https://doi.org/10.31449/inf.v45i6.3729 Informatica 45 (2021) 119–123 119 
 
Supply Chain Optimization of Agricultural Products in the Internet 
Environment with Blockchain 
Peicai Guan 
Department of Economic Management, Sichuan Top IT Vocational Institute, Chengdu, Sichuan 611743, China 
E-mail: cp5195@126.com 
Keywords: supply chain, blockchain, logistics, traceability 
Received: September 3. 2021 
This paper briefly introduces blockchain and agricultural product supply chain and optimizes the 
agricultural product supply chain with blockchain. Then, an instance analysis is carried out by taking a 
flour mill in Sichuan Province as an example. The results show that the supply chain-based agricultural 
product supply chain could be properly applied to the supply chain management of the flour mill; the 
supply chain that adopted blockchain technology could effectively resist abnormal data modification and 
ensure the reliability of supply chain information, and it could also quickly trace the faulty link in the 
supply chain and improve the efficiency of supply chain management. 
Povzetek: Predstavljeno je uvajanje verižnih tehnologij v dobavno verigo kmetijskih produktov. 
 
1 Introduction
Products that are primarily processed or not processed in 
agricultural activities are called agricultural products, 
including aquatic products, cereals, vegetables, fruits, and 
poultry eggs. With the progress of science and technology, 
agricultural productivity has improved. In order to ensure 
production efficiency, the production areas of agricultural 
products gradually pay more attention to intensification 
and division of labor, i.e., different types of agricultural 
products are produced on a large scale in their respective 
suitable areas to meet the demand of other regions [1]. 
Although intensification and division of labor have 
improved the production efficiency of agricultural 
products, different kinds of agricultural products have 
different shelf lives; therefore, excellent logistics are 
needed to build a supply chain to efficiently transport 
agricultural products to other regions to ensure their 
values within the shelf lives [2]. The use of logistics in the 
supply chain can realize the transaction of agricultural 
products without the constraints of time and space. 
Although the supply chain organically integrates different 
trading members to form an interlocking network chain, 
which greatly expands the productivity, it also has some 
hidden dangers, i.e., once a node in the interlocking supply 
chain makes mistakes, the whole supply chain may not 
collapse immediately, but it will inevitably cause adverse 
effects; therefore, it is necessary to trace the source of 
agricultural products in the supply chain in time, i.e., to 
query the faulty links in the supply chain [3]. In the 
traditional supply chain, although the node enterprises are 
closely linked with each other, due to different reasons, 
they form an information island, which makes it more 
difficult to query the real information in the supply chain. 
The emergence of the Internet has driven the development 
of blockchain technology. The new decentralized and 
trust-free data framework of blockchain enables it to have 
the same nature to optimize the traditional agricultural 
product supply chain when combined with the supply 
chain. Tian [4] analyzed the application of radio frequency 
identification (RFID) and blockchain technology in the 
construction of the agricultural product supply chain. Mao 
et al. [5] proposed a credit evaluation system based on 
blockchain and found that long short term memory 
(LSTM) combined with blockchain had better 
performance for analyzing the credit evaluation text. 
2 Blockchain 
Blockchain is a kind of distributed ledger database that 
leverages peer nodes in the network and consensus 
algorithms [6]. In the blockchain, different data blocks are 
connected in chronological order. The authenticity 
reliability of the data in the block is tested by the hash 
algorithm [7], and the trust relationship between the nodes 
where the block is located is realized by consensus 
algorithms. The block structure in the blockchain is shown 
 
Figure 1: The basic structure of a block in the blockchain. 

