# A Survey of Blockchain Applications for Management in Agriculture and Livestock Internet of Things
## 4 Applications of Blockchain in Agricultural and Animal Husbandry IoT
### Efficient Resource Allocation  
In the agricultural and pastoral IoT field, operators can manage key resources such as water, feed, and fertilizers more efficiently by leveraging blockchain and smart contracts. The application of this technology not only optimizes resource allocation and ensures precise supply but also improves overall production efficiency. In paper [100], the amalgamation of blockchain and IoT technology was employed to tackle principal concerns within the tea production supply chain. The challenges faced by traditional tea production and supply chains include high risks and inefficiencies dependent on manual control, as well as a lack of traceability throughout the process, leading to insufficient resource management and low efficiency. Although IoT technology has made progress in data collection and automatic control, challenges still exist in ensuring the effective allocation and use of resources. These limitations impact the tea production and supply chain's performance in terms of resource conservation, environmental monitoring, and overall production efficiency. To address these issues, the paper proposes a tea resource management platform that synergizes the transparency and unchangeability of blockchain technology with the automation and resource management capabilities inherent in IoT. This platform features an IoT layer equipped with specific chips in devices that autonomously capture environmental data via wireless transmission and RFID technology. These data are processed using an adaptive weighted fusion method, enhancing accuracy. Concurrently, the blockchain layer of the platform utilizes smart contracts to record and track these data, thereby increasing transparency and security. This integration effectively facilitates decentralized oversight and ensures data consistency. Moreover, the platform implements energy-efficient automated controls, including automatic adjustments based on environmental data and optimal irrigation strategies, thus minimizing water resource wastage. Moreover, papers [101; 102; 103; 104] all mention that in the field of agricultural water resource management, the main issue currently faced is how to effectively and accurately manage and monitor water usage. Paper [105] mentions that although the development of IoT technology has enabled the incorporation of energy-efficient connected devices into water distribution networks, which can automatically monitor water consumption, existing agricultural IoT systems tend to choose hardware devices with low power consumption and limited resources. This choice highlights a core issue: the limited capability of IoT devices to directly interface with blockchain infrastructure necessitates the introduction of a third-party intermediary, like an IoT gateway, to facilitate communication between sensor devices and blockchain endpoints. This not only escalates infrastructure costs but may also compromise the credibility of data collected from the field. To tackle the identified problem, paper [106] presents an innovative solution within a decentralized water resource management system: enabling low-power IoT devices to directly engage with the public blockchain network. Such devices are capable of transmitting data to smart contracts independently, without the necessity for intermediary infrastructure components like IoT gateways. This approach not only diminishes infrastructure costs but also significantly boosts data trustworthiness by bypassing third-party intermediaries. The practicability of this solution was corroborated through experimental evidence, demonstrating that devices with limited resources can efficiently engage with the public blockchain with only a minimal increase in energy consumption. This advancement provides a more effective and reliable technological avenue for the management of agricultural water resources and furnishes pertinent insights for the advancement of analogous domains.