EXPECTED IMPACT OF THE DATA SMART FARMHAND

EXPECTED IMPACT OF THE DATA-SMART FARMHAND EXPECTED IMPACT OF THE DATA-SMART FARMHAND

Soil Information Fingerprint | Data-smart Farmhand Platform

The expected impact of the Data-smart Farmhand (DSFH) platform starts with implementation of the first phase, the Soil Information Fingerprint (SIF) of minimal viable soil and first mile environmental data. But it is only one step of our efforts to harmonize a wholistic database for a more transparent and secure food system. Ultimately, the DFSH framework will connect a systemwide database product and inclusive ecosystem with seamless interoperability, inclusive governance and stakeholder access to a marketplace of technology. This will allow all stakeholders to be rewarded with double- and triple-bottom-line returns (returns on investment, environmentally sustainable returns and returns that ‘do good’) throughout the entire value chain. These returns will start with the implementation of the SIF and will multiply exponentially as the platform is built and scaled to include all parts of the food system. Further stakeholder engagement with DSFH platform is necessary to create data conformity across the entire value chain and to satisfy the mountain of needs from different users, and build token velocity for store-of-value. Importantly, extensive industry participation is necessary in order to identify the best food system metrics, how to scale the ecosystem as a community, and gain acceptance of this sustainable business model. 1.

Tokenization of Food System Ecosystem: Value In, Value Out As a consequence, there are four ways a blockchain-based and tokenized DSFH with a SIF business model economically benefits producers directly, and all stakeholders indirectly: More profits for producers, because less (or zero) profit sharing with intermediaries. Broadly, the entire ecosystem is incentivized to achieve more nutritional, safe and affordable products for consumers, and with less compliance costs for the chain. Better and more useful technology (tools) to improve sales channel visualization and safety, reduce waste and loss, and receive transparent upstream feedback. To start, the SIF will mostly help the producers, but as we scale the DSFH platform, other tools connected to the SIF will be built that bring the same type of value to other chain stakeholders.

Producers compensated for data (token), data ownership which incentivizes them to use more services -- more often -- and to input quality data into the system. This will be true for any stakeholder that generates data using the DSFH token. Store-of-value of token –there is a finite number of tokens, so the model incentivizes users to promote the value of the ecosystem to others to generate velocity across the entire DSFH platform. More usage, means more demand for the tokens, which in turn

means a higher value of the token in someone’s possession. Furthermore, being a shareholder should incentivize inputting quality data into the system. Better Data Input and More Data Inputs. Replace Garbage In, Garbage Out, with Value in, Value out!

2.

Standards for Data Conformity and Environmental Labelling The aim of organizing the pertinent viable data on the blockchain and structuring an immutable database platform of food system information, such as the SIF, is to build conformity to develop a packaging environmental-label framework. According to the European Union: Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), streamlining bureaucracy and creating conformity in data usage is vital in producing a sufficient food supply for 500 million EU citizens. This improved data usage can strengthen the position of producers within the food production chain, thus making the CAP more efficient and more transparent, while providing a response to the challenges of food safety, climate change, growth and jobs in rural areas. And thus, would help the EU to achieve its Europe2020 objectives of promoting smart, sustainable and inclusive growth (European Commission, 2019e). Starting with the SIF, the platform could scale to allow retailers to input their data in efforts to continue the product’s data DNA as it moves up the chain and into a consumer’s home or restaurant. The retailer could have an application for consumers to research individual products in the retail brick-and-mortar stores, or eCommerce sites, to compare the value of the carbon footprint, water usage and dietary requirements amongst the different SKUs (Stock-Keeping Unit). Subsequently, the consumer would be using the environmental label rating system to measure data similarly to how consumers read the existing nutritional information already on product labels. As well, it could conceivably empower conscious consumers by connecting product packages to their home smart devices by scanning the labels, and allowing them to receive updates on the lifecycle ofproducts in theirrefrigerators, in efforts to reduce food waste and minimize the effects ofpotential contamination. Consider that there is a common belief among consumers that buying local reduces the carbon foot print, but a less known fact is that there are various instances when buying local may cause a larger environmental impact overall than to transport that same product from a more optimal environmental growth area, such as when it is out of season for the product. Also, it is possible the product may have a lower nutritional value or the benefits of reducing the carbon foot print do not outweigh the alternative, such as, when compared to the strain on our water impact. One example, when looking at imported Moroccan vs. off-season, locally produced French tomatoes, which studies have found that from the perspective of freshwater, the French options is more optimal compared to the Moroccan imports, whereas the opposite is true in regards to carbon and energy perspective (Meyerding et al, 2019).

