Last updated 8 months ago
Digital records of livestock movements and treatment are inaccessible to researchers, farmers, and investors. Data inequality prevents efficient trading, welfare management, and health monitoring.
Scientific Microservices will develop the world’s first decentralised system for livestock movement, health and treatment records using NMKR Studio on the Cardano blockchain.
This is the total amount allocated to Tokenizing livestock movements and life events.
Please provide your proposal title
Tokenizing livestock movements and life events
Enter the amount of funding you are requesting in ADA
50000
Please specify how many months you expect your project to last
6
Please indicate if your proposal has been auto-translated
No
Original Language
en
What is the problem you want to solve?
Digital records of livestock movements and treatment are inaccessible to researchers, farmers, and investors. Data inequality prevents efficient trading, welfare management, and health monitoring.
Supporting links
Does your project have any dependencies on other organizations, technical or otherwise?
Yes
Describe any dependencies or write 'No dependencies'
We rely on NMKR Studio to mint and manage NFTs, as well as the API for the Australian National Livestock Identification System.
Will your project's outputs be fully open source?
Yes
License and Additional Information
The project is on an MIT license, with project code hosted on a public Github repository.
Please choose the most relevant theme and tag related to the outcomes of your proposal.
Supply Chain
Describe what makes your idea innovative compared to what has been previously funded (whether by you or others).
There are no previously funded projects on Catalyst focused on livestock.
The case for NFTs in the food system, or “agri-coins”, has been made by DigiFarm in relation to crop production (DigiFarm, Project ID #1300139 and #1300178). We propose NFTs for livestock; essentially a livestock “agri-coin” recording livestock movements, health and welfare, and production environment.
Describe what your prototype or MVP will demonstrate, and where it can be accessed.
The MVP will demonstrate that it is possible to create digital livestock tokens as NFTs that align with the requirements of the Australian livestock monitoring system, and to record relevant animal health and management events as transactions associated with specific NFTs. This will be demonstrated using a field trial with Australian beef producers and the existing national livestock identification system (NLIS).
The MVP backend will be managed using NMKR studio, with a simple front-end web interface accessible through a hosted public website.
Describe realistic measures of success, ideally with on-chain metrics.
Development of a standard bovine NFT that can record a cow to the requirements of the Australian National Livestock Identification System (NLIS) minted to the Cardano blockchain.
A field trial of livestock NFTs with three working smallholder farmers (~30 head of cattle) in Queensland, Australia, evidenced by transactions on the chain minting the trial cattle, and further transactions representing health and welfare events required to be reported by the Australian NLIS.
A technical report published to GitHub demonstrating user experience and NLIS reporting time reduction for users.
Please describe your proposed solution and how it addresses the problem
According to the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations, every year 42 billion animals and 1.7 billion tonnes of meat, dairy, eggs, fish and honey are produced, traded, and shipped around the world. Currently, these global livestock movements are not recorded in a standardised or accessible way.
There is value in recording information about livestock movements. Human health relies on the safe rearing and processing of livestock; not only are high livestock yields important for global food security, but recording livestock movements also helps to prevent food fraud and limit the formation of novel diseases that can be transferred from animals to humans. The recording of events in the life of a livestock animal (such as vaccinations, veterinary attention, pregnancy, transport, and sale) is vital for animal health and welfare. Information can also aid the livestock industry in addressing key concerns, such as the environmental impacts of meat production.
The value of information about livestock production and movements is demonstrated by the current existence of national regulatory livestock information systems in Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Laws and regulations in these countries require that every single livestock animal is recorded with a central authority. Every event that happens to that animal is also recorded: birth, vaccinations, health events, sale, transport, processing. All of this information goes into a centralised database controlled by a single entity, usually the national livestock industry body, to ensure that livestock producers are meeting regulation standards (for example, not transporting animals in a stressful manner or for too long).
Despite the burden that these national reporting requirements place on livestock farmers, the resulting data is scarcely used. The reporting of livestock information takes time and attention from the farmer; for example, the Australian national livestock regulator requires that every time a cow is loaded onto a truck, a movement transfer is recorded with the national database along with a Property Identification code, an NLIS ID number for the animal, a National Vendor Declaration, and other relevant paperwork. These national records are not made available to the public, so they cannot be efficiently used for group-level analyses of the sort that might unlock the promised benefits for human, animal, and environmental health.
