The Food Standards Agency (FSA) and the University of Lincoln are undertaking an initiative to further our understanding of how food data trusts can address some of the key challenges facing our food supply chains. The food supply system is facing over-arching challenges such as climate-change pressures, growing population, human and animal health, and food and food-related waste. From a Food Standards perspective, the focus is on food safety and food security. In other words food provenance matters.

The Lincoln Institute for Agri-Food Technology (LIAT) at the University of Lincoln together with the EPSRC-funded Internet of Food Things Network Plus have been looking at the role of data and digital collaboration and this project build on aspects of this work together with other pilot projects that have been run by the FSA exploring the benefits of Digital Ledger Technology (DLT) and Blockchain solutions.

We are also keen to draw upon other work in this area in order to help develop a roadmap going forward as well as produce some demonstrators of what value creating solutions should look like.

The project is currently evaluating some real-world use cases which will be used to develop ideas and more detailed plans for the second phase of the project. At which point we look forward to hosting a series of workshops which will be open to the wider community interested in these matters.