GrainChain's Smart Contracts Unite Honduras Coffee Business

Agro-focused blockchain platform GrainChain has brokered deals across the Honduran coffee supply chain to track the production and trade of beans over its smart contract system.

GrainChain's rollout in Honduras comes as players in both coffee and tech embrace blockchain to tame the global coffee market.

In May, Starbucks announced that it would track its global coffee supply chain on Microsoft's Azure blockchain for the benefit of consumers who want to follow the bean from plantation to coffee pot.

Macias had already tested GrainChain's bean-to-buyer tracking system on farms in Texas, where the company is based, and Mexico, and both examples were presented as models to the banks.

GrainChain's launch participants include fair trade and organic specialty coffee producers, Macias said - "People who are trying to make a difference in the social aspect of creating coffee."

"Having technological support and money changes many things," German Delcid, a farmer with the participating Santa Rosa de Copan farm, said.

GrainChain's biggest struggle came from the exporters and buyers, who Macias said did not immediately understand the benefits a smart contracts system might have to their supply chain.

Under GrainChain's platform, farmers at Santa Rosa de Copan and other participating growers document their coffee production via a real-time mobile app, according to Macias.

GrainChain's real-time record-keeping system makes the banks more eager to loan to farmers whose output they can check, and whose use of loan funds they can control.

Off-the-grid Honduran farmers and concept-heavy blockchains make unnatural bedfellows; Delcid, the Santa Rosa de Copan coffee farmer, is the first to admit it.