Facilitating Trust in Food Supply Chains through Blockchain Technology: A Systematic Review of Considerations for Alternative Food Networks

Trust is an important concept in our food systems. Global food systems are witnessing challenges regarding trust. Alternatives to global food systems, generally referred to as alternative food systems, emphasise trust through local and short food initiatives, commonly referred to as alternative food networks. Alternative food networks can benefit from the trust characteristics inherent in digital technology advances such as blockchain. A key characteristic of blockchain is trust. Knowing how blockchain trust characteristics and trust mechanisms can be used to facilitate trust in the supply chains of alternative food networks will be helpful. This paper presents a systematic review of the literature and an understanding of how trust is captured in architectures of blockchain-enabled food supply chains and highlights possible extensions towards facilitating trust in the supply chain of alternative food networks. A distinction is made between the trust characteristics inherent in blockchain and those that apply to alternative food network supply chains. A framework to integrate trust enabled by blockchain into supply chains of alternative food networks is proposed. Areas of future work are recommended, including a need to validate the proposed framework.