3.

Empower Cooperatives, Individuals and Intermediaries to Stay Relevant Bottom-up solutions embed trust and further open collaboration using shared data and aligns the Cooperative’s governance model with a blockchain-backed and human-centric model for access and financial inclusion in an ecosystem. Cooperatives can be very useful to help individual stakeholders, but their market power is limited when compared to their retail customers and suppliers. Which is causing cooperatives to merge further across the globe to help bring more market power, but this homogenization may generalize the desired outcome and create the potential for weakening the specificvalue for individual local member control (European Commission, 2019f). Moreover, a more transparent way to track and effectively deciphering data would be an enormous deterrent against negligent or nefarious transactions, and demonstrating a more transparent transactions would be significant to help cooperatives produce and market their products for higher value and returns.

A blockchain ecosystem could strength the positions of individual producers and their cooperatives in regards to negotiating in the aforementioned points; and how agriculture practices affect citizens beyond the obvious question of how we procure our meals. Consumers have far from an ideal experience understanding how companies use their personal data, how new innovative models affect workers conditions, how a company's value chain is impacting the environment. The result is a growing user conscience to the need of reacting and demanding evidence of good behaviour, and to flex the muscle and exercise control through buying decisions. There are many examples of the fast-growing importance of establishing trust to meet the demands of consumers. Consumer misalignment and addressing the issue of trust and information visibility can be alleviated by technology as part of the solution. Technologies can guarantee the validity and immutability of certain actions and records; however, many valid technologies do not meet expectations in its implementation. These implementation short comings result in lack of the necessary adoption, or even worse, they were misused or introduced in a way that did not deliver any positive change and were eventually rejected, or abandoned. Empowering Intermediaries to ‘Stay Relevant’ in terms of connecting stakeholders and giving them share of value through token compensation for their efforts would align the adoption of the DSFH and SIF platform with all stakeholders. 4.

Improve Input Supplier Access to Improve Usage of Products/ Services You can see that increased access to cooperative and individual farmer’s data will improve research and development capabilities of input supplier companies. As well as improve the communicate around best practices of their products and research to all partners. By allowing input suppliers to have further insight into how producers apply, integrate, upkeep and utilize their products and services will allow them to improve their offerings and to more precisely demonstrate the value of their products.

Reducing the light between how input suppliers intended their products to be used and actually used will lead to improved nutritional yields, in crop production, lead to minimizing food lost and waste and improved environmental compliance. And improved operational safety for the direct customer and indirectly for consumers and other citizens throughout the value chain, for example, reduce water contamination from unnecessary fertilizer and/ or pesticide application. 5.

United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Improving the Soil Ecosystem to

Minimize Food Loss and Food Waste

The global population is projected to reach 9.8 billion people by 2050, and in 2018, for the first time in history, the world population of middle and upper classes equalled our most vulnerable population (Figure 17). In this instance, a vulnerable population is when a household is spending below $1.90 per person per day and those in the middle class are when households are spending $11-110 per day per person, in 2011 purchasing power parity. Owning to the assumption that our food waste problem will only grow as a population with further expendable income increases, and meanwhile our food loss problems will continue to cause concerns, the ecological burden ofthe food system looks to increase by 50–90% without technological changes and the implementation of mitigation actions (Springmann et al, 2018; Kharas and Hamel, 2018; United Nations, 2017; World Bank, 2018).

Figure 17: The Global Tipping Point (Kharas and Hamel, 2018).

Subsequently, sustainable mitigation action is necessary to bring measurable added value when tackling the challenges of our generation as stated by the UN Sustainable Development Goals for 2030. The metrics defining sustainability and how it is used in the parlance of agriculture have been broadly applied to the industry, but several scholars argue it originally meant farming that does not erode its own base of soil, water, farmers, or children willing to farm. Sustainable factors such as access to clean and uncontaminated water, improvements in nutritional outputs, biodiversity regeneration, pollination, pest control or nutrient recycling, and environmental and climate change affects every user.

