# A Survey of Blockchain Applications for Management in Agriculture and Livestock Internet of Things
## 4 Applications of Blockchain in Agricultural and Animal Husbandry IoT
### Supply Chain Management
#### 4.2.2 Traceability and Quality Assurance of Supply Chains  
This section delves into the crucial role of product traceability within supply chains, emphasizing its significance in assuring product quality and safeguarding consumer safety. It outlines the strategies for implementing traceability systems in supply chains and the associated challenges, such as utilizing identification technologies like RFID and QR codes, as well as approaches for data collection, processing, and analysis. This section further explores how traceability is applied to tackle food safety challenges and handle quality management issues. In paper [96], the authors introduce a model that integrates IoT and blockchain technology, particularly tailored for the governance of supply chains in agriculture and food sectors. The core of this model is an innovative energy-efficient routing protocol aimed at reducing energy consumption and extending system life. Particularly, in contrast to the conventional Low-Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy (LEACH) protocol, this protocol improves network stability by 23% and extends the time to the death of the first node to 463 rounds, compared to 168 rounds for the LEACH protocol. Moreover, the energy usage of this protocol is 68% less than that of LEACH, resulting in a 112% extension of the network's lifespan. The blockchain element acts within the supply chain to securely and privately share data, effectively eliminating vulnerabilities associated with centralized information networks and enhancing the system's security and accessibility. Additionally, the model meticulously incorporates IoT technology to gather agricultural data accurately. In this context, IoT applications include monitoring crop growth, soil temperature, pest infestations, and soil quality, providing essential insights for farmers about crop yields, disease prevention, and soil management. These insights aid in enhancing agricultural practices and crop management. Furthermore, IoT technology tracks and documents crop growth data, while the blockchain component updates the food safety status in real time within the supply chain. This reduces the vulnerability of information networks, enhancing security, availability, and ease of access. Moreover, paper [97] addresses traceability and quality assurance challenges, focusing on the agricultural product supply chain through the use of consortium blockchain and smart contracts. This innovation tackles the prevalent issues of information asymmetry, data tampering, and loss, which traditional traceability systems, dependent on technologies like RFID and QR codes, struggle with due to their limitations in data security and integrity. The essence of this solution lies in its utilization of blockchain's distributed, immutable, and decentralized properties. By deploying consortium blockchain and smart contracts, the system ensures secure and transparent record-keeping across the supply chain and facilitates efficient management and regulation of participant interactions. This approach not only enhances the traceability and quality assurance of agricultural products but also minimizes the dependency on vulnerable centralized systems, thereby reducing trust costs and improving overall supply chain integrity. By storing every transaction record on the blockchain's immutable ledger, the system guarantees heightened transparency and traceability throughout the supply chain. This enhancement significantly boosts overall efficiency and effectively tackles critical issues like food safety. Additionally, in livestock farming, cold-chain transportation is an indispensable link, and blockchain technology significantly enhances traditional cold-chain transportation. In paper [98], the researcher emphasizes the significant increase in demand for fresh farm produce via online shopping platforms amid the COVID-19 pandemic. In this context, the difficulty of maintaining the quality of agricultural products increases.