Food Traceability by Cardano

[GENERAL] Summarize your solution to the problem.

A Daap that stores information on Cardano native tokens and transaction metadata for traceability while reducing blockchain deployment complexity & enables a collaborative environment for data sharing

[GENERAL] Summarize your relevant experience.

Industrial engineer, 4 years in supply chain management & quality certifications.

Blockchain technology enthusiast, 1 year involved in the cardano ecosystem.

Entrepreneur, CEO and founder of CropTrace an Ag-tech Startup. I concluded the incubation process at Startup Mexico.

[GENERAL] Requested funds in USD.

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

Detailed Problem:

Agri-food systems are under enormous pressure. By 2050, the world's population is expected to increase to an estimated 9.7 billion.[1] Feeding the population will require increasing current food production in the context of climate change and unsustainable exploitation of natural resources.

To meet this challenge, agrifood systems must become more productive, transparent and sustainable, small farmers will have to adopt new production processes and, in turn, deal with limited access to information, financial services and formal markets.

Smallholder farmers often receive only a small fraction of the final market value of their production. Inequalities such as these manifest themselves in extreme poverty among farmers, as well as on-farm human rights abuses in the form of slavery, child labor and hazardous work environments.[2] [3]

Current agri-food systems exert undue pressures on the environment. Agri-food supply chains contribute 26% of greenhouse gasses while using 50% of habitable land and 70% of freshwater. In addition, agriculture is the largest contributor to biodiversity loss on Earth.[4]

The integrity of agri-food supply chains is often compromised by food safety incidents resulting from adulteration, dilution, tampering or counterfeiting. Food fraud results in damages of up to $40 billion annually. Worse, the source of the problem is often not easily identifiable given the opacity of supply chains.[5]

The above issues underscore the common challenge of ensuring traceability and transparency in agri-food supply chains. 

What are the problems with the current solutions? 

Blockchain has been adopted in the food system and traceability and brings many advantages for provenance, compliance, authenticity and quality. However most of the applications are permissioned and mostly at the benefits of a private owner or consortium. This information asymmetry is particularly damaging for smallholders that have no advantage on this system and have to adopt the retailer system. Data cannot contribute to building and sharing a common and efficient data model. This model is crucial to make the agriculture model more efficient and reduce the food system environmental impact . Data cooperation and governance can be a direct source of income and social benefits, and an impact on researchers that cannot reuse and improve food security models, study sustainability or carbon emission without relying on private companies.

Blockchain contribution to food security.

Food system creates valuable information that is essential for food security and plays a major role in the economic growth of countries. Because food growing is a complex process and that food is processed between the farmer and the consumer, food data is not yet effectively collected and used to improve the sustainability of the food system..

Blockchain is a foundational technology (FT) that can create a more secure environment to secure data with multiple participants. (Lakhani and Iansiti 2017). Blockchain have been successfully implemented in numerous agriculture domains:

The above solutions use private or consortium federated blockchain which are permissioned. The main drawback of the permissioned system is centralization thus does not allow public adoption. Moreover this system prevents researchers from evaluating this system and verifying the alignment with imminent climate challenges.

Research studies have shown that using blockchain-related systems in the food chain improves the transparency and traceability, the safety, the sustainability, the cybersecurity and resilience. Blockchain has found a way in the agrofood supply chain and data management structures in improving the consensus between participants. 

Many efforts have been made to develop food traceability and safety of agriculture with permissioned systems, such as private consortium blockchain that are centrally coordinated, with access granted only to participating entities. Food buyers and public research then have to rely on centralized actors to access information making the system highly centralized and not resilient. Food data information is fragmented due to the centralization and asymmetries of the agrofood supply chain thus data is poorly distributed. 

This fragmentation is also due to incompatibility issues between supply chain and blockchain (Nurgazina et al. 2021). Since large amounts of data are generated along the food value chain it is necessary to generate data that are easy to handle and compatible between all the stakeholders. For example, to analyze food life cycle researchers require to study data from farm to production so data need to keep quality and consistency among the all life cycle , (Zeb, Soininen, and Sozer 2021).

However, little research work has been made to bridge the different blockchain solutions in a food product-centered manner that integrates all the active stakeholders . These efforts are crucial to preserve food data integrity through the food life cycle and create data workflow, carbon emission and sustainability models that can be more accurate. More effort can be the deployed to incentivize and track small farmers to produce with more sustainable practice (Wilson 2018), (Sylvester and Others 2019) and participant will be able to verify the food information (Mehrabi et al. 2020) and collaborate (Hernandez, Mortimer, and Panetto 2021) to take more conscious decision.