Furthermore, the United States Public Broadcasting Service report on the future of agriculture defined sustainable agriculture as: bio-diversity in the soil farmers dispersed on the land with the option ofsmaller farms meat and produce grown with personal care and attention fair markets for crops and animals local surface or groundwater quality watersheds that are not contaminated by farm runoff (Waterhouse, 1999) But specifically, the United Nations identify soil resources as of crucial importance for sustainable human development and food security for individual citizens, thus, the need for improving and maintaining soil quality has enormous positive impacts toward zero-land degradation and environmentally sustainable returns. The soil degradation problems will only increase with further social, economic and climate changes, this is significant because recent reports only continue to highlight the negative environmental impact of each individual’s actions on our food system resiliency. More than ever, we need a literate soil definition and precisely defined metrics which allow all citizens to be engaged and empowered in any mitigation measures (Keesstra et al. 2016; United Nations, 2015).

Farmers in the EU are the first line of defence for protecting the natural environment of soil, water, air and biodiversity on 48% of the EU's land. A 2017 commission to the European Parliament stated: Our Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) should lead a transition towards a more sustainable agriculture, where a majority of farmers and other stakeholders believe that they should do more about environmental and climate challenges. Land-based measures are pivotal to achieving the environmental and climate-related goals of the EU, and farmers are the primary economic agents in delivering these important societal goals.

(European Commission, 2019g) International organizations and policy makers continue to show interest in identifying and researching these metrics in efforts to improve the soil ecosystem for a more sustainable production of agriculture products. The European Commission Joint Research Centre Institute for Environment and Sustainability has put efforts behind mapping the effects of our soil and funding partners to contribute to their LUCAS Soil project in aims to lead a global examination of soil biodiversity (Panagos et al. 2012; European Commission 2019f). Soils metrics were a large focus of the UN Rio+20 Summit, which drilled down on soil degradation as part of land degradation. They called for a land-degradation-neutral world in align with the 2030 UN Sustainable Development Goals, to which the EU subscribes.

The social and economic benefits of improving soil usage and minimizing its extended effects on the environment was also a main topic at their European Union 7th Environment Action Programme Conference (European Environmental Agency 2015a; 2015b). The motivation is there and the needs are obvious, now we need blockchain to connect all the valuable partners on the same track, a gender, political and cultural-level playing field, leading towards better value and smarter returns.

Personal Motivation: Value of Transparency - Do Good Do Well.

Agriculture and the Food Value chain are not the low hanging fruit like Fintech when it comes to blockchain integration, but they are the most tangible example of how integrating blockchain can affect every individual stakeholder to build a more efficient business model. Because, it affects something we all need to consider daily (if we are lucky), what we eat and where our food comes from?

Twenty-thousand-years ago, more stable economic relations were brought about with a change in socio-economic conditions from a reliance on hunting and gathering of foods to domesticated agricultural practices. At that time, the trust developed for nutritional utility of the food system lead to food products becoming currency. Then bulk varieties of products became tradable commodities, with value of exchange that could be measured similar to scarce metals like gold and silver. Aristotle describe the value derived from each household’s agricultural output as their Oikonomikos (economics). According to a translation by Armstrong (1935), Aristotle also said that agriculture is the most honest of all such occupations; seeing that the wealth it brings is not derived from other men. Later, our banking system transformed that trust into a paper guaranteed system, that allowed centralized organization to assign value to goods and services –totally removing the physical utility value of products and backing of scarcity. Into the 20 th century, that trust was assigned to a piece of code that would transfer between institutions, rendering the physical transaction of goods to cease to matter as well. With Blockchain, the concept of tangible utilityvalue and scarcity can return to food products, where a token immutability verifies deliverables and allows a trustworthiness system to dictate the measure of value –where transactional value is measured again in real food metrics like nutritional yield, and not just disposable volume with little measurable value. What a great time to be alive, when we can all be food experts and truly influence maybe the most basic social-economic engine that transcendence all cultures, races, genders and locations –our exchange of food utility.