Modern agricultural developments are calling for new approaches to create a transparent and accountable environment in agriculture. Food safety, fraud and corrupt practices have sown the seeds for an efficient traceable solution. It is challenging to track and follow the transformation of agricultural products and maintain its traceability throughout the whole supply chain network without an integrated information system. Traditional supply chains are complex centralized systems, involving several stakeholders making it difficult to validate its origin, crop growth phases, quality standards adherence, yield monitoring and depends mainly on third parties for trading and trusting purposes. The development of blockchain closes the data gap between the farm and the rest of the world.

Blockchain is using a middleman free electronic system, which retains electronic records, validates and verifies them. All users have access to the data, the records are unchangeable and cannot be altered or deleted. It allows users to transfer values or assets between each other without the need for a trusted intermediary. Such information is useful to all those that contract, process, transport and serve as principal buyers for farm products. A Blockchain is a technology that chains several blocks of information together in ways that are decentralized, traceable and unalterable. It is a digital ledger, chronologically dated and time stamped, irrevocable, auditable, immutable, cryptographically secured, transparent, verifiable, distributed and reduces dependencies on third parties. It is a decentralized database system which helps in information sharing, decision making process in a cooperative, collaborative and coordinated manner. BCT in agriculture enables the traceability of information in food supply chain to improve food safety. Multiple parties can access and verify new solutions to the database allowing for more security and less chance of corruption. It can record information about the entire journey of a food product, from the farm to the consumer.

Keywords: Blockchain applications, Digital Ledger, cryptography, Traceability and Transparency.