pilot programs. The great impact of partnering with Latin American governments is that the governments’ part is to organize, train and motivate the farming community in their respective countries to use the Foodchain™.

Foodchain™ currently has four traceability pilot programs in progress, one in Uruguay (lamb), Mexico (bananas), Panama (meat imports), and Peru (grapes) and will soon start a pilot program in Brazil (cassava) and are in negotiation to implement the traceable platform in El Salvador, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Paraguay, and five other countries. The development of pilot programs has many advantages for the positioning of the Foodchain™ throughout Latin America. Blockchain is all the rage; everyone from governments, farmers, and buyers are talking about it, the need for it, and that the agriculture, meat, and seafood sectors should implement this technology for traceability. However, most of these entities have little knowledge about the use, scope, and implementation of blockchain technology. Through its alliances, Foodchain™ is sensitizing, educating, and training the people in the food ecosystem in Latin America about blockchain technology and the Foodchain™ platforms.

We believe in strong alliances; by ourselves, we cannot solve the pressing issues facing the food supply chain in Latin America. We have a strong hemispherical alliance with the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA). IICA is an 80-year-old multilateral organization with 34 offices dedicated to the agriculture and food business in Latin America. Our alliance is to implement digital solutions and blockchain in Latin America and the Caribbean. More consumers each day are requesting to know the carbon footprint of the foods they consume. We are currently in conversations with IICA for the development of food audits, certifications, and carbon footprint tracing using digital traceability of Foodchain™ for all types of food products.

Within the framework of the IICA/Foodchain strategic alliance, the Development Bank of Latin America (CAF) is supporting the application and implementation of the blockchain technology for the traceability of sheep meat in Uruguay and table grapes in Peru for export to the USA.

World authorities, in particular the FDA and the European Union, have stated that soon all food products need to be digitally traced and verified and the best method would be the use of blockchain technology. Foodchain Trace™ is a robust traceability platform that traces every aspect of food production from seed to harvest, packaging, to logistics, to delivery to the buyer. Foodchain™ Marketplace is a food trading platform that connects farmers with real buyers. Foodchain Trace™ and Foodchain™ Marketplace jointly provide immensely powerful traceability and food trading system.

As the world population grows, it requires more food to be produced to feed the ever-increasing population. Foodchain™ will unite farmers, buyers, and consumers within a digital ecosystem for the benefit of all agricultural companies and farmers, helping them to apply modern technology by digitizing the processes in food production, traceability, and food trading.

Foodchain™ has a strong multidisciplinary team comprised of food producers, technology experts, agribusiness professionals, and other multi-skilled professionals with management and financial backgrounds. Three of the key players are: David Proenza, CEO, has over 30 years of experience in the agriculture and food industry and is an entrepreneurial innovator with depth and experience in management, innovation, food production, and marketing of food products throughout the American continent and Europe. His experience ranges from open-field farming, greenhouses to controlled environment vertical farming. He has applied cutting-edge technology in the food business throughout his career. In 2000, he developed a food export platform for e-commerce, and most recently, for Foodchain, based on blockchain technology.

Paul Harris, CFO, worked for a top city broking firm on the London Stock Exchange and with merchant and investment banking firms in the city’s financial markets before moving into global management consulting. He has worked with many international and global companies where he has applied his management and consulting skills. Paul has been an integral part of the formation of the company from its concept.

Laila Espinoza studied computer science, marketing, and agribusiness. Laila was instrumental in the development of the food export platform for e-commerce since 2000 and is a partner and founder of Urban Farms as well as Foodchain™. She has collaborated with several chambers of commerce in Latin America teaching seminars on compliance with FDA export regulations.

“Foodchain™ through its fair and transparent transaction methodology will improve the socioeconomic status of farmers and alleviate poverty in the sector by digitizing the current chaotic processes, obtaining better markets, eliminating intermediaries that provide no value, and identifying serious buyers that will pay the farmer more for their food products.