Restricted data also means that livestock farmers don’t see a fair return on the value of the information they are generating. Take an example: a cattle farmer who takes extra care to ensure his cows are healthy and fat by providing them with a grassfed free-range property, regular vet checkups, and minimal stress. He has the cattle weighed before taking them to a sale, to confirm that they are in excellent condition. When he gets to the saleyard, however, none of that matters: the saleyard’s only concern is the number of animals he has to sell, and what the buyers will pay for them. Buyers at the saleyard do not get access to the national livestock database, so they don’t have any way to consider the extra value that the farmer has added by taking good care of his animals. Farmers in our interviews feel that they have been denied a chance at a fair process for determining the value of this work.
Predictably, giving farmers a lot of reporting requirements with no way to capitalise on the information they provide has resulted in patchy and poor-quality data, so the current nationalised system doesn’t work very well even for the centralised group that controls it.
Blockchain can answer many of the limitations of the current system, but previous attempts to put livestock on the blockchain have been very expensive and public failures. Previous attempts all tried to create a ‘private blockchain’ that would be controlled by a central authority, in the same way that the current livestock information is centrally controlled. These attempts failed for the same reason that the current system doesn’t work very well: a centralised system is not well suited to the inherently decentralized nature of livestock production. The Cardano blockchain has attributes that make it especially suitable for the livestock production system: efficient transactions facilitating the volume of transactions required, and low fees facilitating the participation of farmers in an industry with low profit margins and no guarantees.
Our proposed solution is to tokenize livestock as NFTs that align with existing official livestock monitoring systems, and record livestock movements as transactions on the Cardano blockchain to create more value for producers and better outcomes for the livestock industry in terms of food production, human health, animal welfare, and environmental impact. To encourage uptake, the solution must not increase the burden of reporting for the farmer, for example by handling the farmer’s required reports to a national regulator at the same time as registering the information to the blockchain.
Our solution will be developed in close collaboration with farmers, including an initial pilot study with smallholder livestock farmers in Australia to co-design an MVP input tool that farmers can use to record information about a livestock animal and mint the animal as an NFT. After registering their national producer ID number (required for Australian regulations), farmers can also use our solution to automate their required reports to the Australian National Livestock Information System (NLIS). The solution will also include an interface that farmers can use to read the information that’s been recorded about their animals: for example, farmers buying the animal at a saleyard can read where it came from and how long it spent in transport.
Components of our proposed solution include:
Our solution addresses the problems of data inequality in the livestock supply chain by:
Please define the positive impact your project will have on the wider Cardano community
High number of potential blockchain transactions from the livestock industry
Our project will create a method for registering livestock on the Cardano blockchain as NFTs. There are an estimated 42 billion livestock animals globally (Source: FAOSTAT 2023). In the Australian beef industry alone there are 30 million cattle (Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2025). Each of these animals undergoes several health and management events over its life, guaranteeing that multiple transactions per animal will be recorded on the blockchain. New animals are born constantly, so there is no upper limit to the number of new NFTs that can be added to the blockchain with this method.
Wide range of demonstrated use cases based on centralized systems
We see this as the first stage in a larger project. Uptake of the new technology in the agricultural community will depend on ease of use for farmers, but once the technology is accepted, there are promising opportunities for extended use cases such as facilitating peer-to-peer sales, reducing transportation loading time, improving price fairness at saleyards, automating insurance claims, and automatically approving requirements for international export. Later stages may connect to other Cardano apps (Landarno, Zengate Global, DigiFarm) to build Cardano’s growing reputation in the agriculture industry.
Improved access to cattle producers for Cardano developers
This project could also pave the way for other Cardano development teams to work in the livestock industry, reducing costs for future work. Currently blockchain solutions are not popular in agriculture, with many influential stakeholders having negative experiences in the past with early attempts at public ledger tokenization. By tackling this known problem with a systematic approach, supported by the mature infrastructure of the Cardano blockchain and NMKR platform, we hope to restore their faith in decentralised solutions more generally, and demonstrate how Cardano has overcome the issues of the first blockchain hype cycle.
What is your capability to deliver your project with high levels of trust and accountability? How do you intend to validate if your approach is feasible?
Scientific Microservices has delivered data science products to food, agriculture and environment organisations in Australia including a koala conservation information system, a livestock value chain solution for food safety, and a simulation software for waterway management. In the past three years we have completed dozens of projects for major Australian construction companies, blockchain startups, and for State Government funds.
