Blockchain-Based Frameworks for Food Traceability: A Systematic Review

Abstract

With the rise of globalization and technological competition, the food supply chain has grown more complex due to the multiple players and factors involved in the chain. Traditional systems fail to offer effective and reliable traceability solutions considering the increasing requirement for accountability and transparency in the food supply chain. Blockchain technology has been claimed to offer the food industry a transformative future. The inherent features of blockchain, including immutability and transparency, create a dependable and secure system for tracking food products across the whole supply chain, ensuring total control over their traceability from the origin to the final consumer. This research offers a comprehensive overview of multiple models to understand how the integration of blockchain and other digital technologies has transformed the food supply chain. This comprehensive systematic review of blockchain-based food-supply-chain frameworks aimed to uncover the capability of blockchain technology to revolutionize the industry and examined the current landscape of blockchain-based food traceability solutions to identify areas for improvement. Furthermore, the research investigates recent advancements and investigates how blockchain aligns with other emerging technologies of Industry 4.0 and Web 3.0. Blockchain technology plays an important role in improving food traceability and supply-chain operations. Potential synergies between blockchain and other emerging technologies of Industry 4.0 and Web 3.0 are digitizing food supply chains, which results in better management, automation, efficiencies, sustainability, verifiability, auditability, accountability, traceability, transparency, tracking, monitoring, response times and provenance across food supply chains.