Back to the first boat I worked to today, I’ve been an incredibly fortunate man, in my very limited set of “rules” about life, the 2 things I despise the most are ingratitude and pretentiousness. So I could not start this blog about my latest publication without being thankful to FAO.
The new “net” in fishing
All the way back to the FAO training, I attended in Mar del Plata Fishing School aged 19, to all the books the sent me over the years, to taking me on board as Fishery Officer in Rome (to replace one of my trainers!), to later on supporting my views and ideas during the CDS expert consultation, offering me the change to co-author a book on Traceability and Compliance with my friend Gilles Hosch, to inviting my work on the development of the crucial (yet controversial) guidelines on social responsibility and to now on co-authoring this study on Blockchain application in seafood value chains.
I learned from them that there is substantial strength that comes from diversity and that offering people an opportunity has literally no price. That is the reason I’ve foster co-authoring, Gilles invited me because we come from different backgrounds but he trusted my vies and experience, when it was my turn with social responsibility I asked someone very different background to me for help; Katrina Nakamura’s angles and knowledge open crucial avenues of work I would not have recognised and even less developed by myself.
So when approached to investigate the applicability of Blockchain to seafood value chains, my first reaction was to bring a totally different perspective to my one, and I was very lucky to know and have the trust of Kenneth Katafono, who has been working blockchain and IT for a while besides understanding fisheries from his work at FFA. Furthermore, being a pacific islander his views on the real potential and limitations of high tech, in remote and generally low-tech environments is crucial.
And while I came across many people don’t consider a big deal writing a work where your name and the FAO logo are on the same page. I say fair enough… yet most of those were people from developed countries and all of them urbanites. I grew up seen the FAO logo in trucks, books and initiatives that dealt with something those people are very lucky never had to deal with: hunger and underdevelopment. For people like me and Ken growing up in remote places and small villages, with subsistence agriculture and fisheries as nearby realities, and being the lucky ones to go to school and then study… Having our names next to the FAO logo is (and it will always be) a big deal!
Anyway… back to the publication (download it from here) the abstract pretty much says what we did:
"This publication establishes supply chain traceability as the substrate over which digital solutions need to operate. It provides a comprehensive introduction to blockchain, and covers smart contracts, explores how they relate to blockchain with an example of their use in seafood value chains, and then examines major development and operational considerations for blockchain applications. The publication also analyses the seafood supply chain with considerations on flag, coastal, port, processing and market States. It identifies general control elements (critical tracking events and corresponding key data elements) that form the basis for traceability monitoring and acquisition and summarizes suitability for blockchain. It also investigates considerations for legality, transparency, species fraud and food safety.
The strategic fit of blockchain technology in seafood value chains is further investigated, with review and analysis of seven initiatives/projects. The publication then provides a key analysis as to whether blockchain for seafood traceability is the right tool and a comprehensive investigation of operational of blockchain. The publication concludes by providing a set of potential trade and public policy implications and recommendations"
Our recommendations are:
From this study, it transpires that all current initiatives are private-industry-based and only cover part of the value chain for specific operators in the market, but none encompasses a whole fishery for a specific type of State, and nor are they compulsory as a form of generalized official market access, hence requiring integration across different authorities in different jurisdictions. Therefore, the potential of blockchain for official-guarantee-type, market-access systems such CDS and/or health certifications has yet to be tested.
While the technology has well-established examples of successful implementation and is constantly evolving, implementation is secondary to having an integral and well-developed traceability along the value chain. Hence, prior to deciding which technology is to be used, it is critical to define what data are to be acquired and to determine the sources and jurisdictions involved at each type of State in function of the extent of the traceability system to be built.
For these to happen, all types of State (flag, coastal, port, processing and end-market) have essential roles in the implementation of traceability mechanisms that can be supported by blockchain, but as yet are operating under other technologies. Some responsibilities and duties are directly related to the implementation of rigorous traceability mechanisms, whereas others are only loosely related – but together they provide the conditions in which traceability functions can be enforced.
In fact, blockchain-based traceability may work best in fisheries that voluntarily intend to demonstrate their compliance to laws, management rules, and consumer demands, or in ones that are looking for a self-controlling mechanism to foster trust among competitors.
Because fishers may want to organize themselves to reduce conflicts and improve trade opportunities, such systems may even evolve in areas where governmental fisheries is currently weakly developed or totally absent.
The recommendation of this study for governments and international organizations in regard to the development, use and promotion of blockchain technology is to follow strict due diligence at legal, commercial and operational level prior to commitment.
Critical forethought needs to be given to the following (not exhaustive) list of critical considerations: Traceability along value chain to be covered:
Exhaustive understanding of all possible – as distinct from desirable – supply-chain events and scenarios under consideration so that traceability can be sustained.
Clear definition of the “critical tracking events” (CTEs) and “key data elements” (KDEs) – to be covered.
For regulatory purposes, the segments of the analysis need to consider the administrative, logistic and legal aspects associated with the types of “States” (flag, coastal, port, processing and end-market) that have custody of fishery products as they move through national and international supply chains from harvesting, trans-shipment, landing and processing, to the consumer end-market.
Clear understanding of the current operational and logistic limitations of the current traceability system in existence (in any).
Use of blockchain technology:
Use a well-designed decision tree, or other decision models, to determine whether it is the right tool to use.
If blockchain is chosen as the appropriate tool, then attention still needs to be given to:
operational considerations,
security considerations,
electronic data interchange,
regulatory uncertainty,
increased responsibility of the user,
technical infrastructure,
costs: design, development, maintenance, operation, integration with existing ERP, and hardware (including data capture, tagging and printing devices).
All this being taken into consideration, blockchain, with its inherent characteristics of immutability, security, and decentralization together with its smart-contract feature, has the potential to improve efficiencies and accountability in seafood value chains. Permissioned consortium blockchains, in particular, have the greatest potential in the current state of the technology to be scaled to address seafood traceability without the concerns of high energy use and slow transaction times that public permissionless blockchains have.
This study has not found limitations on the blockchain technology that cannot be overcome under the right scenario. However, whether there exists the collective will to adopt and expand an integral, value- chain-encompassing traceability system is a different matter.
The authors of the present study agree with this conclusion: “Blockchain, data mining, and AI will not stop IUU fishing, will not prevent overfishing and discarding. But they may help to make global streams of fish and seafood products with the associated flow of money becoming more visible and transparent” (Probst, 2019).
Finally, the authors of this study view as unfair the current media discourse that seems to pin the solution to multifaceted seafood value chain problems (from IUU fishing, seafood safety and species fraud to labour issues) on one data architecture tool – blockchain. This risks hyperinflating expectations on what this technology can offer, with potential operators then walking away because it does not deliver on the hype built around it.