Between us we have 24 published peer-reviewed journal articles on topics relating to food security, livestock management, global food systems and statistics. We have PhDs in Bayesian Statistics and Psychology from QUT and Cambridge University, and a postdoc in food systems from Vrij Universiteit in Amsterdam. We have committed our own farm and livestock as first users of this new system and we have a network of other livestock producers, saleyards, feedlots and vets in the area who will be second users of the technology . For a larger roll-out we have connections to large-scale livestock producers in Australia, regulatory authorities, and international livestock research and development institutions.
We will use NKMR Studio as a trustworthy provider of methods for minting and trading NFTs on the Cardano blockchain. We actively seek collaboration with Cardano stakeholders to ensure that development standards meet the expectations of the community.
Milestone Title
Livestock token data format
Milestone Outputs
A Python class representing a standardised data format for tokenizing a cow of any age or sex in a way that meets the requirements of the Australian National Livestock Identification System, and is able to be minted as an NFT to the Cardano blockchain.
Acceptance Criteria
Creation of a data format suitable for carrying information about a livestock animal on the Cardano blockchain as an NFT, and suitable for updating information following transactions in the livestock supply chain. Data fields might include:
Token (from livestock producer): Animal breed, national ID number, weight, health and welfare information, production system (organic, free range, grass fed, etc.) animal condition, parentage, genome.
Transaction (from other value chain actors): Purchase/sale (recorded by saleyard), transport (recorded by trucking company), pregnancy and vaccinations (recorded by vet), weight change (recorded by feedlot), processing information (recorded by abattoir), animal condition (recorded by butcher)
Evidence of Completion
A livestock NFT representing a single livestock animal with all required metadata for an entry into the Australian National Livestock Identification System via their API, minted to the Cardano Testnet using NMKR Studio.
Delivery Month
1
Cost
6000
Progress
10 %
Milestone Title
Demonstrate that data associated with a livestock NFT can be used to interact with official systems
Milestone Outputs
A manual interaction with the NLIS API to create and update an entry’s attributes based solely on the data linked to the relevant NFT, including registration of Scientific Microservices as a software vendor on the ISC Developer Portal, demonstration of the technology working in the NLIS sandbox environment with test credentials, supporting technical documentation for the ISC API integration, documentation of test scenarios and results.
Acceptance Criteria
Registration documentation for Scientific Microservices on the ISC Developer Portal
API technical documentation supporting the integration of the same data format used to register a livestock animal on the Cardano blockchain (Milestone 1) with the ISC integration patterns
Records of functional error handling and testing of the livestock animal data format in the ISC sandbox environment
Documentation of test scenarios in the ISC sandbox environment and results
Evidence of Completion
Scripts posted to the project Github repository:
Script demonstrating querying blockchain data for a livestock NFT
Script demonstrating the correctly formed POST request to the NLIS API according to their documentation.
Markdown report documenting the data format created in Milestone 1 being used for the NLIS API via the ISC sandbox environment, including results from error handling and test scenarios.
Delivery Month
2
Cost
12500
Progress
30 %
Milestone Title
Farmer interface to the livestock microservices
Milestone Outputs
A MVP web app or alternative interface for farmers to mint new cattle NFTs to the Cardano blockchain and link events to those NFTs. The form and design of the interface will be finalised in consultation with farmers, but will have the following features:
Ability to record relevant livestock information, in batches or as individual animal records;
Ability to send relevant livestock information to the NLIS and meet regulatory requirements;
Ability to mint animals as NFTs, in batches or as individual records;
Ability to query information about animals already registered as NFTs.
Acceptance Criteria
Farmers can access a simple user interface that verifies their identity and allows them to mint livestock NFTs and add basic events. A working demonstration of the user interface via an invitation-only web app accessible to invited farmers and reviewers. Short video showing how to use the web application to submit a new livestock record in the data format created in Milestone 1.
Evidence of Completion
Code for a working web interface published to a public GitHub repository including user interface code and code for the backend implementation on NMKR Studio and the ICS API.
Usage logs showing times of minting NFTs and adding events to Testnet
Transaction ids of the new tokens being minted and events being added to Testnet via the web interface
Delivery Month
4
Cost
11500
Progress
70 %
Milestone Title
Evaluation of the solution in the context of smallholder beef production in Queensland, Australia
Milestone Outputs
Research protocol for a scientific evaluation of how well the solution works for actual beef producers, including:
Field pilot study protocol
Research ethics statement
Data collection and analysis method
Power analysis
Statistical analysis of the collected data
Qualitative information on the experience for farmers implementing this technology.
