AgroChain

This repository contains the code for an Agricultural Supply Chain Dapp With Micro-Finance functionality, coded using Truffle and Solidity. The backend blockchain is a private Ethereum network setup using Geth(go-ethereum) and the interactions are made possible by Web3 javascript library.

What problems are we solving?

An Agricultural Supply Chain tracks a farm product from the farmer to the consumer. Farmers in developing countries are heavily dependent on bank loans. Due to this heavy debt , farmers can't maintain a steady production of agriculture. Micro-finance can help these farmers out of debt.

Agro-market

In the recent past, we have read many incidents regarding the farmer suicides due to debts and poor yield from farming. For a country like India, with the rise in population, dependency over the land for building houses and industrial areas is increasing rapidly. The fertile land for farming is dwindling and more yields have to be produced to satisfy the need of the country. Even though the demand increase, the farmers are suffering from some major issues like :

i. Raising the initial investment for setting up the field due to high bank interest rates.

ii. Fetch reasonable prices for their produce due to the intervention of middlemen in market.

iii. Analyzing market trends and customer needs. Currently the farmer and customer are completely separated in the market by the middlemen.

iv. Inefficient supply chain and issues in storage and transportation, leading to deterioration of crops.

Similarly, the customers are also worried about the high price of commodities as well as the quality of produce. They are forced to purchase whatever is available in the market at the price set by the seller. The ill practices of Black marketing, hoarding, adulteration, etc., carried out by the middle man further increases the prices for the farm products. Even though the demand for organic products is increasing, there is lack of mechanism for tracing the stages of organic cultivation and ensure authenticity. The biggest challenge in the agro-markets is the ‘disconnect’ between the farmers and the consumers.

Our solution to the problem:

Agrochain, is a blockchain based transparent market place where the farmers and consumers could implement a co-operative farming method. Here, the farmers can list the potential crops and the expected yield on his farm on the distributed public ledger. The consumers can view the details and check for the farmer credibility based on the previous cultivation and supply. This creates a transparent and tamper-proof digital market platform for farm products. Thus an agreement (consensus) can be formed between farmer and consumer, such that the consumer can fund individual crops or a field and can acquire or the yield from the farm or the profit percentage of its market value. There will be a rating mechanism to build the credibility of farmer and consumer based on the previous experiences in the agromarket.

The important advantages are:

1. The farmer does not have to wait for bank loan or other lending mechanisms to raise the initial investment. The consumers could provide the fund with zero interest.

2. The consumers could get quality products at cheaper rates as they are funding the crops/fields right from the time of cultivation.

3. No need to have huge farmlands. Even the small scale farmers and household farmers can also sell their products and yield better profit.

4. An efficient supply chain can be ensured with point to point update over the immutable chains. Customers could choose specific farmers for specific products.

5. The farmers can build consumer loyalty based on the quality of product and type of farming, which could eventually yield him better profits.

6. Even the low income group consumers can fund the crops based on their needs and can escape from the market fluctuations of the product prices.

7. Organic farming and quality measurement can be assured with frequent quality checking by the concerned authorities. The immutable ledger ensures transparency and reduces the chances of fraud.

8. Smart contracts can provide a better agreement between the farmers and consumers in case of discrepancies arising with regard to natural calamities, climate changes or other crop loss situations

Eventually, the Agrochain will build a decentralized agro-market where the farmers can easily raise fund for cultivation along with the customers in his hand for buying his produce. On the other hand the customers can ensure quality products at lesser price with an early investment on the crops. Both the customers and farmers could yield profit and build a loyal environment for future cooperation. The best farmer will get the maximum profit on the produce and the best investor (consumer) can ensure good quality food for his home.

The above figure shows the registration form for the farmer in the supply chain application. The entered details are stored directly onto the blockchain. The underlying technology uses Truffle for the deployment and go-ethereum(geth) as the backend blockchain. We use the Web3 Javascript provider API to interact with the blockchain.

The next page is for quality testing, here we can get the farmer details by Farmer Id. These details are stored as a structure using solidity code onto the blockchain. The Farmer details are retrieved using a special data structure called mapping by Farmer Id.

This is the Quality Testing page. Here we can see the block details where the farmer’s details are stored onto blockchain. The ‘Approve Details’ will approve the details of the farmer.

Approve Details button click will redirect to this Product details page. This is also part of the quality testing where we enter the lot number, grade, price, test date and expiry date. These details are also stored in the blockchain as a structure.

This is the customer page where the customer can check the customer details and status of the quality testing of his agriculture produce. The customer has to enter the farmer id and Lot number to see the details. These customer details are retrieved from the blockchain.

The micro-finance form enables any user to fund a farmer. The funding is done by providing the farmers public id, the lot number of the product and the amount.

System Architecture

About Us

We are a group of researchers based at Indian Institute Of Information Technology and Management - Kerala

Website/Contact : http://agrochain.in/