Foorigin: The Future of Food Chain

Detailed Problem Statement:

According to global reports, food fraud causes US$49 billion in losses to the food industry every year. It involves deliberate deception for profit, including food mislabeling, adulteration, country of origin misrepresentation, weight misrepresentation, nutritional misrepresentation, and repackage. It is a border-less crime that has infiltrated supply chains for profit. No food or place is safe from food fraud, and he rules for controlling food fraud are not perfect.

Existing regulatory measures cannot prevent all criminal activity in this area, and we don't have a system to verify the sourcing and quality of ingredients and in a way that can be done by everyone instantly. In developing countries like India these illegal practices have a much broader impact. For food and beverage manufacturers, growers, manufacturers, processors and retailers, this can have serious consequences in terms of revenue, customer loyalty and reputation.

Consumers are not always able to tell which claims are based on rigorous research and what are just marketing tricks. Food recalls due to E. coli bacteria, salmonella and other pathogens or allergens occur due to lack of visibility of the supply chain and the volume of ingredients coming from n anywhere in the world. This endangers public health and threatens the reputation of the global food industry.

Project Description:

Raw material traceability software provides the highest level of physical traceability and transparency available in the supply chain. We use tools like GPS mapping, GIS technology, mobile phones, off-chain oracles, and serialization systems to map the supply chain. Collecting and analyzing large amounts of data using machine learning techniques can automatically deter bad actors.

The app is meant to be an end-to-end design with role-based access control features. In other words, everyone in the supply chain - customers, distributors and vendors - shall make use of it. Customers are free to use the app, with a nominal fee when ordering food from cloud kitchens and restaurants that are equipped with Kitchain. There is also the option for customers choosing to directly purchase raw ingredients. Our existing local food partners and farmers in Tamilnadu shall be onboard as our cloud kitchen pilot initiative, with more onboarding to come as the customer and vendor base increases.

We make every stakeholder visible in the supply chain, providing access to valuable data and alerts to quickly determine if the food is safe and healthy and also optimize the production methods by analyzing the place of wastage. It digitizes secure transactions or "blocks" at every point in the supply chain, directly visible to those who have access to this blockchain ledger, eliminating the need for intermediaries.

Traceability allows you to implement corrective actions quickly and efficiently when problems occur. When a food company or government agency identifies a potential food safety problem, an effective traceability system can help isolate and prevent contaminated products from reaching their destination - consumer hands.

While supply chain vulnerabilities are evident in cross-border transport, this project could close the intrusion loop for potential criminals along the supply chain and thus reduce food fraud. Blockchain provides the ability to track in real time, so it is time consuming and does not require potentially malicious document processing.

Creating cloud kitchens in countries like India would reduce the cost of food and make it more affordable when you don't have the expense of hosting customers in the restaurant. The same mobile and web apps used for supply chain tracking can be used as a cloud kitchen platform too. In essence:

A mobile app and a web app anyone can use to trace the origins of the food they are eating.

The new features we plan on introducing in the mobile app is to use Augmented Reality to display the supply chain of the food. For instance, kitchens and farms are largely invisible to customers currently, and our idea is to induce trust by visualizing the supply chain. Other features to be introduced are to be learnt and implemented along the way with feedback and requirements.

Team members:

Bharath - https://www.linkedin.com/in/bharathrb/

Sam  - https://samjeffrey.web.app/

Sam Jeff is part of the developer team at Gimbalabs, which is a Catalyst-funded start-up to enhance Cardano adoption by small businesses. Gimbalabs to create tools and build APIs specific to Cardano that in turn can benefit other supply chain projects. We are also in touch with two other relevant Fund6 proposals

1. Food Provenance Data Standard - To investigate whether we can make use of their APIs instead of creating bespoke ones

1. Applying Oracle Performance Metrics, for collaboration on Service Oracle Metrics

Expenses:

Software Development and hiring- $5000

Customer outreach and support- $2000

Server, Software, and Hardware Acquisition costs- $3000

Roadmap:

First 3 months: Collecting pilot data and prototyping, vendor outreach

6 months: Testnet and mobile app release, vendor and user base acquisition, website launch

9 months: Mainnet and token launch

12 months: Integrate new features and expansion