As Asian tastes grow more complicated, and customers show more interest for how their food is produced, including its influence on the environment and the working circumstances of those included in bringing it to the table, farmers over the region are adopting blockchain to help develop supply transparency and attach value to their produce.

The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is running with Papua New Guinea pork producers to apply blockchain to verify that their livestock matches international standards and supporting them win access to global markets.

International charity Oxfam is also operating with Cambodian rice growers to assist them in utilizing blockchain technology to support fair trade by assuring that farmers are appropriately paid and that customers can make more knowledgeable purchasing decisions.

While the churn rate of blockchain startups serves to be high, according to FAO investment officer Gerard Sylvester, “developing expertise in one specific field [such as agriculture] will be helpful and even within that field, focusing on one important value chain will help in sustaining solutions.”

Still, with many blockchain agriculture projects still in the pilot stage, challenges remain.

According to Emurgo Indonesia CEO Shunsuke Murasaki, one of the principal reasons significant barriers to introducing blockchain is supporting farmers understand what is, in the end, a very sophisticated tool.

“It takes time to explain to them what’s the benefit and what’s the concept of the blockchain technology,” said Murasaki. Lembah Kerinci Developindo operates six Blue Korintji Coffee shops in Indonesia.

Earlier this year, U.S. technology giant IBM also declared the launch of an app that enables customers to track the coffee supply chain in association with leading global players Beyers Koffie, the Colombian Coffee Growers Federation, and the Itochu Corporation.

For Blue Korintji Coffee, the choice to make usage of blockchain technology began out of a social project to raise incomes for the 500 farmers it operates near the Kerinci Seblat National Park on Sumatra Island.

Farmers and companies record their transactions on their smartphones based on each invoice, which is then collected to the blockchain-powered database.

Blue Korintji parent company Lembah Kerinci Developindo recently holds six coffee shops in Indonesia, which turned $117,000 in 2019, is seeing to triple revenues over the following three years, and profit on what research firm Statista describes the younger generation’s “newfound appreciation for locally-produced coffee.”

Blue Korintji Coffee sources coffee beans provided by farmers about the Kerinci Seblat National Park area.

With the Blue Korintji Coffee project still in the pilot stage, Emurgo’s Murasaki stated his company was already in talks to trade the concept to suppliers of other in-demand commodities like cacao beans and palm oil.

Established in 2017, Emurgo is part of the Cardano project, focused on a blockchain platform produced by U.S. based startup Input Output Hong Kong and is connected to the technology following the cryptocurrency Ada.

According to Murasaki, Emurgo’s blockchain database could also be of use to banks and other financial institutions by giving data like crop yields and sales required defining farmer creditworthiness. With no access to such data currently, Murasaki said the end result is higher interest rates for farmers.

“Every transaction used to be paper-based before this blockchain, meaning that they cannot accumulate trust,” stated Murasaki in a statement. The new database, he continued, would provide them ways to “prove themselves.”