The integration of Blockchain technologies in the cocoa supply chain: state of art and emerging opportunities

Innovative technologies are known to potentially have a great impact onagricultural supply chains, sublimating the pervasive integration of the tech-nologies themselves within the entire processing cycle from the Industry4.0 paradigm. The adoption and subsequent development of new technolo-gies within agricultural supply chains have always been a factor of great in-terest that continues to shape new agricultural production systems in itsmost varied forms. The use of Blockchain technology within the cocoa pro-duction chain appears to be growing, and it has various objectives includingthat of ensuring greater product traceability within the chain itself and asa tool for protecting workers and for end consumers by shielding themfrom potential unfair commercial practices. The objective of this study isto identify, through an analysis of literature review, what are the possibilitiesof technological integration of the Blockchain within the entire chain ofproduction, cultivation and distribution of cocoa also including the socialdimension of worker protection. The results show a growing attention ofthe scientific community towards these new forms of technological inte-gration within a supply chain, that of cocoa, which still presents variouscritical issues in terms of supply chain traceability and unethical work. Thecontribution that the study intends to enrich to the existing literature isthat of identifying what the current state of the art is in the various formsof application of new technologies within the agricultural cocoa supplychain with the aim of increasing its transparency, traceability and to miti-gate unethical activities.