HarvestPlus and the New Fork have begun assessment work on a pilot project in Nigeria about how to use blockchain in the country’s biofortified vitamin-A maize seed value chain. This work was cited in a recent report from the CGIAR Platform for Big Data in Agriculture, Blockchain for Food: Making Sense of Technology and the Impact on Biofortified Seeds.

Brian King, Coordinator of the CGIAR Platform for Big Data in Agriculture, encouraged innovators to be bold and take changes. He recalled reading about the time many years ago when Tim Berners-Lee, considered the father of the internet, produced his original paper about the idea. King said there was a note from someone in the margins that said something like: “Interesting! But will it really work?”

The internet “was perhaps the most successful case of digital technology scaling in history. But 30 years ago, [investing in it] would have been a really hard decision,” King said. “We should be ready to be wrong.”