# Food System Digitalization as a Means to Promote Food and Nutrition Security in the Barents Region
## 4 Transforming the Food System through Digitalization to Promote Food and Nutrition Security
The use of blockchain in food processing will ensure safety, since food ingredients can be easily tracked, monitored and reported on, thereby building trust among consumers [61]. Blockchain, as a distributed, shared ledger for recording transactions, will revolutionize how the food industry can optimize the trading and shipping of food, trace contaminated items, and reduce fraud and waste. Blockchain holds incredible promise in delivering the transparency needed to help promote food safety across the whole supply chain. Within the food supply chain, the different actors, i.e., growers, suppliers, processors, distributors, retailers, regulators, and consumers, can access information about the origin and state of food [62]. This will help to resolve issues of authenticity and food fraud that may result from geographic origin, production method, processing technology, ingredients composition, etc., [63]. In practical terms, a framework can be constructed that can be used for structuring the discussion around the Internet and food, thereby furthering the discussion on how to facilitate openness and innovation in the field of food, with the goal to feed the planet in a healthy and sustainable way. The increasing activity of info-communications in virtual space leads to an avalanche-like growth for information stored and circulating on the Internet. This opens up new opportunities for increasing the security of the population of the territories in all aspects, including food security. Possible ways of realizing this potential based on modern information technologies are diverse. They include monitoring the actual diet of the inhabitants of the territories, monitoring and predicting consumer demand, the formation of new chains of production and food supplies. The overlapping relationship that exists between the consumers, the food business, and the authorities is shown in Figure 1. The figure shows how the main actors contribute to the digitalization of the food system in different ways, and the benefits of digitalization in the food system. General feedback shown in the picture may reflect in different layers, processes and effects. The benefits of digitalization seem to appear in two general ways. The first, \"extensive\" one consists of an improvement of almost all traditional processes within the food system by using information and communications technology (ICT). The second, \"intensive\" way is connected to a restructuring of processes within the system. Along with the revolutionary changes of Industry 4.0, one particular restructuring is a shift from hierarchical organizations to horizontal ones, based on peer-to-peer (P2P) interactions. In this article, the authors use P2P as a common name of architectures implementing horizontal instead of hierarchical structures of interactions, i.e., 'peer-to-peer. This kind of interaction appears in the food system in different layers, from IOF to informal customer and producer networks within social networking services (SNS) and to the network of food businesses. The most valuable advantages of any P2P system are its scalability, flexibility, and reliability [64]. Transformations from hierarchical to horizontal structures will potentially improve the sustainability of the regional food system, making it more adequate to the actual demands of the actors and expanding it to trans-regional and cross-border contexts. Due to the harsh climate and poor development of transport infrastructure in parts of the Barents region, the development of horizontal relations will be especially important for the region. Regional food markets in the region are specific, characterized by small volume, low density and unevenness of the population as the main consumer of products [65]. The consequence of these features results in vulnerability of the food system in the Barents region, due to dependence on unreliable transportation,  
Figure 1: An overlapping relationship within a digitalized food system.