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From Tuscan wines to Mongolian mines, blockchain is transforming supply chains
Seafood from all over the world is tracked on Wholechain and the data is verified on the blockchain.
The whole chain
Every second of every day, supply chains track an infinite variety of goods transported from millions of different places into the hands of millions of different people in every corner of the world. From the rare earths mined in the Gobi Desert that power your smartphone, to the sustainable seafood from small-scale fisheries in the Indonesian archipelago on your plate, to the rolling hills of Tuscany where carefully grown grapes now swirl like wine in your glass , supply chains drive economic growth, accelerate innovation and enable a globalized world connected by our collective desire to trade.
Yet, the sector has been challenged by a number of challenges.
According to a survey cited by researchers from MIT Sloan School of Management, 81% of companies do not have full visibility of their supply chains and 54% have no visibility at all. Consumers, retailers and auditors cannot easily verify claims of sustainable, ethical and responsible sourcing. This hurts everyone, up and down the line, for different reasons, and is extremely wasteful. This is reported, for example, by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Supply chains cause 40% of food waste in North America.
Enter blockchain technology.
Offering unprecedented transparency, security and efficiency, nowhere is the potential of blockchain more evident than in supply chain management, where trust, accountability and transparency are crucial. Blockchain’s decentralized and immutable ledger enables seamless traceability and verification of transactions across the entire supply chain network. In this context, companies like it The whole chain they are pioneering the integration of blockchain in ways that will revolutionize supply chain management.
In its latest version, Wholechain improves its capabilities through integration with Algorand
Algorand
blockchain (Disclosure: I work for the Algorand Foundation, a non-profit organization that promotes large-scale blockchain innovation). Wholechain automatically writes traceability data to the blockchain, providing customers with a record of auditable data that informs more responsible supply chain decisions. By providing an immutable record of a product’s origin, Wholechain gives companies the visibility they need to ensure their products are sustainably sourced and comply with international regulations, particularly food safety standards and those prohibiting child labor and exploitation of workers. Its full-chain traceability work with the supply chains of Fortune 500 companies also earned recognition, earning a spot on the list Blockchain by Forbes50 list in 2023.
Leveraging blockchain allows for seamless scalability without compromising environmental impact. It also simplifies onboarding and end-to-end coordination for supply chain partners. This allows companies to trace products back to their origins, have visibility every step of the way, and verify claims about those products.
Wholechain’s work in the traceable seafood sector is in line with the urgent needs of the sector as it seeks to comply with the FDA’s Food Modernization Act new traceability rule for high-risk food products starting January 2026. Seafood, included in the FDA list, is under scrutiny for its food safety and quality issues and is a perfect candidate for blockchain-based traceability. Wholechain won the FDA’s 2021 Food Traceability Challenge, recognizing this potential of blockchain.
Food safety is just one example of the usefulness of traceability in the world of supply chains. Partners across the chain, including some of the most trusted leaders in sustainability, recognize the role of technology in advancing myriad cross-sector goals, including deforestation-free supply chains, decarbonization, social well-being and others. Blockchain confirms trust in the data that informs decision making. This trust is critical to supply chain transformation, which requires holistic knowledge of ingredient life cycles – from harvesting to shipping to processing and distribution – encompassing logistical, environmental and social challenges.
And the trust and certainty that blockchain generates also helps small producers enter the global market. By leveraging immutable traceability data on Wholechain, sustainable sourcing company Envisible and the Global Seafood Alliance help small producers substantiate their harvesting and production practices while covering the costs of certifying them. The program offers small-scale suppliers such as Ocean fishing experts in Oman AND Cape Fish in South Africa a competitive advantage in markets they would otherwise not be able to access due to high certification costs. Verifiable data, to which blockchain adds an additional layer of trust, makes this program possible, adding small-scale producers to the global seafood market.
When institutions as wildly different as De Beers, which uses blockchain technology to secure compliance with human rights and child labor laws in its diamond supply chain, and the United Nations World Food Programme, which uses blockchain to monitor food quality as a way to increase the income of small farmers, we are clearly at the beginning of mass adoption. We are seeing the future through the eyes of supply chain innovators who understand that in a world where the miner in Mongolia is connected to the engineer in Cupertino and where the winemaker in Tuscany is connected to the waiter in Tulsa, we need the level of trust beyond the boundaries that the transparency and traceability of the blockchain generate.