Business leader Antonio Tiu to leverage blockchain technology and AgriToken for Filipino farmers in partnership with BLX.

November 22, 2022

Systemic problems in an agrarian nation

Agriculture is one of the most important industries in the Philippines. Despite this fact, there is comparatively little attention given to innovation: The status quo largely prevails across the industry.

This has been the model for some time: By offering fiscal incentives, these zones lead to investments, job creation, and economic growth. To look at it another way, no one has thought of special economic zones as tech hubs, comparable to business clusters like Silicon Valley that arise organically, owing to the surrounding resources, such as universities.

The lack of innovation is problematic due to the systemic issues facing the Philippines. The first relates to the very climate itself. As an archipelago nation in Southeast Asia, the Philippines faces a variety of regular environmental disasters, including everything from floods and typhoons to earthquakes and volcanic activity. These of course threaten food security in the nation.

The second issue is food production. Despite the Philippines being one of the largest producers of rice in the world, the nation is also one of the biggest importers. The difference is not due to a lack of production, but the aforementioned lack of innovation. Nearly one-fourth of the nation is employed in agriculture: There needs to be more outputs for the inputs involved, most likely through technology.

The final major issue relates to the farmers themselves. Ironically enough, the actual farmers, the people unarguably at the heart of the agricultural industry, are among the poorest people in the Philippines. The people who make the most in the agricultural value chain are a long line of middlemen, who bring the goods closer and closer to retailers and end users.

This triad of issues may seem too all-encompassing to ever properly address. But there is a possible solution, one that could represent a breakthrough solution: blockchain. This is of course nothing new. Blockchain has long been heralded as a possible innovation for agricultural nations like the Philippines, but there have been few actual implementations - that is, until now.

Reimagining agriculture with blockchain

Antonio Tiu, the chairman/CEO of AgriNurture, Inc. (ANI), an agricultural firm listed in the Philippine Stock Exchange will be adopting blockchain technology for all its contract growers. To learn and determine which blockchain was most ideal for the Filipino farmers, Tiu spent more than 2 years in the exploratory process, canvassing, and vetting blockchains from all over the globe.

Tiu and his team evaluated several dozen blockchains on a shortlist, which included everything from cryptocurrency focused-blockchains like Bitcoin to general-purpose blockchains like Ethereum. After this exhaustive search, Tiu ultimately choose the up-and-coming blockchain, BLOX.

BLOX is unique even in the world of blockchain, which prides itself on continual innovation and reinvention. While BLOX is registered as a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) in Wyoming, the blockchain has already made significant traction in the Philippines, across a variety of different stakeholders.

To share just a few examples, Emil Banno, the CEO of JCash, has selected BLOX as the blockchain backbone for all his forthcoming ventures with Japanese investors. Yassi Pressman, the beloved Filipina actress and entertainer, is using BLOX as the foundation for two of her ventures, one in influencer marketing and another in play-to-earn (P2E) gaming. Finally, Coexstar will not only be listing the native token of BLOX, or BLX, but it also be used as the foundational backbone of its fintech marketplace.

According to Tiu, this clear local relevance is why he and his team selected BLOX from all the possible blockchains for farmers.

“BLOX is already disrupting many industries in the Philippines. It only made sense for us to extend this innovation to agriculture. Farmers will be able to benefit from the benefits - transparency, security, and efficiency - that BLOX will bring. For them, this will inevitably mean a higher quality of life,” said Tiu.

That value proposition may seem bold, but BLOX has end-to-end features to address the problems that agriculture currently faces. The BLOX wallet enables farmers to participate in the digital economy with both fiat and crypto. But there are many similar wallets: What separates BLOX wallet is the addition of a BLOX explorer, which functions as the “public ledger” of the blockchain, enabling anyone to view all transactions in real-time. The ability to monitor and track transactions will enable farmers to capture more of the value from the movement of foodstuffs.

Tiu also revealed that he will be minting the Agritoken stable coin on BLOX in a closed loop ecosystem for payment and lending support to farmers with lower interest rates than traditional micro finance options. More importantly, the blockchain will be used to ensure that farmers borrow responsibly and use the stable coin to fund only designated inputs and/or services such as fertilizer, seedling, pesticide, post harvest equipment, etc. This prevents them from diverting funds on non essentials which is a major issue with the traditional microfinance loans.

By monitoring the use of the AgriToken stable coin, the Philippines‘ produce exporter can fast track quarantine protocols and better achieve food security. In turn, contract growers can focus on what they excel: produce the right quality and quantity. This game changer will significantly disrupt the sector and improve their quality of life.

“My goal with this closed loop stable coin concept is to uplift life of every Filpino farmers via financial inclusion. I want to achieve inclusive growth of the unserved and underserved to be able to break from the cycle of debt traps set by the loan sharks. By doing so, they can grow and expand their farming operation and ultimately move up the value chain in the agricultural sector.” said Tiu.

To bring BLX to your industry, reach out to the BLX team at https://blx.org/about.html

ABOUT BLX

BLX reinvents blockchain and cryptocurrency by putting the puzzle pieces together and offering a comprehensive picture of an ecosystem you never have to leave.

Our mission is to bring a solution that provides the foundation for a richer set of financial services. We offer an off-the-shelf, complete packaged blockchain solution that simplifies complexities and makes it easier to identify appropriate use cases and therefore, spur widespread adoption.

More importantly, we’re solving real-world problems in places and situations where they are needed the most—bringing the unbanked and underserved markets into the global financial system, creating greater transparency, enhancing security, improving traceability, increasing efficiency and speed, and reducing costs in all kinds of transactions—to revolutionize the way people do things every day.