Origin Agritech is cooperating with the Elastos Foundation to develop Blockchain technologies for rural e-commerce and product supply source tracking applications:
 
Agricultural seed and produce source tracking
 
Agricultural seed products are important farm inputs and are often considered strategically vital. Source tracking for seed products could help to prevent pirating problems and reduce the food supply problems caused by inferior seed quality. Similarly, agricultural produce is critical to public health, and produce supply source tracking is an effective way to guarantee food safety, assure food supply stability, and increase public trust. Food supply tracking is also important to the organic food demand. Without the effective tracking of food production, process, and logistics, organic certification is impossible.
 
Source tracking of agricultural produce is a complex task. Traditional tracking often takes long and has high costs without expected results. Blockchain technologies provide revolutionary tool for source tracking. Although the initial data collection steps are similar for traditional tracking and Blockchain technology enabled source tracking, the difference often lies in late stages, where the application of Blockchain technologies could reduce the cost and increase the speed and effectiveness of source tracking.
 
Decentralized rural e-commerce eco-system
 
The source tracking of seed products and agricultural produce could also promote the trading of these types of products through an e-commerce eco-system while the successful application of Blockchain technologies to an e-commerce eco-system could provide a much more efficient platform for source tracking. The source tracking of agricultural seed products and a rural decentralized e-commerce eco-system has natural synergy. They support each other’s function, especially when Blockchain technologies are applied to the system. Blockchain technologies has the potential to enable source tracking and rural e-commerce system to revolutionize rural commercial activities. Blockchain technologies’ impact on Chinese vast rural region is inestimable.   
 
Although Chinese e-commerce has grown very fast and covered almost all regions, rural e-commerce has always been lagging behind due to a relatively weak logistics network and a less established credit system. E-commerce for agricultural input has never truly established, although the demand is very strong. Many companies have tried to invest in rural e-commerce but without much success. Most e-commerce platforms simply move offline products to centralized online websites, which could not generate the technical advantages a good e-commerce platform might provide.
 
Blockchain technologies could provide important technical aspects and meet the demand of rural e-commerce. The benefits of Blockchain technology include but are not limited to:
 
➢       The tracking of product supply source to eliminate or dramatically reduce pirating
➢       Guaranteed product quality due to source tracking
➢       A technical solution for distributed, decentralized e-commerce system
➢       The enabling of trusted and secured transactions
➢       The creation of an e-commerce system modeled like an open ecosystem, which will enable further technology and application development