Blockchain meets edge-AI for food supply chain traceability and provenance

Food supply chains are increasingly digitised and automated through the use of technologies such as Internet-of-Things (IoT), blockchain and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Such digitization efforts often rely on cloud computing, which creates bandwidth overhead, high latency, security and privacy challenges. In this chapter, we propose the use of edge AI, which is a computing paradigm that combines edge computing and AI, to complete computing tasks close to the sensor data sources. Edge AI can promote greater scalability and avoid the security and privacy challenges of centralised cloud computing. The chapter introduces the provenance and traceability requirements of food supply chains and the digitization of these supply chains through blockchain, IoT, and AI. The chapter also proposes the use of smartphone integrated sensors to provide unique physical, chemical, or biological signatures of food supply chain products, and to conduct the necessary computations on the smartphone. The proposed Edge AI approach to supply chain digitization sets the scene for greater resilience in modern digital supply chains.