In today’s globally interconnected sourcing and trading environment, agri-food supply chains are highly complex. Despite this, however, documentation relating to factors such as compliance, safety, sustainability and provenance typically remain stored on paper or private databases. This makes access to data costly, time-consuming and susceptible to fraud. Although distributed ledger technology has the potential to address these problems, factors such as the lack of interoperability of DLTs mean that many participants, such as small farmers, lack the resources to support the implementation of such systems. Furthermore, DLT is a rapidly evolving area of technology. The result is that, without a solution to the issue of DLT interoperability, the benefits of the technology are only available to the bigger partnerships and consortia.
The introduction of Quant’s Overledger OS has changed this situation radically, by providing the full, fast and easy interoperability between multiple and disparate DLTs, as well as legacy networks, that is fundamental to all stakeholders involved in agri-food supply chains. Requiring no further infrastructure, Overledger makes access to DLTs simple and cost-efficient for any party, from fishing fleets and dairy producers, to olive farmers and wineries. By facilitating safe and secure exchange of information, via DLT, between all stakeholders, Overledger brings a new level of trust and transparency to the agri-food supply chain.
The benefits of this are considerable, ranging from an ability to easily implement Smart Contracts for automating transaction processing and guaranteeing provenance, through cost-efficiencies from faster, more seamless systems, to the elimination of fraud and counterfeiting opportunities for criminal actors. And there are many more. In short, Quant technology enables consumers, producers and authorities alike to benefit from a new generation of more more traceable and trustable supply chains in global agriculture and food markets.
