Instant payment possible for grain growers

Any delays between delivering grain and being paid for it could become a thing of the past, but Australia will need to develop a digital currency to make this happen.

That’s according to AgriDigital co-founder Bob Mckay.

His company successfully completed a world-first last year by executing the settlement of an agricultural commodity on a blockchain, a public ledger of digital currency transactions.

In December last year AgriDigital’s software used real-time data of a grain sale between a Dubbo grain grower who delivered wheat to meat processor Fletcher International, and executed this transaction on a blockchain.

AgriDigital has computer software that connects buyers, growers and storage providers.

Mr McKay, who previously founded AgFarm and online grain broker ClearGrain, said one of the goals of AgriDigital was to cut the delay between growers delivering grain and being paid for it.

He said the pilot run in Dubbo worked well.

“The contracts execute as long as all the criteria of the contracts have been met. It means title to the commodity can pass to the buyer and in theory payment can pass to the grower straight away,” he said.

Mr McKay said the pilot showed there was a need to develop a digital currency linked to the Australian dollar.

Blockchain technology works with digital currency. The most popular in the world is Bitcoin.

“But no farmer wants to be paid in Bitcoin. They want to be paid in Australian dollars,” Mr McKay said.

“There is no real digital currency backed by a Reserve Bank. There are lots of people in Australia pushing for this to happen,” he said.

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Source: Instant payment possible for grain growers | The Weekly Times