RFID technology traceability enhances the brand influence of rural chicken farming industry

The application of RFID technology in the animal husbandry industry mainly has two aspects. On the one hand, it is to establish an animal husbandry management system for fine breeding of animals, and on the other hand, it is to establish an animal tracking management system. More than 20 countries and regions all over the world have adopted RFID technology to track and trace the food production process, and achieved good results.

The RFID-based traceability system identifies the management objects of the supply chain links such as the growth of breeding animals, meat processing, storage and retail, and connects them with each other, and then expresses these identifications with barcodes and human-readable methods. Once a meat product has a health and safety problem, it can be traced through these labels to accurately narrow the scope of the safety problem, find out the link where the problem occurred, and trace the geographical location, slaughtering or processing institution of the relevant place of origin. In this way, the supply of goods in these places can be blocked from flowing into the market, and then effective governance can be carried out.

Every step of the chicken project

The chicken farm of the Bubu chicken project in Cha'an Town, Anhui Province is quite extensive, and it is not a chicken farm in the traditional sense, but a large area is delineated for stocking chickens.

For a long time, the rural aquaculture industry has been at the bottom of the industrial chain for a long time. The biggest constraint is the lack of trust between rural and urban areas caused by information asymmetry, and rural areas cannot turn their green and pollution-free resources into brand advantages. Technologies such as blockchain and the Internet of Things can just solve this problem.

For example, Bubu Chicken mainly solves the pain points of rural chicken farming: no sales channels, low profits, and low brand influence. Bubu Chicken has also developed concepts such as "making the life of chickens transparent and visible" and "block chain poverty alleviation free-range chickens". The difficulty of being unmarketable.

In addition to adopting blockchain and other technologies, the Bubu chicken project also introduces the agricultural insurance of property insurance companies to underwrite chicken breeding risks. Previously, when farmers purchased agricultural insurance for their chickens, risk assessors needed to check on the spot how many farming Assets there were, and assess whether these chickens would die and how much income loss would be caused... Due to the high assessment process and cost, Farmers are not motivated to purchase insurance, and insurance companies are not motivated to underwrite insurance.

The blockchain provides a new way of thinking for agricultural insurance underwriting: since farmers’ chickens use blockchain anti-counterfeiting traceability, how many chickens farmers have raised and the mortality rate in the past three months... these data only need to pass through the blockchain. The data can be known in real time, which reduces the risk of insurance and credit risk control and evaluation costs, and increases the enthusiasm of insurance companies for underwriting farmers and breeding assets.

In addition to agricultural insurance, based on the asset data on the blockchain, banks can conduct risk assessments on farmers' loans, which also promotes the solution of agricultural farming loan problems, greatly reduces the threshold for entrepreneurial farmers to obtain financial services, and promotes the development of rural entrepreneurship.

Step by step chicken anti-counterfeit traceability system

The Bubuji anti-counterfeit traceability system mainly includes three systems: data collection system, data storage on-chain system, and data verification system.

01Data collection system: each chicken has a unique ID

The data acquisition system mainly relies on the ring-shaped buckle IoT device (chicken brand) worn on the chicken leg to collect data (the place marked in red in the figure below). The chicken card contains step counting module, positioning module, communication module and so on.

Each chicken card will have a unique ID generated by the system and a QR code that can be scanned. Once the chicken card buckle is closed, it will start to work and cannot be disassembled. Once it is disassembled, the electronic link device inside the buckle will be damaged, thus losing the function of collecting data.

After the chicken brand starts working mode, it will collect and upload the movement steps and coordinates of the chicken in real time, and send them to the communication base station regularly. A communication base station usually includes a primary base station and several secondary base stations. The secondary base stations are deployed in a grid pattern and are responsible for collecting data from chickens that are active in its vicinity, and sending the data to the primary base station in aggregate. Then the main base station will send all messages to the message middleware. Since a large number of IoT devices may generate massive amounts of data content, message middleware can act as a flood storage here, cutting peaks and filling valleys.

02 Data storage on-chain system: the content cannot be tampered with

The system needs to subscribe to the messages in the message middleware, and Store and upload the messages to the chain.

Storage: Due to the huge amount of data generated by IoT devices, and the storage limitations of the blockchain itself, all data cannot be directly stored on the chain, so an intermediate storage medium is required to store the original data.

The intermediate storage medium can be a distributed File system (such as OSS, HDFS), or a decentralized file system (such as IPFS). When testing, you can also use the local file system. The system will regularly collect a certain amount of messages to generate files, and store them on the file storage medium.

On-chain: The system will use the SHA-256 algorithm to calculate the data summary of the stored file and obtain the digital signature of the file (since the digital signature of the file is a summary of the original content of the file, any modification to the original content of the file will generate new file signature).

Then the system initiates a blockchain transaction, and puts the storage path of the file, the digital signature of the file, and the address of the previous transaction (PreHash) into the remarks field of the transaction to be uploaded to the chain. Once the blockchain transaction is confirmed by the consensus of each node, it will be broadcast and stored in the ledger of each node, and the content stored in the transaction cannot be tampered with.

03Data query and verification system: scan the code to know the information

After purchasing a chicken, consumers can scan the QR code of the chicken brand on the chicken leg (or the information of the RFID chip in the sensing device) to query the entire life cycle information of the farmed product, including the time of entry, the number of steps, Coordinates, slaughter time, slaughter time, quarantine agency, logistics information, blockchain last transaction address (LastHash), etc.

Advantages of RFID technology in the livestock industry

Electronic identification management has been used in Europe and the United States for several years and has become a showcase of technology. In addition to the application of automatic feeding ration and production statistics within the enterprise, it can also be used for animal identification, disease monitoring, quality control and tracking of animal species. The advantages of RFID technology in the livestock industry mainly include the following points:

01 Non-contact identification, real-time and effective data collection

RFID technology uses non-contact radio frequency identification to collect and manage the data in electronic tags placed in animals or on their bodies. It is an extremely effective management method to grasp the health status of animals and control the occurrence of animal epidemics.

02 Waterproof, can be applied to animal body

Using low-frequency tags, it can penetrate water and animal bodies, and is insensitive to water and metals. It can be read conveniently and quickly no matter whether the tag is placed in the animal body or on the body.

03 The number is unique, not easy to forge, and easy to manage

When the animal is born, the electronic identification is placed on the animal, and the electronic identification is one-time use, with a unified number and a unique number. Through the traceable management of individual animals, precision feeding is carried out to improve the quality of meat; at the same time, health warning and quality monitoring are carried out, which greatly increases the economic benefits of the enterprise.

04 Combination with information technology is conducive to tracking management

Through the supporting software management program, the whole growth cycle is monitored. Such as whether it is stocked in a non-polluted natural environment, whether the water, soil, air and other indexes are up to standard, the use of veterinary drugs and additives, whether the feed has been polluted by pesticides or residual additives, etc., and record which pasture it is stocked at in different periods, And their epidemic prevention situation, health status and other important information. When the food animal reaches the slaughter standard, the slaughterhouse will strictly check the "quality file" of the animal, and only after passing the strict inspection can the slaughter be carried out, and the "file" will be archived for future "quality traceability".