Detailed solution:

We are developing a traceability platform based on Cardano's Blockchain technology. This platform has the function of digitizing the agri-food supply chain to make traceability and compliance with safety and sustainability standards and certifications an integral part of the production processes of small farmers.

The user will be able to record and share authentic information from each stage of the chain, starting with producers at the first mile, improve food safety, strengthen brand integrity, increase consumer confidence and monitor environmental impact as well as good agricultural practices and social conditions in the producing communities.

Small farmer cooperatives and organizations will be able to monitor production yields, facilitate third-party certification processes, access formal markets, and build a digital economic identity that allows them to access various financial services.

Stakeholders:

Initially, the user profile of the platform will be those who have or seek to establish supply relationships with small farmers.

The user profile of the platform is one who has an interest in :

• Reduce high transaction costs in contract farming agreements.
• Reduce operational complexity in the supply of small producers.
• Communicate practices related to sustainability and protection of human rights.
• Facilitate food safety and sustainability certification processes.

Normally processors, cooperatives and exporters meet this profile, but they can also be national and multinational corporations or startups in agricultural e-commerce.

The platform will be very useful for track products and to prevent counterfeit items.

This solution can help multiple stakeholders for several purposes:

• The certification can reinforce the geographical indication goods and ensure the respect of “Products specifications” as provided for the EU regulation.

• For food producers it can help avoid counterfeiting of products and be proof of sustainable production.

• By using tokens for food labeling and traceability systems can enforce the hygiene requirement (e.g. maintenance cold chain) facilitates traceability (article 18 General Food Law*) and the recall (article 19 GFL). 

Tecnology overview.

Cardano native tokens.

The solution lies in a permissionless non-fungible and fungible tokens that store verified food related information with a non hierarchical trust system. Through multiple applications including food identity and provenance. The decentralized system can help for food transparency, decentralized trust and peer to peer transactions thus reducing the monopolistic position of intermediaries.

Cardano is part of the third generation of blockchain. Via the extended unspent transaction output (EUTxO) Model, Cardano blockchain allows the implementation of minting policy at the creation of the token. Cardano also allows abstractions of transactions thus allowing to add metadata to the transactions. At the first stage of token creation, minting, the information that is stored in the token file and metadata are now saved into the blockchain with a transaction signed with a wallet.

Cardano uses PolicyID to protect the minting and modification of the token. The PolicyID is a 24 words seed phrase that creates a hash and defines the token minting policy. Cardano policy ID can be used to directly identify the token issuer since the seed phrase is really hard to recover from the hash.

Another particularity of Cardano system is the use of staking addresses and receiver/sender addresses that belong to the same wallet. This unique staking address can be retrieved from receiver and sender addresses.

Tokens bound.

Native tokens can be linked to create a more complex system of relation. A non-fungible token of a certification can be directly bound to the fungible token of a food product via a metadata bound that can attest the product quality, certification, test, origin that serve as proof.

This bound is encoded and specialised to understand the link between tokens. For example, FoodOn ontology used “certified”, “has part”, “has quality” to qualify relation between elements. The token policy ID will serve to identify the token provider efficiently thus policyID must come from a third party certification recognized by stakeholders in order to create trust on the document and on the product.

This decentralized system can integrate fungible tokens to represent food units linked to the verified non-fungible tokens. Since the non-fungible token was verified by a third party and is locked by the minting policy then fungible token will refer to verified non fungible tokens.

How will the solution work?

At the harvest time the food producers will mint a quantity of fungible token proportional to the food harvested. While trading food with a processor or retailers through the food supply flow, the asset can be sent to the next stakeholder wallet that can in turn send it to another stakeholder. Moreover, stakeholders will be able to submit metadata in the transaction such as the previous transaction or the delivery. This system can serve as an online reference to keep data integrity along all the supply chain processes.

Transaction metadata can efficiently report the operation made on a product and follow a standard for interoperability along the supply chain. Following a standard this metadata could describe product transformation (physical/ chemical changes), contain information generated by IoT about the product environment (light,temperature,humidity) or transport (vehicules,location, duration) shared between stakeholders. The transaction metadata content can also point to a private server or contain a hash of the information to maintain privacy.

At the product transformation, the process should also be stored in metadata bound and obey to a metadata standard. The burning transaction of the token refers to the policyID of the manufactured product. The manufactured product will be bound with the raw material (part/parent) token (such as “as part”) by referring to the token burning transaction. Part tokens will be burned and the manufactured token will be produced in stoichiometric quantity. These two mechanisms will protect information integrity during the product transformation.

