You Can Buy Dinner for Next Year Now – Directly From the Farmer (And More Cool Ideas for Greener Foods)

European supermarkets are looking to innovative apps and blockchains that could bring in more customers seeking a greener and more transparent food system.

“We are witnessing a bit of a seismic change in attitudes in consumers who are purchasing food,” says Julian Burnett, vice president for the distribution sector at IBM UK & Ireland, who conducted an online survey showing consumers’ growing demand of sustainably produced food. “There’s more awareness than ever before about the provenance of food and sustainable practices.”

For example, NaturaSi, an organic supermarket chain with around 500 stores in across Italy, has begun putting nearly expired products on Too Good to Go, an app available in 15 countries. The company’s CEO, Fausto Iori, is also considering using blockchain for a new “prepaid farming” model where loyal customers can support farmers by buying products up to a year before they receive them, highlighting it as “the next step … under the sustainability revolution”.

Carrefour SA, French retail giant with stores worldwide, has already applied blockchain technology in five countries, to give more transparent information to customers. According to the project manager Emmanuel Delerm, customers can scan a QR code on 24 products ranging from chicken, to dairy, to fruit. If they scan a packet of chicken, for example, they can find out its birth date, who its farmer was, if it was raised organically or using antibiotics, and the dates it was slaughtered, processed, and delivered to the store.