Improved distribution and food safety for beef processing and management using a blockchain-tracer support framework

Abstract

Agriculture has since become a major source of livelihood for Nigerians. It also accounts for over 85% of the total food consumed within her borders. The sector has maintained improved productivity and profitability via a concerted effort to address critical issues such as an unorganized regulatory system, lack of food safety data, no standards in agricultural produce, non-adaptation to precision farming, and non-harmony via inventory trace supports. This study proposes blockchain-based trace-support in a continued effort to ensure food quality, consumer safety, and trading of food assets. It uses the radio frequency identification (RFID) sensor to register and track livestocks, farms/farmers, and abattoir processes as well as provisions a databank to trace livestock data. Results show the model adequately perform about 1,101 transactions per seconds with a response time of 0.21 s for queries and 0.28 s for https pages respectively for 2,500 users. Also, it yields a slightly longer time of 0.32 s for queries and 0.38 s for https pages respectively with an increased 5,000 users via the world-state as stored in the blockchain’s hyper-fabric ledger. Overall, the framework can directly query and retrieve data without it traversing the whole ledger. This, in turn, improves the efficiency and effectiveness of the traceability system.