Thanks to this technology, the transaction was conducted instantaneously and without other intermediaries
Two farmers from Ontario, in Canada, made the first sale of corn through blockchain technology, according to what local media reported in late January.
Larry Reynolds and Lloyd Crowe are the farmers who decided to make this first transaction through a Canadian blockchain platform called Grain Discovery, which these field workers managed to get a buyer through a bidding system, in order to end the sale almost instantaneously.
Grain Discovery is a startup of Canadian origin which operates in the agricultural sector. It seeks to guide the potential of new technologies to the agroindustrial sector and promote direct, safe and instantaneous trade. The system works through a platform that becomes the place where users can advertise the product, which must be ready for sale and receive an offer in real time.
This allows sellers to carry out the commercial negotiation instantaneously and receive the payment in a short time. One of the advantages offered by this new platform is to reduce the time to market the product, speed up the shipping processes and keep the product fresher.
At the end of last year, farmers lost the sale of two shipments of corn because they were contaminated with a toxin that generates a type of Fusarium fungus. This happened because the sale took too much time to be fulfilled and said fact prevented the purchase from materializing. The product had to be discarded.
According to the farmers, this fact hindered a second sales process. Now, both must get a new buyer, verify the quality of the product and conduct negotiations for their purchase and sale. Noticing the time that some sales take, a representative of the Grain Discovery approached Larry and Lloyd to propose them to use this platform in order to get a new buyer and make the sale in a short time.
The farmers decided to use the service and quickly got a buyer, with whom they could make the transaction instantly. “By using Grain Discovery we were not only able to avoid hours of searching for a new buyer, but we found one right at the end of the route, at a better price than the original agreement, and they paid us instantly”, Larry Reynolds told to various media local.
On the other hand, the CEO of the startup company Grain Discovery, Rory O’Sullivan, commented this sale was a historical transaction, since it is the first purchase and sale of corn that was made between farmer and buyer using only blockchain technology as an intermediary.
O’Sullivan stressed that the technology platform of Grain Discovery allows consumers to be able to see the way by which the product will be transported and even be able to verify the levels of carbon present, among other endless possibilities.
“We are participating in a number of other pilot projects this year, which include the traceability of Canadian soybeans for Japan’s export market and Columbia coffee to its sale in Canadian coffee shops”, Rory concluded enthusiastically.
Certainly, there are many possibilities to adapt blockchain technology to the various facets of social, personal and commercial life, in order to facilitate those processes that some time ago took much longer to materialize, inter alia, the purchase and sale in the field of agriculture.
By María Rodríguez