CropTrace platform enables communication and trust over product information and offers a transparent traceability solution. Tokens will protect the product information integrity and certification in a metadata structure, preserve the distribution stoichiometry (1 token = 1 unit of food) and can be synchronized in every ecommerce and ERP database at the same time. Every end consumer will be able to check for product information saved on the blockchain.

This public information can be used by consumers to make social and environmental buying decisions. Finally tokens can help for the data interoperability and connection between food databases to liberate this information and create an immutable backbone for food traceability safer, more open and universally accessible.  

Why is a traceability daap important for the Cardano ecosystem? 

There are factors that drive the adoption of a traceability platform for the agri-food sector such as:

• Consumers are increasingly aware of the importance of environmental sustainability and labor standards during the production process of agri-food products. More than 71% of consumers worldwide are willing to pay more for brands that provide transparent information.[6]

• Adoption of third-party certification standards (e.g., Rainforest Alliance, Forest Stewardship Council, B Corporation) can demonstrate companies' commitment to responsible production.[7]

• The legislative framework, certifications and standardizations drive the adoption of modern traceability systems due to the strict guidelines of regulatory bodies related to food safety in several developed and developing countries.[8]

Why is our solution better ?

Our solution offers a permissionless blockchain based approach that makes reliable data accessible for multiple parties thus can reliably protect the food data security system. Food information can then be reused along the food product lifecycle even after processing for public or private stakeholder. 

Then hierarchical governance can be replaced by a role based structure that enables participation, scalability, and technological innovation. The decentralized blockchain structure and consensus mechanism will maintain multi version control of data in a decentralized way and available for everyone. Using a permissionless network, cryptocurrencies payment can accelerate incentive for the food product and sustainability, buyers can use cryptocurrencies to buy the food product directly, governments, NGO can also periodically reward farmers based on the certification they own on their products.

How does this solution add value to Cardano's ecosystem?

Our main output is the deployment of the platform with traceability functionality, since we plan to use native tokens, it will drastically reduce the complexity of operating and implementing the blockchain technology, so we expect an adoption by the agricultural supply chain stakeholders.

As a result, it is expected to attract new users to the ecosystem, the creation of new wallets, native token minitng and payments of agricultural assets with ada or djed. 

Our solution lies in the construction of food related tokens to build a comprehensive food that can efficiently be shared between all stakeholders and be used for their applications. This token can represent material resources ( food, land, water, seed, equipment) and immaterial resources (trust, knowledge) related to the food system that are also referred to as ‘commons’ [9]. This token can also be used for food analysis and commercial usages.

References:

[1] Henri Leridon, “World population outlook: Explosion or implosion?” Population Societies 573, no. 1 (2020): 1–4, https://doi.org/10.3917/popsoc.573.0001.

[2] Oliver Nieburg, “Paying the price of chocolate: Breaking cocoa farming’s cycle of poverty,” ConfectioneryNews, July 10, 2014, https://www.confectionerynews.com/Article/2014/07/10/

Price-of-Chocolate-Breaking-poverty-cycle-in-cocoa-farming.

[3] Nigel Poole, Smallholder agriculture and market participation (Rugby, UK: Practical Action Publishing, 2017), https://doi.org/10.3362/9781780449401.

[4] Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek, “Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers,” Science 360, no. 6392 (2018): 987–992, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.

aaq0216.

[5] Mischa Tripoli and Josef Schmidhuber, Emerging Opportunities for the Application of Blockchain in the Agri-food Industry, Revised version (Rome and Geneva: FAO and ICTSD, 2020), http://www.

fao.org/policy-support/tools-and-publications/resources-details/en/c/1330492/.

[6] Jessi Devenyns, “Report: Consumers want increased transparency from retailers and brands,” Food Dive, September 21, 2018, https://www.fooddive.com/news/report-consumers-want-in-

creased-transparency-from-retailers-and-brands/532723/.

[7] Maki Hatanaka, Carmen Bain, and Lawrence Busch, “Third-party certification in the global agrifood system,” Food Policy 30, no. 3 (2005): 354–369, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2005.05.006.

[8] Peter Newton, Arun Agrawal, and Lini Wollenberg, “Enhancing the sustainability of commodity supply chains in tropical forest and agricultural landscapes,” Global Environmental Change 23, no.

6 (2013): 1761–1772, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2013.08.004.

[9] Ducrée J, Etzrodt M, Gordijn B, Gravitt M, Bartling S, Walshe R, et al. Blockchain for Organizing Effective Grass-Roots Actions on a Global Commons: Saving the Planet. Frontiers in Blockchain. 2020;3. doi:10.3389/fbloc.2020.00033

[IMPACT] Please describe how your proposed solution will address the Challenge that you have submitted it in.