Acceptance Criteria
Publication of a PDF report linked on GitHub including project motivation, participant information, research ethics statements, power analysis, methods, analysis, results of the pilot study and a summary of the project’s positive impacts written in plain language suitable for communicating the transformative potential of the Cardano blockchain for the livestock industry.
Evidence of Completion
A technical report published to GitHub and on the project website demonstrating user experience and outcomes for farmers, including reduced burden of NLIS reporting and any improved value capture from information stored on the blockchain. Data collected during the pilot will be anonymised and published for open access to allow verification of our reported results and further analysis by any interested members of the Cardano community.
Transaction ids of the NFT minting and data linking events that occurred during the field trial.
Report of field trial submitted
Invite emails sent to major players, with responses and invite emails minted as NFTs on the blockchain.
Delivery Month
6
Cost
20000
Progress
100 %
Please provide a cost breakdown of the proposed work and resources
Costs are calculated at a standard rate of USD $5,000 per month for each developer. We use work rates established for Australian developers discounted to USD 5,000 per month to represent more value for money for the Cardano community per previously funded Catalyst project #1100262.
Milestone 1: Livestock token data format
Activities: Research, design and implement a suitable data structure for the livestock token.
Developers: 1
Duration: 3 weeks
Cost: USD 6,000
Milestone 2: Smart contract to link NLIS data with the Cardano blockchain
Activities: Develop a smart contract to send livestock data to NLIS on behalf of farmers, and mint NFTs (via NMKR) on the Cardano blockchain. Validate and test the smart contract on Testnet.
Developers: 2
Duration: 5 weeks
Cost: USD 12,500
Milestone 3: Farmer interface to the livestock microservices
Activities: Design an MVP web interface and implement it in code. Integrate the web frontend with the microservices architecture set up in Milestone 2. Validate and test the interface.
Developers: 2
Duration: 4 weeks
Cost: USD 10,000
Milestone 4: Evaluation of the solution in the context of smallholder beef production in Queensland, Australia.
Activities: Create research protocol for a small evaluation pilot study, including an ethics statement for human and animal subjects research. Recruit two or three smallholder beef producers in Queensland, Australia as pilot testers. Deploy the pilot with at least 30 animals and document results, especially user experience for the livestock farmers.
Developers: 2
Duration: 8 weeks
Cost: USD 20,000
Total duration: 20 weeks (5 months)
Total Cost: USD 48,500 | ADA 50,000
How does the cost of the project represent value for the Cardano ecosystem?
In its mature form, the number of blockchain transactions and tokens minted for the cattle industry alone could be astronomical. Just in Australia, millions of cattle are born, traded, transported, and processed annually, with each of these events representing another on-chain transaction.
Extending this protocol to countries with no existing livestock monitoring system would put Cardano in a position to directly improve the animal welfare of billions of animals, improve the food safety of billions of people, and unlock new high value markets for millions of producers in unregulated markets.
In addition to early corporate and government interest, the potential for livestock on the blockchain has been recognised by the Ethereum community, which has released at least two prototypes for technology similar to what we are proposing (see Supporting Links for peer-reviewed research on these projects). The Cardano community has several advantages over Ethereum for creating a solution that can gain traction. This project represents an opportunity for the Cardano community to implement livestock transactions in a more efficient and reliable way than the currently proposed solutions on Ethereum.
Terms and Conditions:
Yes
The project team consists of Dr. Jac Davis and Dr. Jegar Pitchforth, who together operate the company Scientific Microservices.
Dr Jac Davis
Role: Project Lead, Field Scientist
Experience: Dr Davis is a well-regarded scientist with published peer-reviewed journal articles on food security and livestock production systems. 5 years of academic experience as a researcher on food security, ethical human and animal research, and food systems, followed by 5 years of consulting and project management.
Links: LinkedIn Google Scholar
Dr Jegar Pitchforth
Role: Data Scientist, Full Stack Developer
Experience: Dr Pitchforth has developed software for agricultural and environmental information management on a consulting basis for several government and industry bodies in Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands. 5 years of experience in the software industry followed by 5 years creating software products on contract.
Links: LinkedIn Google Scholar
Cost breakdown of proposed work and resources