120 Informatica 45 (2021) 119–123 P. Guan 
 
in Figure 1. The block head is an important part of the 
block, which stores version number [8], random number, 
timestamp [9], previous block hash, current block hash, 
and Merkle root; the block body seals up the relevant data 
of the transactions in which the block participates. These 
data are guaranteed to be true by digital signature and are 
summarized to the Merkle root by hash [10]. In the process 
of using blockchain, the blocks will not interact with the 
block body data directly but interact through the hash 
function in the block header. 
3 Agricultural products supply 
chain and its optimization 
In order to improve the production efficiency of 
agricultural products, different types of agricultural 
products will choose different regions for large-scale 
production. Although this approach can maximize the 
production efficiency of agricultural products, it will also 
bring some problems. The main reason is that the 
consumption capacity of the origin of agricultural 
products is limited, and the surplus products will cause 
greater losses if they are not handled; therefore, it is 
necessary to have a reasonable supply chain to transport 
the surplus agricultural products to other regions through 
logistics to promote the interaction of agricultural 
products between different regions. 
Supply chains have been used in production and sales 
in many fields. Generally, the links of supply chains are 
similar [11], but the specific details are different due to the 
characteristics of each field. Figure 2 shows the basic links 
of the agricultural product supply chain. The first link is 
the production of agricultural products, which usually 
includes the planting, feeding, and harvesting of 
agricultural products. The second link is the treatment of 
agricultural products, and this link can be skipped 
according to the type of agricultural products. For 
example, agricultural products such as eggs that do not 
need to be processed can directly enter the storage link, 
while the agricultural products that need to be processed 
will be processed in this link. The third link is the storage 
of agricultural products. Due to the limited logistics and 
transportation capacity in the supply chain, it is impossible 
to transport the surplus agricultural products in a short 
time; thus, it is necessary to store the agricultural products, 
and the storage time depends on the shelf life of the 
agricultural products. The fourth link is the transportation 
of agricultural products. The agricultural products stored 
in the storage link are transported to the sales point of the 
target area through logistics. According to the types of 
agricultural products transported, the transportation link 
can not only be connected with the storage link but also 
directly connected with the treatment and production 
links. As the shelf life of agricultural products is often 
short, they need to be transported to the sales place 
immediately after production. The final link is the sales of 
agricultural products. When the agricultural products are 
transported to the corresponding sales place through 
logistics, they can be sold [12]. 
In the traditional supply chain of agricultural 
products, each link can be regarded as a node, and each 
node will record the operation and related information of 
agricultural products in the corresponding link of the node, 
such as the quality and shelf life of agricultural products, 
quality inspection personnel, recording time, etc., so as to 
facilitate the traceability of agricultural products in the 
future. The nodes that make up the supply chain can be 
different departments of the same enterprise, or different 
and cooperative enterprises. The Internet makes the nodes 
in the supply chain more closely connected, i.e., it makes 
the communication between nodes more convenient, and 
it also makes the nodes store more information about 
agricultural products. However, due to the various types, 
processing methods, and storage conditions of agricultural 
products, the food logistics supply chain is not only 
complex but also has a long cycle. An information island 
forms as the data storage and transmission formats of 
different node enterprises in the traditional supply chain 
are not the same, which is difficult to guarantee the 
authenticity and reliability of data. 
The optimized agricultural product supply chain is 
shown in Figure 3, and the sequence structure of the 
agricultural product supply chain is consistent with that of 
the traditional agricultural product supply chain. After 
using the blockchain for optimization, the agricultural 
product information of each link in the supply chain is no 
longer stored in the corresponding local node but uploaded 
to the block of the blockchain through the Internet [13]. 
4 Case analysis 
4.1 Object profile 
This study took a flour mill in Sichuan Province as an 
example. The flour mill mainly sells different kinds of 
flour and has many subsidiaries, which are respectively 
engaged in the production, processing, transportation, and 
sales of flour raw materials. Although the subsidiaries of 
the flour mill operate independently, they belong to the 
same flour mill, thus forming a complete supply chain. As 
the subsidiaries are under the same company, relatively 
complete data can be obtained by conducting an 
investigation in the headquarters of the flour mill. The 
supply chain formed by the subsidiary companies of the 
flour mill effectively improves the production and sales 
efficiency of flour. However, due to the independence of 
node enterprises in the supply chain, the behavior of 
 
Figure 2: The supply chain of agricultural products. 
 
Figure 3: The agricultural product supply chain optimized 
by blockchain. 

Supply Chain Optimization of Agricultural Products in the... Informatica 45 (2021) 119–123 121 
 