Use case that impacts and facilitates adoption.

Given the evident need for a modern information system that provides traceability and transparency to the world's agri-food systems, it can be said with certainty that the creation of this daap is a use case that impacts not only the Cardano ecosystem but also the lives of millions of people, which translates into greater adoption thanks to the low level of complexity in the proposed implementation.

Type of proposal.

The proposal fits into the Transport and Logistics category.

Transport and Logistics.

Trace food products and by-products.

Traceability is the ability to record and keep history of a product from the production to consumption while answering “when, where, whom?”.

The transactions stored on the blockchain possess unique addresses. Blockchain helps to store the product trace by keeping the information on the ledger by the physical owner of the asset. This authentication brings more certainty and interoperability on the data stored about the asset, in turn that becomes more valuable.

The user will scan a tag (QR Code or NFC) applied on a product to access its traceability information stored on the blockchain. By verifying information stakeholders are involved in anti counterfeiting products, verifying the trace and preventing them from harmful fake products.

Native tokens help for products to be synchronized to one different database by querying the same blockchain. Using metadata data standards in token and transaction, tokens improve the interoperability between database and application. It removes the cost of data architecture and development making the blockchain traceability more accessible.

Tokens can be support product traceability. At the product transfer, the transaction differentiate a batch of products from another batch, thus every batch of products can be identified by a unique transaction, from the most recent transaction, a token can be traced back to the minting transaction, allowing a product auditability.

This unique latest transaction can be integrated in a QR code for any stakeholder to check the physical product traceability. All Stakeholders are identified by their wallets staking address or policyID. To help this identification a system based on users wallet should allow them to add information to clarify the role of every participant in the supply chain and enforce transparency and auditability.

Prevent counterfeit items.

By using metadata safety and quality control regulators and blockchain analysis tools will be able to observe the complete history of a token from farm to fork. This information could accelerate the search for a safety issue such as mycotoxins for example. In case of a safety issue, safety agencies can emit a warning on non fungible tokens that will be displayed if someone scans the product QR code of this batch.

Trust system encompasses food certificates, quality control and hazard alerts. This category of resource is the first requirement for consumer health protection. Food producers notably smallholders food labelling is first important for farm identity [1],[2]) and consumer trust. Token can help for human and machine food certificate verification by saving a digital certificate pointing to a digital asset of food product parcel and land certification. Third party verification will make sure about food producer specific claims about a food production parcel notably.

Key Metrics:

• Number of registered users on the platform (new Wallets in the Cardano ecosystem).

• Number of minted CNFTs representing a production land.

• Number of minted CNFTs representing a certification.

• Number of minted fungible tokens representing the harvested crop (Food product tokens).

• Number of Food product tokens tracked along the value chain.

• Number of Food product tokens processed under third-party certification.

References:

[1] Wilson M. Digital Identity for Smallholder Farmers: Insights from Sri Lanka. GSMA https://ww w gsmacom/mobilefordevelopment/programme/digital-identity/digital-identity-for-smallholderfarmers-insights-from-sri-lanka-2. 2018.

[2] Sylvester G, Others. E-agriculture in action: blockchain for agriculture, opportunities and challenges. FAO; 2019.

[IMPACT] What are the main risks that could prevent you from delivering the project successfully and please explain how you will mitigate each risk?

Challenges impeding the adoption of blockchain traceability systems.

• Digital adoption, most smallholder farmers live in rural areas of developing countries, where there is a lack of access to internet and other digital infrastructure, as well as digital illiteracy.

• There is a lack of incentives for farmers to collect data, and one element that is currently missing is the need for a business model for data collection that includes the technology and support activities to make implementation viable, which is fundamental to ensure the sustainability of the model for small farmers.

How are we going to deal with these challenges? 

The use of Cardano native tokens and metadata in transactions reduces much of the complexity in the implementation of blockchain traceability systems, for example it is not necessary to use smart contracts in the issuance of non-fungible tokens.

The platform is designed in a way that is friendly to new users, especially since most of the stakeholders to whom the platform is addressed are not familiar with the technology.

Despite being able to develop the platform in a robust way, it has been decided to use low code tools within the cardano ecosystem such as Joget, a solution for companies and startups that allows to create applications in cardano in a very fast, simple and cost efficient way. This will allow us to design the product focusing on the user experience.

Regarding the incentives to small producers for data collection, we and agribusinesses need to carry out an education campaign to communicate to producers the benefits they will have:

• Third party certifications (organic, environmental, fair trade, etc).

