Medici-Backed Blockchain Firm Wants to Unite the Coffee Industry of Honduras

Published at: Sept. 25, 2019

Agricultural startup GrainChain backed by Medici Ventures, the blockchain venture arm of online retail giant Overstock, plans to unite the coffee industry of Honduras by delivering its blockchain platform to a network of local stakeholders.

The firm has signed several agreements with the aim of bringing the entire coffee supply chain of Honduras together on its blockchain platform, according to the press release published on Sept. 24.

One of the world’s biggest coffee producers

By launching the initiative, GrainChain intends to facilitate multiple processes in the coffee supply chain of Honduras, where coffee has historically been one of the major export products.

Specifically, GrainChain promises to accomplish three primary goals such as growing trust between farmers and banks, improving the accuracy of data and raising the transparency.

Farming from a mobile app

As part of the initiative, GrainChain will provide local customers with a digital wallet to enable remote and unbanked farmers to apply for loans. Banks will be able to use GrainChain loans for small and medium size farmers, while insurance companies will use GrainChain to automate the records, the press release notes. Additionally, local farmers will have access to their commodities via a mobile app, which enables real-time monitoring of their inventory.

Founded in 2003, GrainChain’s financial settlement system lets producers, buyers and sellers deploy smart contracts in agricultural transactions. GrainChain’s activity in Honduras follows the company’s partnership with the Mexican state of Tamaulipas to expand its grain tracking service in the country, as announced in May 2019.

As Cointelegraph previously reported, 10% of GrainChain was acquired by Medici Ventures, the blockchain venture arm of online retail giant Overstock, in late 2018.

Recently, a group of global coffee companies teamed up with tech startup Farmer Connect to launch a blockchain platform to track coffee using IBM-developed app.

Tags
Blockchain
Texas
Supply Chain
Honduras
Agriculture
Related Posts
French President Calls on Europe to Use Blockchain to Innovate the Agriculture Industry
French President Emmanuel Macron has advocated the use of blockchain to innovate supply chain management in the European agriculture industry. The president made his remarks during the 56th International Agriculture Fair in Paris on Saturday, Togolese agriculture news site Agridigitale reported on Feb. 23. Macron called for unity among European nations to counter competition from global markets in China, Russia and the United States, underscoring the importance of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in this regard. He identified three broad strategies to advance the continent’s agricultural industry and maintain a competitive edge, affirming that “no farmer or consumer wants …
Blockchain / Feb. 25, 2019
South Australian food and wine tracing platform teams up with Hedera
The Australian government-backed agricultural supply chain platform Entrust has announced it will operate on Hedera Hashgraph — a distributed ledger platform claiming a transactional throughput of 10,000 transactions per second. South Australia’s premier, Steven Marshall, officially launched Entrust on September 20, describing the platform’s initial focus as protecting the wine and dairy manufacturing industries from counterfeit fraud in the global markets, and driving efficiency savings across agricultural sectors. Entrust is a software-as-a-service platform that tracks the movement of primary products (such as wine grapes) across the local agricultural supply chain, as well as the supply chain of the secondary manufactured …
Blockchain / Sept. 22, 2020
Agtech Firm Tracks Beef Exports From Australia to China Using Blockchain
Australian livestock tracking platform Aglive has completed a pilot that monitored shipments of beef to China. Aglive’s trial was launched during late-January and was conducted in partnership with global shipping logistics company DB Schenker and industry body Meat and Livestock Australia. The pilot saw cattle tracked from Macka’s cattle farm in regional New South Wales to an abattoir located in the same state. From there, frozen beef products were tracked across the supply chain as the meat was transported by land freight interstate to Queensland, and then shipped to Shanghai — ensuring that the products were stored under safe conditions …
Technology / May 5, 2020
ConsenSys to Build Global Trade Platform for Agribusiness Giants
Covantis, a blockchain initiative backed by global agribusiness giants like Cargill, has selected major Ethereum-focused firm ConsenSys as a technology partner. Within the partnership, ConsenSys will build an Ethereum-based blockchain platform to digitize the post-trade finance industry and bring efficiencies and cost savings to the international agribusiness supply chain, Covantis said in a Jan. 23 press release. Four agribusiness giants established the initiative in 2018, while Covantis’ name came out months ago The concept of Covantis was established in October 2018, when four of the biggest global agribusinesses companies announced a joint initiative to digitize their global shipping transactions using …
Blockchain / Jan. 24, 2020
Major Agriculture Companies Partner to Use Blockchain in Grain Trading
The world’s four largest agriculture companies, commonly known as ABCD, have partnered to digitize international grain trading by using blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, Reuters reports Thursday, Oct. 25. ABCD, composed of Archer Daniels Midland Co., Bunge Ltd., Cargill Inc., and Louis Dreyfus Co., states that blockchain implementation could make trading more efficient and transparent, as well as reduce costs. The conglomerate aims to digitize the system that has previously relied on paper contracts, invoices, and manual payments. According to grain industry news outlet World-Grain.com, blockchain and AI will be initially used to automate grain and oilseed post-trade execution …
Blockchain / Oct. 25, 2018