**1. Introduction**

Agribusiness is a sector of paramount importance for a country; its potential is the result of a set of several factors, especially investments in technology and research, which can increase productivity. The agribusiness aggregate is composed of several inputs or product supply chains operating in different natural ecosystems. In a supportive context, the supply chains are embedded in an institutional environment formed by financial, R&D, and technical assistance organizations and institutions with a strong influence on their performance [1].

Supply chains involve a set of activities that are gradually structured from the production to manufacturing and marketing of a product or service. A supply chain is understood to be the operations involving everything from the manufacturing of inputs, production on the farm, transformation process (industrialization), distribution, and trading to reach the end consumer [2]. Thus, the agribusiness supply chains of a country may have grea<sup>t</sup> prominence all over the world since they are complex, diversified, and dependent on the organization of each link in the productive system and the relation between them. The farmers operate in a strong, participative, and comprehensive system with an increasingly interconnected integration within a wide business and cooperation network. A farm represents an important node, integrated with other nodes such as infrastructure, commerce,

**Citation:** Rocha, G.d.S.R.; de Oliveira, L.; Talamini, E. Blockchain Applications in Agribusiness: A Systematic Review. *Future Internet* **2021**, *13*, 95. https://doi.org/ 10.3390/fi13040095

Academic Editor: Ahad ZareRavasan

Received: 19 February 2021 Accepted: 5 April 2021 Published: 8 April 2021

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**Copyright:** © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

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finance, technology, labor relations, and the entire public and private institutional apparatus [2,3]. In addition to the number of actors and transactions, their complexity is increasing over time, taking into account the countless amount of country-specific economic, political, environmental, social, cultural, legal, and sanitary norms and conventions [3].

Many resources are changed through the links between actors involved in an agribusiness supply chain. In one direction, there is a flow of products and services, while in the opposite direction, financial resources are exchanged. Today, information is a valuable resource, which flows both forward and backward [4,5]. Information sharing is subject to many benefits and constraints depending on objectives, interests, technology, trust, and control, among other factors [6]. The asymmetric nature of information and misinformation is a constant challenge to be overcome in supply chain management, and consumers are demanding traceable products, transparency, and safety information [7–10].

The fast growth and development of information technology, attributed to a platform of public services aiming to improve the managemen<sup>t</sup> of distant resources and services, became the key to solving frictions between the demand and supply of products in organizations [10]. The blockchain is a communication network where data are stored and shared in a distributed manner between all links, eliminating any trusted authority centralized in different business models, and where each node can coordinate without a unified data center [11]. The concept was introduced in 2009 by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto, who created Bitcoin to solve double-spending problems. The nodes in the Bitcoin network incorporate mutually agreed validations on the blockchain, carrying the transactions on the ledger, that is, a kind of cash book determining who has data in that chain [12].

Blockchain is considered a technological innovation that comes from the incorporation of existing technologies and, lately, has received more attention due to its autonomy, anonymity, and data immutability, becoming an emerging subject in science and organizations [11]. It is a distributed database, in which a group of people controls, registers, and shares information, that can be used in different kinds of applications and is interconnected through platforms and hardware all over the world. It has been identified as a technology that has a concept based on a protocol that is inviolable to human action and it is also based on three underlying technologies: peer-to-peer networks (P2P), cryptography, and distributed consistency algorithms [13]. It is also accompanied by a smart contract, which is not a necessary part of blockchain-based systems but provides natural support for transactions carried out using the technology [14].

A blockchain is a chain of information blocks interconnected in the digital environment of the internet, allowing for information on transactions of various kinds to be stored, linked, and recovered, forming a large database [15]. The blockchain networks can be categorized into public, private, and federated blockchains, based on the network managemen<sup>t</sup> system adopted and the permissions allowed [16]. A private blockchain is a permissioned access platform; a public blockchain is a permissionless open data network in which any user can add data in the form of a transaction, which is an identification data package in the system, and these data can also be checked and copied; a federated blockchain combines the features of both private and public blockchains [16,17].

Blockchain technology is claimed to be a technology of inviolable validation, having decentralization as a safety measure that creates consensus and confidence in direct communication between two parts, without third party intermediation. It is appropriate for situations requiring privacy, identity control, and permissions [17,18]. Thus, a blockchain provides immutability, transparency, and almost instantaneous insurance in the form of information shared between two or more participants in a single transaction, eliminating the need for third parties, creating an immutable record which can be seen by all the relevant parties without being altered.

When addressing the blockchain theme, it is common to think of cryptocurrencies, especially Bitcoin. However, experts in technology and economics are signaling that blockchains may be relevant in technological research and can be used in many areas in addition to Bitcoin [19]. Many organizations have integrated technologies which have been

changing the environment and markets, making it easier to develop activities favoring all parts of the process, including the agribusiness segments, resulting in positive contributions to the agri-food supply chain.

The current agribusiness supply chains are ineffective because their integrity can be easily counterfeited. Blockchain applications have the potential for automated control in which the product is traced from the farm to the consumer's table, depending on the 3P's (party, product, and premises) conditions; with this technology, the end consumer can select the product they want to consume, with safety in the product quality. In addition to the product quality differential, the price received by the producer tends to be higher because of the guarantees. In this way, blockchains can improve traceability in agribusiness, adding value not only for the producer but the entire production chain as well. Thus, an infrastructure supported by the use of this technology can help guarantee food safety, as effective tracking reduces losses in the logistic process [7–10,19–23]. Blockchain applications have been reported for other purposes related to agribusiness, such as precision agriculture and environmental monitoring [24], transactions certification [25], smart agriculture and smart contracts [26], consumer–retailer relationships [27,28], sustainability and coordination, performance, and order managemen<sup>t</sup> [29], development of safer algorithms [30], and fair-trading practices [31].

Although blockchain is a new technology, its uses and potential applications in agribusiness are already being reported. However, the literature lacks studies that investigate the purposes for which blockchain technology has been employed. Therefore, this study is conducted using the following research question: what are the purposes for which blockchain has been applied in agribusiness supply chains? The main goal is to identify the purposes for which the blockchain has been applied in the agribusiness sector.

The article is structured in five sections. The first section addresses the subject, evidencing the research problem and objective. The second section explains the methodological procedures used to achieve the objective. In the third section, the data analysis is presented and discussed; conclusions, limitations, and suggestions for future studies are offered in the last section.