• Access to formal markets, this information system will facilitate the supply from small producers.

• Increased income by being able to demonstrate sustainable practices.

• Construction of economic identity to access financial services in the future.

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed plan, including timeline and key milestones for delivering your proposal.

This proposal is a continuation of a proposal from a previous fund, specifically fund7. The name of the proposal is "Support small farmers in Latin America". [1]

Basically this proposal has as deliverable the MVP of a platform that allows the digitization of the food product, allowing the transfer of the food product between the different stakeholders and an integration of payments using cryptocurrencies (ADA).

The estimated date for this deliverable is September 2022.

(The prototype of this platform is being developed, in the near future we hope to add evidence of progress in the comments of this proposal).

The current proposal aims to add traceability functionality to this platform using tokens and metadata. 

Timeline:

The following implementation plan assumes that the prototype platform proposed in fund7 is ready, as it serves as a basis for adding traceability functionality using Cardano native tokens and transaction metadata.

Although the design of the traceability solution is intended to be used in any agri-food sector, given the recent alliance we made with AndesWines (is the leading wine marketing company in south america, creating new wine marketing strategies since 2001) and its founder the agronomist Maximiliano Morales. We plan to implement a proof of concept in the wine sector in Latin America.

Duration of the project: 6 months ( September 2022- February 2023).

Stage 1 Research September 2022:

For the first stage, it is important to understand the needs of the sector.

I´m going to work together with the engineer Maximiliano Morales in collaboration with industry stakeholders to define the flow of the supply chain of the wine sector, that is to say, the whole process from the farmer to the final consumer.

We will have to answer questions such as:

• What will be our fungible tokens representing the food product (grapes, wine bottles)?

• What would be our non-fungible tokens that represent the origin and place of transformation of the raw material ( farms, wineries, processing plants?

• What kind of certifications are used in this sector? Generate metadata structure and non-fungible tokens that represent these certifications.

• What are the stakeholders involved (farmer, cooperative, distributor, retailer, consumer, etc.)?

• What types of processes occur in this value chain (harvesting, fermentation, pressing, bottling, etc.)?

Once this research is completed, we will be able to design the tokens and metadata needed, using the global traceability system as a basis.[3]

While I am designing the tokens and the metadata structure, Engineer Maximiliano Morales will be connecting with industry stakeholders, doing marketing and promotion, in order to visit them and explain the solution in more detail.

Resources needed:

• Specialized advice from the agronomist.

• Marketing, promotion and engagement.

• Field visit with stakeholders to present the overall vision of the solution.

• Project management.

• Presentation of the documentation to the community.

Milestones:

• Design of fungible tokens (food product), incluiding metadata of product.

• Design of non fungible tokens (lands, certifications), incluiding metadata structure.

• Metadata design in each transformation process.

*Metadata structures will be designed in a JSON format. Moreover we can store complete libraries such as the GS1 standard directly on IPFS in a token. We can then retrieve the information on the blockchain to store data in interoperable format.

Stage 2 Development of the prototype October-November 2022:

I will be working on the development of the platform prototype, initially we want to test a low-code or no-code solution.

Why?

Well, I think that having more flexibility in being able to change certain aspects of the platform in a very fast way will allow us to make iterations with the users and improve their experience with the solution. Plus we can have the prototype ready to use faster, cheaper, and more efficient. 

The proposed tool is Joget, a solution to design cardano applications in a simple way.

The Joget team was funded in fund7 , with their proposal : https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Accelerating-Enterprise-Adoption/383332-48088

The first functionality of the prototype will be the creation of tokens representing food products (e.g. grapes).

The farmer will be able to create food products (mint fungible tokens), within the platform, during this step, product information is saved in a JSON structure then a digital signature (policyID) is applied to sign the token on the blockchain and preserve it from any modification.

Form with product information including, but not limited to: name, product, quantity, description, owner, document(s) and picture.

This form is sent to a minting platform that will submit the minting transaction to the node and mint tokens.The quantity of token minted will represent the maximum stock of a product to follow the availability of a token along the supply chain.

*this function is supposed to be part of the proposal in fund7, so only the metadata form referring to the wine sector would be added here.

The second functionality of the prototype will be the creation of tokens representing farms, wineries,certifications etc.

After the farm inspection the third party certification fills a first form that will provide details about the farm property including the place name, size of the farm, location, starting date and the principal plant production. The TPC will then connect a wallet, submit the form and mint the associated token.

Then in a second form the TPC can fill information within the certification ( type of certification, application date) that can be link to the land (regenerative agriculture) or to the product (biological production, non-gmo). The certification refer to the minting transaction of the property or the product in order to create a bound on the token.

