Sahyadri Farmers Producer Co, one of the largest FPOs in the country, has started implementing Blockchain technology for full traceability of its products from farm to fork.

Vilas Shinde, Chairman of the FPO, told BusinessLine that today in the final price of the goods sold by the company, 25 per cent is share of the farmers. Sahyadri wants to increase this share to 50 per cent by reducing supply chain inefficiencies and ensuring greater transparency.

For fiscal 2019-20, Sahyadri’s revenue stood at ₹464 crore.

Shinde said that the idea of Blockchain implementation started by complying with specifications such as ISO and food safety standards of the European customers. The company realised that the use of Blockchain enhances the trust and dependability of the data provided by the FPO to its customer and other stakeholders.

Sahyadri wants to take the transparency in the business to the next level by using Blockchain, which will inform even a single farmer how much has his produce sold in the city and at what retail price. The idea is to ensure that the goods are sold at a fair price in the retail market and farmers will know the price their goods fetch. At the customer end, he/she will get a quality product, which can be traced to a single individual farmer using the QR codes and digital maps, he said.

The technology is being developed by IIT-Bombay incubated start-up EmerTech Innovations Pvt Ltd. Gaurav Somwanshi, CEO of the company, said

on an average, 15,000-20,000 labels printed per day at the FPO are stuck on Stock Keeping Units, which are nothing but lots of processed fruits and vegetables bearing a specific weight, which are then sent to the customers using the tamper-proof technology.