Context

The Coffee Board launched the pilot of the country’s first blockchain-based marketplace app for trading in Indian coffee, aimed at getting growers better returns by removing myriad middlemen.

About

• Known as the Coffee Blockchain initiative, the pilot was activated simultaneously by the executive director of the International Coffee Organisation, Nairobi and Anup Wadhawan, India’s commerce secretary.
• The blockchain-based solution was developed in coordination with Eka Software Solutions.
• India became the third country having a coffee blockchain after France and Ethiopia.
• It will allow a coffee producer to directly transact with multiple buyers.
• The aim of using blockchain is to “premium-ise" coffee, add “bean-to-cup traceability" and cut the role of middlemen.
• Blockchain is no longer a technology that is just about powering cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ether. But a distributed digital ledger technology (DLT), and it is also being used by manufacturing companies to improve their supply chains; by healthcare and electricity companies; and by the financial sector to make transactions more transparent.
• In India, coffee is cultivated in about 454,000 hectares by 366,000 coffee farmers -- 98% of them small farmers -- whose returns are meagre.