Blockchain-Enabled Supply Chain Traceability Integrated with Machine Learning-Based Demand Forecasting for Reducing Post-Harvest Losses in Indian Perishable Agri-Food Systems
Abstract
Post-harvest losses in perishable agricultural commodities constitute one of the most economically consequential and persistently unresolved challenges in Indian agri-food systems, with the National Centre for Cold-chain Development estimating annual losses exceeding 1.53 trillion rupees, driven substantially by information asymmetry between producers and downstream demand, fragmented multi-intermediary distribution chains, and inadequate cold-chain temperature compliance. This study presents an integrated framework combining a permissioned blockchain-based supply chain traceability ledger with a machine learning demand forecasting and demand-supply matching pipeline, piloted across seven perishable commodities (tomato, onion, potato, banana, mango, leafy greens, and grapes) moving through procurement networks linking 240 farmer-producer groups to wholesale mandis and retail outlets in central and western India over an eighteen-month observation period (July 2024-December 2025). The blockchain ledger, implemented on a Hyperledger Fabric permissioned network with IoT-integrated cold-chain temperature logging at five transit stages (farm collection, pack-house, road transit, distribution hub, and retail storage), recorded 184,000 traceability transactions and 62,000 temperature-excursion-monitored shipments, while a Transformer-based temporal demand forecasting model, benchmarked against naive seasonal, ARIMA, Random Forest, and LightGBM baselines, generated mandi-level demand predictions used to drive dynamic demand-supply matching and dispatch scheduling. The blockchain-tracked and ML-optimised supply chain achieved post-harvest loss reductions of 35-45% relative to the traditional multi-intermediary baseline across all seven commodities (e.g., tomato: 28.4% to 17.9%; leafy greens: 34.6% to 21.3%), with road transit identified as the dominant cold-chain temperature excursion stage (18.4 excursions per 100 shipments, mean duration 47 minutes). The Transformer-based forecasting model achieved the best demand prediction accuracy (MAPE=7.4%, R²=0.903), enabling mandi price volatility reductions of 36-45% (coefficient of variation) across commodities. Smart-contract-automated payment settlement reduced farmer payment cycles from a traditional mean of approximately 18 days to under 12 hours, while farmer net price realisation as a share of final consumer price increased from 31.4% to 52.8% through intermediary disintermediation. These findings demonstrate the technical and economic feasibility of integrated blockchain-ML agri-supply-chain infrastructure for simultaneously reducing physical post-harvest losses, dampening price volatility, and improving farmer income realisation in resource-constrained Indian agricultural markets.
Keywords: blockchain, supply chain traceability, machine learning, demand forecasting, post-harvest loss, cold-chain monitoring, smart contracts, agri-food systems, Hyperledger Fabric, farmer income, mandi price volatility
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