**1. Introduction**

Global agri-food supply chain involves a myriad of functionally and geographically diverse stakeholders. This fragmented structure limits the free flow of information among supply chain participants. Due to the low information transparency, modern food supply chain often confronts challenges in production, processing, storage, distribution, and raises concerns about food safety and fraud. As a matter of fact, nearly 10% of the world population (600 million people) have suffered foodborne illness every year, and 110 billion USD is lost each year in productivity and medical expenses resulting from unsafe food in low- and middle-income countries [1]. According to European Commission on food fraud [2], olive oil, milk, honey, saffron, orange juice, apple juice, grape wine, vanilla extract, and fish are on the list of the most common sources of food fraud. Scandals such as the milk adulterated with melamine in China, horse meat in beef products and sold in Europe, fipronil in eggs, and the slaughter of sick cows for meat in Poland have drawn attention worldwide.

Under these circumstances, consumers around the globe are demanding detailed information in terms of product provenance and what parties are involved in each stage of the food supply chain. However, the lack of supply chain transparency severely inhibits the capacity of food supply chain stakeholders to provide such

information. Moreover, when food contamination incidents occur, low transparency also delays the effective implementation of countermeasures. In this context, academics and practitioners have begun to investigate the potential of technological innovations (e.g. artificial intelligence, big data analytics, and internet of things) to improve food supply chain transparency. In this paper, we examine how blockchain technology can be used to address food supply chain challenges and the factors that influence its effective implementation in food supply chain. Our analysis is based on a critical synthesis of a wide range of sources in the recent years from major businesses who are leading the digitalization efforts in agri-food industry, world leading supply chain consulting firms, global international organizations, trade magazines, and research articles. The contributions of this paper are twofold. First, it provides a holistic overview of the merits of blockchain adoption in the food supply chain. Second, we propose an integrative framework of factors that affect blockchain adoption in this specific context.
