Key Takeaways:
- VeChain develops a government traceability platform.
- The Ministry of Agriculture announced the Digital Agriculture Rural Development Plan that will use blockchain technology.
Since its inception in 2004, China’s government has been committed to improving the country’s food and beverage industry’s supervision, traceability, and safety. The attention on this vital sector has only intensified, with consecutive regulation changes raising industry criteria to assure high quality and reduce fraud and foodborne disease cases.
In recent years, there has been a focus on combining cutting-edge technologies like blockchain, IoT, and Big Data. As a result, regional governments are entrusted with building comprehensive systems that incorporate these features.
The Ministry of Agriculture, under the central Chinese government, announced the Digital Agriculture Rural Development Plan (2019-2025) in January 2020. It declared unequivocally that blockchain technology should be accepted and utilized to suit the agricultural sector’s development needs.
The government reinforced the mandate in 2021 with the Fourteenth Five-Year Plan, which emphasized the importance of rural development and modernization while resolving regional imbalances.
The Inner Mongolian government announced a province policy in 2016 that marked the beginning of attempts to build an interoperable traceability system. The Bureau of Market Supervision and the Bureau of Agriculture and Animal Husbandry will begin bidding, design, and development in late 2020. VeChain was chosen to create the government’s traceability platform in early 2021.
Rice, millet, sunflower, cattle, and lamb from Ongnuid Banner were authorized as geographically landmarked items in early 2021. As a result, VeChain’s blockchain solution will be used regularly in these items. In addition, the Bureau of Market Supervision and the Bureau of Agriculture and Animal Husbandry will also use the traceability platform to encourage excellent local businesses, develop rural brands, and demonstrate the region’s product quality.
So far, 12 businesses have been successfully connected to the agricultural traceability platform, making them their initial set of users.
The initial roll-performance out validates VeChain’s solution’s cost-effectiveness and competence, as well as its suitability for meeting tight government rules. As a result, the platform will welcome more enterprises and product lines in the next few years. The platform is intended to be second only to Walmart’s traceability platform in terms of network activity, with transactions generated at every step of the process.
VeChain’s solution, as a pioneer, acts as a model and source of inspiration for areas around China wishing to develop their traceability platforms following government rules.
On December 24th, there will be an offline event to promote the platform and encourage firms and areas to participate and establish their own.
The regional government gains control over details from across the supply chain, such as the location of enterprises/factories, product marketing/sales/distribution, quality assurance data, and additional information such as product warnings or news, for example, in the case of product recalls, allowing for a quick response.
Enterprises may log in and manage their complete product ranges on-chain and upload and examine historical data related to operations from across the whole supply chain.
The platform was designed to be simple to join and manage, with clearly labeled catalogs and instructions to help rural enterprises overcome considerable challenges. In addition, Vechain’s ToolChainTM enables widespread adoption of blockchain, a technology that is generally associated with high complexity, even in rural areas.
The end-users’ detailed landing page provides an overview of company profiles, product data, the manufacturing process, quality test reports, ingredient traceability, and the item’s on-chain TXID.
