Seafood savvy: How Adelaide tech company Eachmile is combatting the global overfishing crisis

Global technology company Eachmile is playing its part to combat overfishing with incentivised data sharing.

By Isabella Kelly, Future Adelaide Intern

Eachmile chief operating officer Alastair Smart. The Adelaide-based tech company is combatting overfishing with incentivised data sharing. Picture: Russell Millard

A technology company at Lot Fourteen is combatting the overfishing crisis by creating transparency in supply chains through incentivised data sharing.

Such transparency will become increasingly valuable into the future, with the world’s population set to balloon to 10 billion by 2050.

Eachmile utilises blockchain technology to securely track every step of the supply chain, which chief operating officer Alastair Smart says minimises fraud.

“(Blockchain) is immutable. You can’t falsify it later. So if someone has it, it gives confidence to consumers and to people that … they can have some faith that it’s coming from where they’re saying,” he says.

“There’s a disincentive for fraudulent actors because it can be readily traced back.”

Developing nations, which are responsible for more than 90 per cent of seafood production, have become a major focus for Eachmile. Picture: Russell Millard

With up to 50 per cent of seafood being wasted within the supply chain, Smart says smart production is crucial.

“We have no real choice but to use the sea. We just have to do it sustainably,” he says. “One in 10 livelihoods on the planet depend on it.

“It can’t come from the land … we’d need to actually wipe out forests the size of India by 2050 to be able to grow it on land.”

Developing nations, which are responsible for more than 90 per cent of seafood production, have become a major focus for Eachmile.

The incentive element of its data collection application MFish means customers can purchase tokens through the app to purchase harvest data from suppliers.

These tokens can be used in different ways depending on the location, such as topping up a mobile phone, paying utility bills, and funding doctor visits.

“We see how supply chains are really challenged, and they’re needing more responsible solutions like this,” Smart says.

“Big companies are exposed because they’ve got products on their shelves that they don’t know where they have come from and that’s very risky for them.

“We’ve got this supply, we can see it’s got sustainability credentials … that can then be sold on a transparent platform for a commission, and the buyers can come in and see who everybody is and what they need.”

Eachmile is applying its trace protocol technology to other agricultural commodities such as cocoa production and responsible palm oil farming.

Original article published on adelaidenow.com.au