Blockchain-Based Supply Chain Transparency for Agricultural Produce

Abstract

The agricultural supply chain continues to suffer from fragmented data management, limited transparency, and vulnerability to fraud, resulting in substantial economic losses and reduced consumer confidence. Conventional centralized systems used for tracking agricultural produce are prone to tampering, lack interoperability, and fail to provide a verifiable end-to-end product history. To address these challenges, this paper presents a blockchain-enabled traceability framework built on the Polygon network, designed to create an immutable, transparent, and decentralized ledger for agricultural product lifecycle management. In the proposed system, farmers register their produce through a digital interface, where a unique cryptographic QR code is generated for each batch. Every subsequent transaction—including aggregation, transportation, storage, and retail transfer—is recorded on-chain using smart contracts written in Solidity. These smart contracts enforce product identity, ownership verification, and timestamped event logging without requiring intermediaries. A lightweight backend built using Node.js interacts with the blockchain via Ethers.js, ensuring secure and real-time updates. Off-chain data such as certificates and images are stored in IPFS to maintain decentralization while reducing on-chain storage costs. Consumers can retrieve the entire product journey by scanning the QR code, gaining access to verifiable information including origin, farmer details, transport history, and quality certifications. This significantly enhances trust, enables faster recall in case of contamination, and promotes responsible consumption. The use of the Polygon Mumbai testnet ensures low-cost and scalable transactions, making the solution practical for large-scale agricultural deployments The system demonstrates improvements in transparency, integrity, and stakeholder accountability. Experimental results show reduced verification time, improved data immutability, and resistance to traditional fraud techniques. This research contributes a practical and scalable model for modernizing agricultural supply chains using decentralized technologies and highlights the potential of blockchain to reshape trust, efficiency, and sustainability in food ecosystems