# Blockchain Applications in Agriculture: A Scoping Review
## 4 Discussion
### Summary of Evidence
#### 4.1.6 Provided Service Area  
Following the research question about the reasons for using blockchain, we examine which service is provided by the respective applications (RQ1). Based on our findings, more than half of the applications have been created to provide product monitoring ormanagement. This is observed in 55% and 75% of the papers, respectively. A unique feature is that most applications (61%), which have been created for product monitoring, store data from IoT devices, e.g., [66; 105]. In the case of management, this may relate to the process by which the product went through the various stages of production as well as its resale, e.g., [57; 110]. This model of all transaction availability promotes the circular economy model. Most of the time, management and monitoring are combined in the proposed solutions. Management can also refer to the coordination of processes, such as the rental of equipment [94], the use of robots [99], and the proper distribution of a good such as water, energy, or waste, e.g., [83; 86; 109].  
Although not so many applications have been created extensively, one industry that developed mainly after 2019 is product certification (8%). In most cases, the provided solutions certify the authenticity of the product's origin [102; 111] and the conditions under which it was developed [69; 98]. Therefore, the data stored in the blockchain are related to both the product and the process other than the IoT data. We notice that they refer more often to organic products and are mainly interested in the transparency and integrity provided by the blockchain. Furthermore, a research paper uses GIS to prove the location [111].  
A different emerging field of blockchain applications in agriculture is auctions (3%) and product trading (4%). In the first category, we identified three research papers [89; 97; 112] that proposed a system of offers for the sale of agricultural products. All these proposed solutions belong to the farming sector. Respectively, there are applications that deal with the trading of either agricultural products [113] or energy and water for crops [54; 83]. In addition, there is a proposed solution that exchanges products based on the farmer's rating [114].  
Other services provided by agricultural blockchain applications are reputation (4%) and reward systems (3%). The rationale for a reputation system is clear, and such systems aim to capture product and producer ratings. The reason for using blockchain in such applications is the integrity that it provides, something that our research thoroughly verifies [77; 78; 114; 115]. Additionally, blockchain is highly associated with reward system applications. More precisely, we observed that all incentive solutions related to data management are also indirectly related to blockchain, such as water [85; 86] and waste [109]. The validation of the incentive mechanism is performed by the IoT data stored in the blockchain. Finally, one last type of provided service is data sharing, and blockchain is used for authentication [106] or as an incentive mechanism as mentioned above [56].