Technological advancement has continued to bring us more innovations and one of the recent innovations was introduced at CES 2020. This innovation is an app called ‘Thank My Farmer’ which focuses on allowing consumers to keep track of the origins of their drink from the farm until it gets into their cups. This app focuses on ensuring fair trade practices.

This app came as a result of the collaboration between IBM and Farmer Connect. It was announced at CES 2020 as an app that utilizes blockchain to create a lasting and beneficial connection between those that drink coffees and farmers who are in charge of growing and harvesting the beans. By using this app, consumers are not just monitoring their coffees, but they are also providing a form of support for the farming community while enhancing the transparency of those that sell coffees. The IBM Food Trust is the platform under which the ‘Thank My Farmer app’ is developed.

A lot of organizations have done so many activities on setting up fair trading principles that affect farmers, fair wages for the workers growing the beans, and eco-friendliness of the farming techniques. Nevertheless, these are not the only activities in the coffee chains as there are other activities such as harvesting, packaging, processing, importing, exporting, roasting, and lots more. There is a problem with keeping track of these processes because every participant only monitors the activities that he does in the supply chain. Consequently, the data for the whole chain is not continuous or consistent. Hence, it can be hard to determine the source of the beans and the processes that they have gone through.

However, with the help of blockchain, all these problems are bound to chain. Blockchain makes the process of exchanging and monitoring of the information of the supply chain to be significantly easier. It also eases the process of payments by devising a transaction chain that is digitized and can never be erased or edited. Every network participant gets the same copy of the data and also receives information about any additions to the blockchain that other authorized network participants share.

At this stage, the ‘Thank My Farmer’ app comes into the picture by extracting the required data directly from the blockchain through an established method that is applicable across the whole industry. Therefore, this special app serves as a way to link the coffee drinker with brands, farmers, coffee roasters, traders and others involved in the supply chain. With the help of an interactive app, this app shows you the complete story of the coffee bean.

At the beginning of this year, this app will be fully launched into the market and consumers can start making use of it. For the coffee consumers that are in Canada and the United States of America, they can use the ‘Thank My Farmer’ app to easily scan QR codes via 1850 coffee. Consumers in Europe, on the other hand, can use the app through Beyers 1769.

As predicted, the ‘Thank My Farmer’ app will become bigger, better and more useful as the year goes on. Small and large businesses are expected to take part in its use. Coffee drinkers are also enjoined to provide financial support for the areas where the farmers are growing their coffees. At the moment, Farmer Connect is working along with the Soyrin Foundation to integrate self-sovereign identity, which is a kind of digital identity that is designed based on distributed ledger technology. This concludes the discussion concerning a circular economy that is meant to support small-scale growers and provide transparency for the users.

The Farmer Connect platform was established by Dave Behrends in September 2019 along with several other coffee companies such as Beyers Coffee, the Colombian Coffee Growers Federation, Sucafina and the J.M. Smucker Company. He is also the head of trade at the Sucafina coffee trade. The technical sponsor of this project is IBM. In his press release, Dave Behrends noted that coffee drinkers now have the opportunity to take part actively in sustainable governance through their support for coffee growers in developing nations.

Researches from Stanford tested whether the consumers are willing to pay more for fair trade coffee. The randomized control trial was carried in 26 different supermarkets. The study revealed that there was around a 10% increase in the sales of the two most famous kinds of coffee when the coffees were labeled with a Fair Trade name instead of being labeled generically.

Blockchain in the supply chain

It is worthwhile to note that blockchain has been utilized before to enhance the supply chain’s transparency. In various sectors, blockchain is currently being used for monitoring food and raw items from one process of the supply chain to another. A big fast-food chain takes advantage of this technology to keep track of the temperature of meat as it moves from farm to eatery where it is eaten. Minespider utilizes blockchain to keep track of each process in the supply chain of the mineral. The complexity of the supply chain of the mineral is similar to that of the supply chain of coffee.

All these positive developments align with the success of IBM Food Trust, which is a platform based on blockchain and focuses on improving how the food industry can be more efficient, transparent and traceable.

In 2016, IBM was joined by Nestle, Wal-Mart, Wegmans, and four leading food suppliers to work on the Food Trust Network. Over the years, several other organizations have joined them.

With the aid of the Food Trust and blockchain, it is possible for Wal-Mart to send food products back to the particular farm. According to the CDC, it is estimated that each year 48 million people become sick from food-borne illness whereas 128,000 of them require hospital admission with 3,000 dying.

Raj Rao, CEO of IBM Food Trust, noted in a press release that blockchain goes beyond ambitious technology for business. It now utilized to change the way individuals can develop trust in the products that they use.