By Dilara Inanir.

Different perspectives on tokenization in farming

We had a chance to learn about a tokenization business by discovering the Swiss company Livingstone Greentec AG (“Livingstone”), in our Digital Food Business Model. Livingstone offers solutions for food business like plant propagation, the integrating communication technologies such as GrowLab and FoodHub systems.

But how can we achieve to a better future with these applications? How are these technologies working? What are the benefits and challenges? Is there a future in horticulture farming?

Let’s dive into this business case and find the answers.

First of all: What does Livingstone offer?

The company GreenTec aims to provide sustainable environmental technologies, develop economically successful products and offers solutions for future agriculture, as their motto proposes “Solutions for Living in Harmony Earth”.

Livingstone solutions propose three main elements for our future: GrowLAb, FoodHub and the GreenZone Platform.

Image: Livingstone-GreenTech

GrowLab: is a tissue culture laboratory for plant propagation. The Lab produces plantlets by using specific cells from the plant tissue without reliance on seed companies or seedling growers.

FoodHub: a combination of an industrial greenhouse with a logistic and processing center. The FoodHub green house uses algorithms to control the temperature, humidity, lighting and other parameters in the green houses. As a result it provides safer and higher quality crops.

GreenZone Platform: is a block-chain based e-trade platform which is still under development. It enables local farmers to connect with retailers and consumers. Using this platform, the customer can easily know where the lettuce he/she bought comes from. In addition, it might gives local and international markets fairly-priced, safe and high qualitative food.

For more information about GreenTech visit https://livingstone-greentec.com/

Finance & Production side of Livingstone

We looked from different angles at the Livingstone business by dividing into two groups. These groups focused on the finance and on the production sides of the company. The finance group focused mainly on the business activities of the company, while the production team discussed about the concept of the technology behind and the benefits and potential challenges for the society.

Finance

To make this topic clearer, let me first explain what a token is and how it is used by Livingstone:

Tokens are like a currency within a blockchain. In this case tokens are used for shares. Instead of selling parts of the company, Livingstone sells tokens which are called “Livit” and represent little shares of the company. The main benefit is to cut the middle man out, which results in the end in lower prices for the consumer and higher profits for the company.

The group discussed the financial strategy and lighted up the token allocation in Livingstone. The LIVIT token is distributed to the Livingstone shareholders according to the shares mentioned in the white paper. The 30% of the LIVIT tokens are shared by early investors, the management team and advisors & bounty. The remaining great part of the LIVIT tokens are for free flood.

 Production: What does the blockchain and cryptocurrency mean for food production?

As a team discussing the production side of the business and the effects on society, we defined major benefits and challenges of it.

 

Benefits

The following benefits sound promising:

• Selection of the best plant material and growth, so to reach high productivity high quality
• Less land use
• Traceability and transparency of data.
• A system which is easy to scale since the data is available
• More economical farming/agriculture
• “Feed the world!” hopefully!

 

Challenges

Two potential customers that might be interested in this food business:

1-Those who are into new production process

2-Those who want to know where her/his food comes from

The second customer profile might be the biggest challenge in this business due to an already existing a lack of trust.

There is also no certain laws about an implementation of a cryptocurrency which may cause uncertainty in people’s mind.

 

In addition to these challenges there are plenty of questions to answer:

As this system cuts out the middle man, who will communicate with the customer, and how?

Will shopping fully shift from outline to online?

How can customers trust these new technologies? How to convince these people?

There are many question marks in this text as well as in our minds which need future answers. Good luck to future us. Seems we will have fun while discovering!