- The collaboration between FIWARE Foundation and Alastria Association represents a major step towards the adoption of blockchain / distributed technologies within private and public organisations, allowing them to accelerate digitalization in different industrial and business sectors, achieving higher agility, veracity, security, and efficiency.
- Both organisations, together with Cattlechain 4.0’s EU funded project partners Sensowave, L’Institut de l’Élevage (Idele) and Bas Alimentària (Natrus), are paving the way for a sustainable livestock production that works for consumers, producers, climate and the environment, following the EU Strategy from Farm to Fork.
- The technologies developed within the Cattlechain 4.0 project, already validated in scenarios involving up to 5,000 cows, will completely change the way livestock is managed, ensuring that the living conditions of the animals meet a set of defined animal welfare standards with full transparency and traceability throughout the entire supply chain.
The sustainability of food systems is a global issue. Food producers are in the process of adapting to face and overcome diverse challenges posed by the climate change, the Covid pandemic or the changing food demand structure to just mention a few. The EU is playing a key role in setting standards and strategies to accelerate digitisation, facilitating a global transition towards competitive sustainability from farm to fork and tapping into new opportunities for all actors of the food chain.
Cattlechain 4.0 project aims to connect farmers, meat and dairy companies, veterinarians, public authorities and the general public using blockchain for mapping the food journey from the farm to the consumers’ tables. The solutions developed on the project’s scope combine IoT devices and external sensors (grazing, weighing and drinking behaviour) with a new generation of Artificial Intelligence algorithms, Sentinel satellite imagery and blockchain technologies to provide comprehensive, reliable and cost-effective tools to monitor beef and dairy cattle, support decision making, reduce operational costs and increase overall productivity and efficiency in the farm. Thanks to the blockchain guaranteed animal welfare indicators, traceability of the dairy/meat products sold/purchased will result in trusted information for retailers and consumers.
“Cattlechain 4.0 will have a clear impact in the development of new business models that can improve overall efficiency and productivity of the farm. Thanks to a new generation of AI algorithms, devices can be smarter and facilitate information sharing throughout the supply chain. With blockchain technologies and adapters, increased trust between parties is guaranteed – and also seamless integration,” said Carlos Callejero, CEO at Sensowave and Cattlechain 4.0 Project Coordinator.
The role of FIWARE and Alastria in Cattlechain 4.0
FIWARE brings in a standardised open source implementation for context information management. Solutions based on FIWARE, gravitate around capturing, managing, and processing context data that are defined as the collection of properties describing digital entities that work as “digital twins” of objects in the real world. Examples of digital twins can be an animal (a dairy cow, beef cow) on a farm, veterinary records, carcass, meat products or feed products. Some of these solutions may require recording of certain actions or events in such a manner that manipulation by any unauthorised party can be prevented and proper auditing and certification of processes can be guaranteed.
The integration of blockchain technologies in architectures based on FIWARE is possible thanks to a new component within the FIWARE Catalogue called Canis Major allowing transparent, trusted registration of context data in blockchain networks. A notable achievement is that it is already integrated with the biggest network from the Alastria Blockchain Ecosystem, called RedT. With their dedication of promoting standards, both organisations will focus on Canis Major in the first step in order to support all EBSI-compatible blockchain networks. This way, applications using FIWARE Open Source technologies, will be able to be deployed on top of any of these networks, including the upcoming EBSI network itself (already in pre-production with more than 30 nodes in 25 Member States).
“Thanks to the Canis Major adapter, you can avoid the complexity of programming with different blockchain technologies. Just select which parts of the information from the Digital Twin representation must be saved in the blockchain, and when you want to save it. This way, you generate a record that will later help to carry out auditing and animal welfare certification processes,” said Juanjo Hierro, CTO at FIWARE Foundation.
“To achieve the highest degrees of trust and transparency in the auditability and traceability processes of the supply chain you can not rely on a private blockchain network owned and controlled by a reduced set of entities. At the same time, all juridical entities involved must use strong real-life digital identities to keep them accountable and responsible for their acts. What is needed is a blockchain network following the Public-Permissioned model, and this is exactly what Alastria provides with a general-purpose, inclusive, open and efficient blockchain network that can be used for any type of use case with these requirements,” said Jesus Ruiz, Board member and CTO of Alastria Blockchain Ecosystem.
FIWARE Foundation and Alastria Blockchain Association are already demonstrating how the integration of Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs) into the architecture of Smart Solutions powered by FIWARE can provide higher levels of transparency, traceability and auditability to applications and platforms deployed in further domains like Smart Cities, Smart Energy, Smart Manufacturing, or Smart Water Management.
Future work will include the ability of solutions based on FIWARE to leverage ESSIF (European Self-Sovereign Identity Framework) with the combination of Verifiable Credentials and Blockchain technology.
Event at the Basque Culinary Center
Next 29 of March, 2022, Cattlechain partners will present the objectives and results of the project, as well as the new lines of work and collaboration that will be extended further.
The event will also feature testimonials from farmers and the intervention of the Digital Gastronomy Lab of the Basque Culinary Center whose mission is to promote the digital transformation of gastronomy through open innovation.
Cattlechain: Optimizing farm productivity and animal welfare using IoT & Blockchain
29 of March, 2022 – 12:00 AM – 14:00 PM
Basque Culinary Center – Paseo Juan Avelino Barriola, 101, 20009 Donostia, GipuzkoaThe event will be live streamed online. More information and free registration here.
About Cattlechain 4.0 project
Cattlechain 4.0 is a global solution to monitor, manage, support decision making and traceability of the beef and dairy cattle supply chain. It is based on a combination of advanced AI algorithms, IoT and blockchain technologies to guarantee that the living conditions of the animals meet a set of defined animal welfare standards. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 853864.
About Alastria Blockchain Ecosystem
Alastria Blockchain Ecosystem is a non-profit association that promotes the digital economy through the development of Blockchain/DLT technologies. Alastria has a clear vocation to be a pioneering project of reference in the generation of new digital economy models. It is the first Public-Permissioned Blockchain network in Spain and Europe with multisectorial associates.
About FIWARE Foundation
Together with its members and partners, FIWARE Foundation drives the definition — and the Open Source implementation — of key open standards that enable the development of portable and interoperable smart solutions in a faster, easier and affordable way, avoiding vendor lock-in scenarios, whilst also nurturing FIWARE as a sustainable and innovation-driven business ecosystem.The foundation achieves this through the support of a fast-growing global community that shares a common vision and combines their efforts toward making FIWARE the Open Source technology of choice for industries, governments, universities and associations to reach their full potential and scale up their activities, thereby, entering new markets and growing their businesses. Founded in 2016, the foundation has Atos, Engineering, Red Hat, NEC, Telefónica and Trigyn Technologies among its 500+ members. For further information, refer to FIWARE’s Press Kit and follow the organisation on Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube.