The property token and certification token can also contain the policy ID that the farmer will use to mint token of his food products. Then only the TPC policyID and the farmer policyID can be used to mint token from the certification. After verification of TPC identity, verified policyID can be registered in a database, creating a registry of verified policyID.

This form is sent to a minting platform that will submit the minting transaction to the node and mint tokens.The token will be unique and will represent the origin or transformation place or certification of a food product along the supply chain.

Once minted, TPC can send the property and certification document directly to the farmer wallet.

*Remember : Tokens can be linked to create a more complex system of relation, a certification token can be directly bound to the token of a food product via metadata bound that can attest the product quality, certification, test, origin that serve as proof.

The third functionality is search for a product saved on the blockchain and the traceability information.

Blockchain node queries are used to retrieve information about Cardano tokens. By using this query we can return the whole product information integrity from the production site to the consumer.

The user will only need enter the Product PolicyID or product name or one of the product transaction.

Joget relies on Blockfrost to make calls to the blockchain. Blockfrost will return the asset associated with the product information and picture associated. By reading the metadata bound to a document, blockfrost will return the information associated [4].

Given the token or transaction hash Blockfrost can retrieve all the transactions associated with a product. With this information we can order all the transactions of a asset (native token) then retrieve the traceability of this product. This traceability will give the position of any product in the supply chain in function of the time, this transaction information can also be used to verify which products have transited in a stakeholder’s stock.

Any stakeholder or consumer will scan a tag (QR Code or NFC) applied on a product to access its traceability information stored on the blockchain

The fourth functionality of the platform is the ability to transfer assets between stakeholders.

The Wallet connector integrate with Joget can be used to submit transactions directly to the node. The transaction includes Wallet address of the emitter and receiver(s), list of token names and quantities and the metadata label and content.

Stakeholders can use this function to send stock of products directly to others stakeholders, this transaction will conserve the quantity, information of the original token and add metadata associated to the transaction.

Resources needed:

• Joget DX Open Source Low Code Platform monthly suscription.

• Blockfrost Cardano API.

• NFT creator from Game Changer Wallet.

• Product development.

• Cloud service.

• Digital content showing progress to the community.

Milestones:

• The prototype with the functionalities described above.

Stage 3 Pilot Test December 2022 -February 2023:

Once the platform prototype is ready, the first step will be the creation of wallets for participating stakeholders: Farmers, Cooperatives, Third party certifiers, Third party verifiers, processors, etc. 

Initially we will use the wallet : "Game changer wallet". Due to its design, it is easier to use, especially for non-technological farmers [5]. As an incentive for creating the cardano wallet and the identification token for the platform, we will send $20 in ADA to each smallholder, which they can delegate to community pools.

Using this wallet the user will be able to create an IDNFT, which basically will be a token that will allow authentication within the platform.

Pilot Test.

Now it will be possible to mint tokens representing production farms as well as those representing certifications, this process will be assisted by myself and the agronomist advisor, as well as staff designated by the stakeholders of the sector.

We will also start mining tokens representing the food product. Also start doing transactions adding metadata, these processes will be done first in the testnet and will follow the steps described above.

the pilot test will be done with some historical data and estimates just to test the performance of the platform.

We will iterate until the platform works properly taking into account the user experience.

Resources needed:

• Educational content and tutorials for creating wallets, accounts and token minting.

• Real time technical support.

• Field staff provided by stakeholders.

• Office staff provided by stakeholders to validate token information and mint tokens.

• Second Field visit with stakeholders to implement the solution. (From México to Chile)

• Prototype of the platform.

• $20 in ADA for each smallholder.

Milestones:

Given the time it takes for the wine cycle, we will hardly be able to conduct a pilot test from grape planting to wine on the table. Therefore, we consider it a success to implement the solution for the first mile of operations, from planting to the barrel in the winery.

References:

[1] https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/384340

[3] https://www.gs1.org/standards/traceability

[4] https://blockfrost.io

[5] https://wallet.gamechanger.finance

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

Budget breakdown.

Resources needed for all stages and (detailed cost):

• Specialized advice from the agronomist. ( $1000 each month * 6 months = $6000)

• Marketing, promotion and community engagement. ( $ 2000 the first month)

• Field visit with stakeholders to present the overall vision of the solution.(From Mexico to Chile) ( $2500 incluiding travel expenses, hosting, food , 7 days).

• Presentation of the documentation to the community ($500).

