- In the seafood industry
about 30% of our seafood is illegal,
unreported, unregulated.
- But a new movement
is taking hold of the industry:
One that uses blockchain technology
to track where our food comes from,
and ensures everyone gets paid fairly
along the supply chain.
- Most of the farmers here now have farming
as their only source of income.
- The grand picture that we're working towards
is truly inclusive business models
that work for everybody:
for the fishermen and the farmers,
and those actors through the supply chain.
- Having blockchain traceability
is a game-changer.
My name is Trini Pratiwi.
I am the project manager of ASIC,
Asian Seafood Improvement Collaborative.
Indonesia, even though we are five top largest shrimp
producers globally,
Indonesia is not “price maker,”
we are “price taker.”
- Fishers and farmers
are arguably the most critical part
of the seafood supply chain,
but they typically get paid the least.
- My job is a shrimp farmer.
Tiger prawns and wanami and milkfish.
- Haji is just one of the many farmers
in Indonesia that is struggling to make ends meet
as fishers and farmers are increasingly paid less
while other players profit.
- I started the fishponds cultivation in ‘96.
Starting now, until now, it is more complicated.
- Here's the problem:
Seafood prices are rising,
and there's often a 35% to 45% price markup
by the time it reaches consumers.
But very little of that profit
makes it back to the fishers and farmers.
So could we use technology
to learn where our food comes from,
and ensure that fishers and farmers are paid fairly?
That's where ‘Fishcoin’ comes in.
- Fishcoin was born out of the idea
of the token incentivizing data sharing.
- As seafood travels from the fisher to a buyer,
data about where and when the fish was caught
is often handwritten on notepads and spreadsheets,
which can be easily falsified
before it reaches the shelves at grocery stores.
- For years I've been working as an auditor.
So I would go to seafood processing facilities
in and around this region,
and often the paper comes in.
I would joke that, “the ink is still wet.”
- So Alistair and his team created
a type of cryptocurrency called 'Fishcoin,'
so fish buyers can pay fishers and farmers
for their catch data.
- Fishcoin allows seafood buyers
to purchase the traceability data.
- And that data lives on the blockchain,
which is basically a database that prevents the data
from being altered later;
traveling with the seafood all the way
to your dinner table.
On the Fishcoin app or webpage,
a fisher enters the seafood species, quantity, and data.
Then the fisher negotiates with the buyer
for how much that data is worth.
- So for example, if it's a hundred dollars worth
of seafood, they might ask for a dollar—
so 1%—
and then puts that information on a blockchain.
It's that simple.
- Fishers and farmers
can redeem Fishcoin tokens
to pay for goods and services like cell phone plans,
utility bills, and groceries.
- We can support them by giving this reward,
and hopefully reducing the burden
to cover their daily expenses.
- Blockchain transparency systems aren't perfect.
They rely on the trust
that information is entered accurately,
but false information is less likely to be entered
when it can be tracked.
Vignesh Iyer designed Fishcoin with this in mind.
- I've been obsessed with this phrase of
"Automation of Trust,"
and we see blockchain as an infrastructure
that automates trust.
Data captured at the point of transaction
is always invaluable.
Once you incentivize this,
that's how accurate data comes on its own.
Blockchain allows the marginal players
to come to mainstream:
that's the biggest advantage blockchain provides.
- Data traceability
isn't just a flash in the pan.
New U.S. and EU standards mean that visible supply chains
will be required more and more,
and blockchain technology can be used as a tool to do this.
As consumers, we wanna know where our food comes from,
and with blockchain,
it could be as simple as scanning a QR code
at the grocery store.
The cost to know where our food comes from
could be marginal for consumers,
while transforming the lives
of people who are responsible for catching our seafood.
- It's a mission critical that we get traceability.
If we can't identify, verify, and reward these fishers
and farmers that are producing in a sustainable
and responsible manner,
we can't transform the industry.