Decentralized Food Economies
Description
Menno van Ginkel:
"The vision of sustainable nutrition, regional food economies and short supply chains may be realized via decentralized food networks. According to McNamara (2016), decentralized food networks “would democratize the food industry by dispersing small food hubs across the globe, bringing food production to regional communities. Minimizing the gap between consumers and producers is a critical step towards an environmentally and economically sustainable food system”.
Decentralized networks, such as the open source movement, often rely on a combination of volunteers creating community wealth and business activities in markets. “We also see it in the open source software revolution where there is dozens, hundreds of programs that rely upon communities volunteering to create new and interesting code, often in collaboration with proprietary software companies. So it is not necessary an either or proposition, it can be quite synergistic in creating value; one working in the market and through a community”. (Bollier, 2016, 12:13)." (https://hackernoon.com/leveraging-platform-cooperativism-and-blockchain-technologies-for-decentralized-food-networks-and-28dc5e7c42f1)
Examples
Blockchain Applications for Agrifood
Menno van Ginkel:
"Many projects are initiated to realize shorter food chains and peer-to-peer (P2P) economies, such as Delicia, an Estonian based blockchain start-up which aims to connect regional food producers, restaurants, supermarkets, and consumers in networks with the main goal to reduce food waste (2018). Other European start-ups like Ambrosus, OriginTrial, and Te-Food are creating the blockchain-enabled data infrastructure for traceability and food safety in the supply chain, and Dutch start-up Fructus aims to create a blockchain-based marketplace where farmers can directly interact with consumers (Fructus, 2018). Additionally, Backfeed and Odyssey are creating blockchain platforms as well as protocols for decentralized cooperation and decentralized sharing economies respectively, tools which can be leveraged to create open networks of food cooperatives. It can thus be argued that various aspects of the agrifood sector are rapidly being digitized, contributing to decentralized food networks and short food supply chains." (https://hackernoon.com/leveraging-platform-cooperativism-and-blockchain-technologies-for-decentralized-food-networks-and-28dc5e7c42f1)