The much-hyped blockchain has gradually become a mainstream technology that is widely adopted. Still, it's a bit of a surprise when you come across a company that uses both IoT sensor technology and blockchain to solve an agricultural problem. Zest Labs has created a fresh food management solution that focuses on food quality, reducing waste, improving food safety, and using technology to achieve this.
They offer total solutions from growers to retailers. Use sensor-based technology to help suppliers and retailers manage freshness and quality, as well as track and traceability. At the heart of the concept is that often 30% of products are not handled correctly, and it is difficult to distinguish them from other 70% qualified products. In fact, tens of millions of tons of agricultural products are transported. You can't check all the goods.
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) estimates that food waste in the United States is as high as $218 billion a year. Not all of the produce picked on the same day is the same, nor does it necessarily have the same shelf life, depending on indicators such as humidity, field and storage temperature. This makes the best date an issue. To address this, Zest Labs has introduced a single freshness metric— ZIPR codes — that can significantly improve freshness management decisions based on specific product types, growing locations, actual harvesting and processing conditions.
Zest Fresh software uses patented methods and sensors to calculate a ZIPR code for each tracked pallet (unit of measure for bulk goods), ensuring inventory and shipping decisions based on actual freshness. Growers, retailers and restaurateurs can benefit from smart routes, which means produce closer to the best date can be relocated earlier to a closer location for primary or further processing.
Testing has shown that using Zest Fresh and ZIPR code can cut waste in half and significantly improve the customer experience. This provides continuous, real-time visibility into the remaining freshness of the product, optimizing the desired shelf life through intelligent routing.
Zest Labs said: "We see an opportunity to help suppliers because they can guarantee the freshness of their products and get paid for maximum quality. Imagine if you could differentiate your product and have a competitive edge in terms of freshness. ”
Zest Labs recently announced that they are now also offering free blockchain for growers and shippers using the Zest Fresh platform. Blockchain adds a layer of security and trust to the entire fresh food supply chain, creating true transparency for all key food freshness factors for all participants in the network.
Zest Fresh leverages secure, certified data collection to quickly provide customers with access to blockchain technology through its wireless IoT sensors, smart access points, and secure Zest cloud. In addition, combined with intelligent predictive analytics, the value of the blockchain can be extended through smart contracts that can automatically identify whether fresh products meet the agreed specifications of the supply chain.
Most industries are thinking about how blockchain can be effectively applied to their operations, with food suppliers paying particular attention as large companies may eventually require their supply chain partners to get involved. This could mean that many growers are forced to adopt blockchain, whether they like it or not. Of course, the mandatory adoption of technology has also happened before, such as RFID, but its application was successful only before large companies forced it to use it, but none of the smaller vendors could afford RFID tags.
While blockchain solves the trust problem, it cannot replace traditional IoT data processing and storage.
The Zest Fresh platform is actually a data flow complex event processing system created in the world of the Internet of Things that could never be adapted to process blockchains. But given the nature of the work blockchain does, it creates a very interesting opportunity for information-sharing networks to ensure consistency up and down the supply chain.
As agriculture becomes more automated and interconnected, blockchain could become another business tool widely used by farmers.