Official Cardano Partner, EMURGO, recently had a great opportunity to present the potential benefits of blockchain technology in the coffee industry at a local event in Tokyo. EMURGO Japan Director Shunsuke Murasaki, spoke at an event entitled “Connectable Coffee” on March 2nd, 2019. The following is an overview of the event and the contents of his presentation.
EMURGO’s goal is to drive the adoption of Cardano by developers and enterprises thereby also bringing value to ADA holders. Through tailored systems development for enterprises, blockchain education, investment & acceleration, and advisory services, EMURGO provides a comprehensive suite of services designed to highlight the utility of Cardano as the protocol of choice for interested stakeholders in their respective industries.
The “Connectable Coffee” speaking event gave us an opportunity to discuss our business objectives mentioned above, in particular investment & acceleration and advisory services as it relates to the coffee industry.
Throughout the proliferation of the Internet, consumers have been increasingly able to connect with suppliers, manufacturers, and other stakeholders in the supply chain industry. With the advent of the blockchain technology in recent years, attention has shifted to the potential effects it could have on certain sectors such as the financial and supply chain sectors. Blockchain as a shared distributed ledger has the ability to increase transparency, security, reliability, and overall efficiency of transactions by removing unnecessary middlemen from a transaction chain.
How Can Blockchain Affect Coffee Supply Chains?
The coffee world is one such area in which there is a chain of stakeholders along the process from coffee bean producer to coffee-drinking consumer. With blockchain technology, consumers would be able to know exactly where their purchased coffee beans came from and who was involved in the supply chain from bean to cup. Coffee-growing farmers would be able to track the production quantity of their coffee beans and that data would be recorded on the blockchain. Currently, other stakeholders such as central coffee processing centers are incentivized to misrepresent production data to profit themselves instead of fairly compensating the farmers.
Director Murasaki stated that with regard to the current state of Indonesia’s coffee industry, it was the world’s fourth largest producer of coffee beans, and that specialty coffee had also grown in popularity in recent years. To document the expanding use of technology, Director Murasaki explained that there are a growing number of coffee farmers in Indonesia well-versed enough in technology to use a smartphone application with their local coffee processor in order to keep track of their yields. Additionally, local coffee roasters utilizing a specific roasting machine can extract roasting data in a form of JSON file thereby enabling the roasters to gain transparency and immediately access data in the supply chain which is a core valued benefit of using blockchain technology.
Blockchain technology has vast potential to solve the current unbalanced power structure in the supply chain and empower individual farmers in Indonesia. Currently, there is no way for farmers to prove yield amounts due to a lack of trustworthy data, and it is very difficult for them to get financial support from banks and financial institutions thus giving stakeholders higher up in the supply chain an inordinate amount of leverage over local farmers. However, with the power of an immutable blockchain ledger, farmers would be able to reliably prove their yields in any given time period thereby empowering them to gain access to financial services and exude more independent control of their own finances.
How Is EMURGO Playing A Role?
EMURGO is already trying to address these issues by investing into supply chain / agritech companies through our dLab: EMURGO accelerator program. One particular company is Helixworks as they are developing DNA-ID based tag technology to use to track items along a supply chain. By using their proprietary technology and a blockchain, it would be possible to distinguish specific coffee beans from other types of coffee beans and track their shipment from the farm to the cup with transparency. Helixworks technology could be used for a host of other produced items that move along a supply chain and would have the potential to create work standards across many different industries.
We strongly believe in the future potential of the Cardano blockchain as it is the only third generation blockchain that is scalable, sustainable, and interoperable to meet the demands of DApps that are bringing real utility to real economies. At EMURGO, we always strive to support the growth of the Cardano ecosystem through systems development, education, investment, and advisory services. Should you be interested, feel free to talk to us or reach out to our team. Follow our social media accounts and subscribe to the EMURGO Newsletter to always receive the latest news from EMURGO!
About EMURGO
EMURGO drives the adoption of Cardano and adds value to ADA holders by building, investing in, and advising projects or organizations that adopt Cardano’s decentralized blockchain ecosystem. EMURGO leverages its expertise in blockchain R&D as well as its global network of related blockchain and industry partners to support ventures globally.
EMURGO is the official commercial and venture arm of the Cardano project, registered in Tokyo, Japan since June 2017 and in Singapore since May 2018. EMURGO is uniquely affiliated and works closely with IOHK to grow Cardano’s ecosystem globally and promote the adoption of the Cardano blockchain. To learn more about the project, visit the EMURGO website.
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