“being both an athlete and a referee” reduces the 
examination intensity of each link. Whether it is due to 
operational errors or driven by interests, flour quality 
problems occur. In addition, the improvement of 
circulation efficiency means increased data of product 
circulation, greatly increasing the difficulty of positioning 
the faulty link in the supply chain. This study adopted the 
blockchain coupling supply chain to establish the supply 
chain logistics platform [14] to manage the logistics 
information of flour in the supply chain and realize the 
accurate positioning of quality control. 
4.2 Agricultural products supply chain 
platform system 
The blockchain-based supply chain logistics platform 
system includes application web page, server, and 
blockchain network platform [15]. The basic framework 
of the supply chain platform is shown in Figure 4. 
The operation process of the platform system is as 
follows: ① after receiving the wheat, the subsidiary 
company in charge of wheat harvest conducts quality 
inspection and uploads the inspection data to the server 
connected with the blockchain network; ② the 
monitoring data of wheat quality are stored in the 
blockchain after being verified by the smart contract and 
consensus algorithm in the server and blockchain 
platform, and the blockchain platform will give every link 
in the supply chain a unique traceability source code [16]; 
③ then, in the links of processing, storage, transportation, 
sales, etc., the node subsidiaries of different links detect 
the wheat or flour products and record the relevant data 
according to the above two steps, the data are stored in the 
blockchain after verification by the smart contract and 
consensus algorithm, and the traceability source code will 
be transferred in the blockchain in the circulation of the 
supply chain. 
4.3 Test of the optimized agricultural 
product supply chain 
(1) Supply chain platform interface test 
The interface test is a unit test [17], which is used for 
checking whether the function of a system can work 
normally. This study used 360 browser to simulate the 
client in the system platform. The test content included the 
input of supply chain information and the query of supply 
chain information. The test process of the former is as 
follows: ① enter the supply chain information input page; 
② click “information input”; ③ input and submit the data 
information of corresponding links in the supply chain; ④ 
wait for system feedback. The test process of the latter is 
as follows: ① enter the supply chain information query 
page; ② select the query target and scope of the supply 
chain; ③ click “information query”; ④ wait for system 
feedback. 
(2) Practical application test 
The improved agricultural product supply chain was 
applied to the selected flour mill. The content of the 
practical application test is as follows: 
① Resistance to forged information: the original 
information of agricultural products in the production link 
of the supply chain was uploaded to the blockchain after 
being modified, whether the forged information of the 
previous link was stored in the database was queried in the 
subsequent supply chain link, and the operation was 
performed ten times. After that, the same experimental 
operations were carried out in the processing, storage, 
transportation, and sales links, ten times in each link. 
② Traceability and positioning ability of the supply 
chain: the supply chain whose information of agricultural 
products in the processing link was modified in the 
previous section of “resistance to forged information” was 
used. In the supply chain query interface of the system 
platform, the batch number of the supply chain to be 
queried was input, and then “query” was clicked. After the 
query result was displayed, it was browsed and compared 
with the field survey result of the flour mill. 
4.4 Experimental results 
Before applying the supply chain logistics platform to 
monitor the supply chain of the flour mill, the interface 
test was carried out on the supply chain information input 
function and supply chain information query function of 
the system platform in a laboratory, respectively. The test 
results are shown in Table 1. It was seen from the results 
in Table 1 that the four process steps of the supply chain 
information input function and the supply chain 
information query function of the system platform showed 
that the two function modules had passed the interface test. 
The system platform can be used in the supply chain 
monitoring of the flour mill. 
In order to verify the resistance of the supply chain 
optimized by blockchain to information tampering, the 
information of agricultural products in different links of 
the supply chain was tampered with separately, each link 
was tampered with ten times, and whether the tampered 
information is stored in the database is queried. The 
optimized supply chain was compared with the traditional 
supply chain, and the results are shown in Table 2. It was 
seen from Table 2 that the agricultural product 
information in the database of the traditional supply chain 
was successfully tampered with ten times in each link; 
however, the supply chain optimized by blockchain 
effectively resisted the ten times of tempering, and the 
information of agricultural products in every link of the 
improved supply chain was not tampered with. 
 
Figure 4: The basic framework of the blockchain-based 
agricultural products supply chain platform. 

122 Informatica 45 (2021) 119–123 P. Guan 
 
In addition to testing the ability of supply chains to 
resist information tampering, this study also tested the 
traceability ability of the traditional supply chain and 
improved supply chain to agricultural product 
information. The traceability query results of the 
traditional supply chain and improved supply chain for 
flour agricultural products in batch 20191215003 are 
shown in Figure 5. Figure 5 shows that the complete 
supply chain from wheat treatment to sales could be 
queried in the two supply chains. The traditional supply 
chain without blockchain was unable to trace the link that 
caused quality problems, and the tampered information of 
product quality in the processing link was shown as 
“qualified”, which led to the result that the quality of 
products in the supply chain had problems, but the queried 
supply chain had no problems. The improved supply chain 
used blockchain, and every supply chain link had a unique 
ID, which was the traceability code of the corresponding 
supply chain link. Traceability code was the abstract code 
obtained by calculating the data information in the supply 
chain with the hash algorithm. In addition to the current 
block, the traceability code was also transferred to the next 
block and broadcast to the whole blockchain. It will only 
be officially deposited in the block after it has been 
verified by the consensus mechanism; thus, the problem in 
the processing link was intuitively seen, and the problem 
was not tampered with. The results further verified that the 
supply chain combined with blockchain could effectively 
resist illegal information modification, browse the supply 
chain information intuitively from the product supply 
chain query results, and quickly locate the link that caused 
flour quality problems. 
5 Conclusion 
This paper briefly introduced the blockchain and the 
agricultural product supply chain and used the blockchain 
to optimize the agricultural product supply chain to 
strengthen the ability of the supply chain to resist 
information tampering and enhance the traceability ability 
of the supply chain. The final results are as follows: (1) the 
interface test results showed that the system platform 
could be used in the supply chain management of the flour 
mill; (2) compared with the traditional agricultural product 
supply chain, the optimized supply chain had good 
resistance to information tampering in different links; (3) 
when the optimized supply chain was used for traceability, 
the faulty link in the supply chain could be quickly located; 
the query result also showed that even if the information 
in the supply chain link was artificially modified, it ould 
not be stored in the blockchain because the modified 
traceability code did not match, which effectively 
guaranteed the reliability of supply chain information. 
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input test 
Steps Supply chain 
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① Successfully 
enter the 
information 
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① Successfully 
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information 
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② Click the 
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