• Joget DX Open Source Low Code Platform monthly suscription. ($20 * 6 months = $120)

• Blockfrost Cardano API. (Free, *at the beginning the free plan is sufficient. )

• NFT creator from Game Changer Wallet. (Free)

• Project management & Product development. ( $1500 each month * 6 = $9000)

• Run on.demand Cloud service by Joget (Free, *at the beginning the free plan is sufficient. )

• Digital content showing progress to the community. ( $100 per article, $500)

• Educational content and tutorials for creating wallets, accounts and token minting. ($2000)

• Real time technical support. ($800 each month * 3 months = $2400)

• Field staff (provided by stakeholders. )

• Office staff (provided by stakeholders to validate token information and mint tokens.)

• Second Field visit with stakeholders to implement the solution. (From México to Chile)( $2500 incluiding travel expenses, hosting, food , 7 days).

• $20 in ADA for each smallholder (until 150 smallholders = $3000)

Total before budget contingency = $30520

• Budget contingency that is included to cover potential events that are not specifically accounted for in a cost estimate (15%) = $ 4580

Total = $35100

What plan is available if additional financing is required?

A contingency budget is contemplated; if it is not sufficient, certain actions must be taken.

The risk of needing more financing is low for the following reasons:

• The wage paid to the agronomist consultant, content writer, technical support is agreed with them from the beginning of the project.

• The budget for promotion and marketing is limited and if necessary the excess should be covered by the contingency budget.

• The budget for the 2 trips to Chile contemplates the average costs, the strategy will be to book flights and lodging in advance.

If this is not enough I will reduce the project management and development fee. So, potential risks have therefore been taken into account.

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide details of the people who will work on the project.

Project management & Product development.

Cristian Jair Rojas Velez.

• Industrial engineer, 4 years in supply chain management & quality certifications.
• Blockchain technology enthusiast, 1 year involved in the Cardano ecosystem.
• Entrepreneur, CEO and founder of CropTrace an Ag-tech Startup.

www.linkedin.com/in/cristianjairrojasvelez

Twitter: @CrisRo0787

Email: crjarove@gmail.com

Discord: crisro0787#3293

Strategic consultant with focus on making a sales strategy partnerships.

Maximiliano Morales

Startup Acceleration, Comms & Sales - Former Wine Specialist of National Geographic Explorer Expedition Ship | Fintech & Veteran Business Coach

• Agricultural Engineer, founder of andeswines.
• Worked for private funds, famili¿y offices, NGO´s and the government of Chile.
• Strategic startup business developer to deliver global impact services.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxmorales/

Twitter: @MaxMoralesChile

Email: maxmorales@andeswines.com

We are looking for the following profiles:

A content writer.

Work by deliverables.

skills required:

• Power of synthesis.
• Be creative.
• Convey information clearly and effectively.
• Proficient in digital programs or tools.
• Manage numerical operations.

Deliverables: 

• Educational content and tutorials for creating wallets, accounts and token minting.($2000)
• Digital content showing progress to the community. ( $100 per article, $500)
• Presentation of the documentation to the community ($500)

Total wage: $3000

Customer support

Part-time

skills required:

• Ability to Learn New Software and Hardware
• Assessing Customer Support Needs
• Patience
• Responsiveness

Total wage: $800 * 3 months = $2400

Partners.

StartupMexico.

StartupMexico is Mexico's first innovation campus for entrepreneurs, a super hub that includes newly formed high-impact companies, seed capital funds, corporate implants and entrepreneurial services all under the same roof, concocting a new type of ecosystem-in-a-building that fosters collaboration, innovation and a more competitive Mexico.

LATAM Cardano Community.

Community of passionate people, committed to achieving the full potential of human collaboration.

Twitter: @LatamCardano

https://www.linkedin.com/company/latam-cardano-community/about/

Chile Stake Po.

Chile Stake Po is a server or pool in the Cardano network that signs blocks and delivers incentives to those who participate, validating the service through the Ouroboros protocol.

It constantly strive to promote values, such as education and community, to strengthen the experience of blockchain technology adoption around the world. People working there constantly monitor their service 24/7 to deliver confidence to the community.

https://chilestakepo.cl/wp/

Twitter: @ChileStakepo

Ticker: CHIL

[FEASIBILITY] If you are funded, will you return to Catalyst in a later round for further funding? Please explain why / why not.

Yes, I would like to come back.

Although we are a business startup, the traceability platform that we want to deploy is designed to be freely accessible without having to pay anything from the user.

We are thinking in the future to create a business model aimed at the same stakeholders, at the moment this issue is not resolved, so it would be good to return in a next round.

[FEASIBILITY] Are you or any member of your team working on any other proposals in this Fund9?

[FEASIBILITY] Are you or your team working on any other proposals from previous Funds?

