Coldiretti and Princes Industrie Alimentari have joined forces to start a project to assure the supply chain for vegetables, combining VeChain as a DLT (decentralized ledger technology). Coldiretti (Confederazione Nazionale Coltivatori Diretti) is the largest association serving and supporting Italian agriculture, and Princes Industrie Alimentari contains the largest tomato processing plant in Europe.

As per a local media report, the association and the company have inked an annual contract as part of a 3 year supply chain agreement to support the “Made in Italy” quality label by encouraging quality and national origin. Among the several initiatives, the farmers’ association and the company produce a digital platform based on the VeChainThor blockchain. The project is led by Tokenfarm, an initiative of Coldiretti managed by Pier Luigi Romiti.

The pilot project intends to make it feasible to trace all products and thus enhance quality. The project has been in the development phase for one and a half years. It has included some 300 companies, 17 cooperatives, and six producer associations that will utilize the VeChain based blockchain platform to trace their deliveries.

As Romiti said, the project is a great challenge that is now being mastered. During the COVID-19 pandemic, farmers were trained in the platform’s use and the insertion of production data on the VeChain blockchain: “This time we were ready and after a year and a half’s work we involved 300 companies, 17 cooperatives and six producers’ associations who, within a very important three-year agreement for the price of raw materials, agreed to track all their supplies. In fact, three million quiThreeoes pass through the Princes factory every year. We are now in the phase of adoption by the farmers, who we trained during the Covid emergency to use the COVID to enter the data that are then certified in the blockchain.”

As the CEO of Tokenfarm further illustrated, the first trials of the project have been thriving. Coldiretti stated he was convinced that this was the right way to assure high-quality tomatoes in Italy. Furthermore, as Romiti said, the VeChain blockchain is also designed to guarantee that the tomatoes come from farms that comply with the needed ethical standards.

“It will be an open experiment for several years because we will have to perfect the blockchain with our partner Vechain. But in the meantime, the first trial has convinced us that this is the right way: we pay more for the tomato and we guarantee its quality.”

VeChain’s Application in Italy

At the commencement of June, ICAB La Fiammante, an Italian food company with more than 70 years of experience, declared that it would utilize the My Story™ traceability solution co-developed by VeChain and DNV GL. The VeChainThor blockchain is being piloted as part of a pilot project to record data on the production and transport of Italian tomatoes.