[AUDITABILITY] Please describe what you will measure to track your project's progress, and how will you measure these?

Metric: New wallets in the cardano ecosystem.

How it will be measured: We will measure the impact of new wallets in the ecosystem, we plan to send ADA to each new wallet that belongs to a smallholder and teach them how to delegate to a community pool, we will measure it by the number of new wallets delegating to community pools.

How will we communicate with the community? 

During the 3 months of implementation, which is the phase where the new wallets will be created, every week we will count how many of these new wallets are being delegated in the Chile Stake Po community pool, the data will be sent to the pool operator so that he can verify it and communicate it with the community every week during the transmission of the podcast " Descentralización Total, un podcast de cardano". 

Metric: number of native cardano tokens minted.

How it will be measured: With the help of the Blockfrost tool, we will make calls to the blockchain to know the number of minted tokens for each wallet that we have registered and verified as belonging to a user of the platform, these wallet addresses will be made public with the consent of the stakeholders.

Not only the number of minted tokens will be known, but also how many are non-fungible and how many are fungible, how many represent food products, how many certifications or how many farmland. 

How will we communicate with the community? 

The data will be presented on CropTrace's social networks (they are in the process of being created) and on the CEO's twitter (Cristian Jair Rojas Velez) this data will be presented every month, during the implementation phase (last 3 months).

Twitter: Twitter: @CrisRo0787

Metric: Number of scans to the final product.

How it will be measured: In the proposed use case, the final product corresponds to a bottle of wine, in this particular case we will have one more metric in the medium term, the final product will be taken as the wine barrel in the cellar.

This metric will be measured with the stakeholder's stock of barrels at a given time, if the barrel appears in stock it means that it has been scanned and stored in the blockchain, this can be done by making a call to the content of the specific wallet of the stakeholder.

How will we communicate with the community? 

The means of communication will be the same as above.

Important note:

Finally, it is important to communicate to the community that any general progress being made in the implementation of this proposal will be communicated through a breakout room during the Latam Town Hall held every Thursday. 

We will be asking the Cardano community in Latin America for a space to communicate our progress every 2 weeks, the link to the Town Hall will be shared through our social networks mentioned above.

[AUDITABILITY] What does success for this project look like?

With the correct implementation of this solution, the world's small farmers will be able to participate in a system in which they currently have no voice or vote.

Thanks to a decentralized and transparent system, the consumer will be able to have certainty of the origin of their food and establish a more direct relationship with the producer without the need to rely on third parties.

[AUDITABILITY] Please provide information on whether this proposal is a continuation of a previously funded project in Catalyst or an entirely new one.

This solution is part of a proposal funded in fund7 "Support small farmers in Latam" (https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/384340 ), in that fund was planned the delivery of a MVP of the platform with the following features:

• Smart contracts with the ability to issue digital titles that represent the harvested crop.
• Transfer ownership of assets between the farmer and stakeholders.
• Share immutable asset records with customised stakeholder views.
• Integrate the COTI PAY payment processor.

After these months of better understanding the cardano technology and given the recent partnerships, we have changed the deliverable functionalities to the following (still keeping the original purpose): 

• Unique identification of producers,cooperatives, processors, exporters & stakeholders in general.
• Creation of tokens representing the food product.
• Transfer ownership of assets between stakeholders.
• Integration of payment processors using crypto currencies. (ADA, DJED).

This proposal plans to add traceability functionality.

Feature added:

• Traceability of the agricultural supply chain. From Farm to Fork.

Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Rating

SDG goals:

• End poverty in all its forms everywhere
• End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture
• Reduce inequality within and among countries
• Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns
• Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts

SDG subgoals:

• By 2030, eradicate extreme poverty for all people everywhere, currently measured as people living on less than $1.25 a day
• 
  
• By 2030, double the agricultural productivity and incomes of small-scale food producers, in particular women, indigenous peoples, family farmers, pastoralists and fishers, including through secure and equal access to land, other productive resources and inputs, knowledge, financial services, markets and opportunities for value addition and non-farm employment

• By 2030, ensure sustainable food production systems and implement resilient agricultural practices that increase productivity and production, that help maintain ecosystems, that strengthen capacity for adaptation to climate change, extreme weather, drought, flooding and other disasters and that progressively improve land and soil quality

Key Performance Indicator (KPI):

• Average income of small-scale food producers, by sex and indigenous status.

• Proportion of agricultural area under productive and sustainable agriculture: We can measure this metric by the number of CNFTs that represent production areas that are linked to other CNFTs that represent sustainable agriculture certification.

#proposertoolsdg