AgriTrustChain: A Decentralized Certiﬁcation and Edaphic Data

Traceability Framework with Zero-Leak for Sustainable Farming Using

Blockchain

Wafa Ben Slama Souei

1 a

, Mohamed Amine Hattab

, Layth Sliman

2 b

, Raoudha Ben Djemaa

1 c

and Faiza Khebour Allouche

3 d

University of Sousse, ISITCOM, Sousse, Tunisia

Paris Pantheon-Assas University, Efrei Research Lab, Villejuif, France

University of Sousse, High Institute of Agronomic Science of Chott Mariem, Sousse, Tunisia

Keywords:

Blockchain, Smart Agriculture, Decentralized Certiﬁcation, Traceability, Trustworthy Agriculture.

Abstract:

Agriculture relies heavily on the storage and management of Electronic Land Records (ELRs), which are usu-

ally maintained in centralized datacenters and shared among farmers, government agencies, and soil experts.

However, these traditional storage methods suffer from several limitations, including risks of tampering, unau-

thorized disclosure of conﬁdential data, and challenges in efﬁcient data retrieval caused by inconsistent formats

across institutions. Centralized systems are also vulnerable to fraudulent activities, such as falsiﬁcation of soil

information and land certiﬁcations, manipulation to secure unjustiﬁed subsidies, and non-compliant export

operations. These infractions lead to signiﬁcant ﬁnancial losses for governments, distort agricultural fund-

ing distribution, undermine the credibility of certiﬁcation frameworks, and and can result in restrictive trade

measures or penalties. To overcome these challenges, this work proposes AgriTrustChain, a blockchain-based

platform that enables the secure storage and retrieval of Electronic Land Records (ELRs), including terrain and

soil data as well as the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). This facilitates enhanced interoper-

ability among diverse agricultural institutions. All land-related information is extracted from the blockchain

and displayed in real time through an interactive map. Additionally, it provides a reliable mechanism to gen-

erate land certiﬁcates based on the NDVI for agricultural land suitable for planting olive trees . Our platform

leverages IPFS, interactive soil visualization, and NFT-based certiﬁcation to enable secure, transparent, and

efﬁcient agricultural land certiﬁcation. The evaluation conﬁrms that AgriTrustChain securely protects land

and soil information, ensuring zero data leakage in soil data management while providing a reliable solution

for modern agricultural data handling.

1 INTRODUCTION

Modern agriculture is increasingly shaped by the need

for sustainability, transparency, and intelligent data

utilization (Sangha, 2014). Among the core com-

ponents of digital agriculture are Electronic Land

Records (ELRs), which store critical information

about land and soil properties, particularly edaphic

characteristics that inﬂuence crop suitability. These

records are essential for stakeholders such as farmers,

regulatory authorities, soil experts, and institutional

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9133-3112

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3369-7302

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7831-112X

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7544-5421

partners, who rely on them for decision-making, land

certiﬁcation, and policy enforcement (Pretty et al.,

2001). However, traditional ELR systems are typi-

cally managed through centralized data centers, mak-

ing them vulnerable to unauthorized access, data leak-

age, and tampering. Additionally, inconsistencies in

data formats across agricultural institutions hinder ef-

ﬁcient information retrieval and sharing. These lim-

itations not only reduce the operational efﬁciency of

agricultural systems but also open the door to fraudu-

lent practices—including the falsiﬁcation of soil cer-

tiﬁcates (Manning and Kowalska, 2021a)(Mukome

et al., 2013) (Awasthi, 2024), and unjustiﬁed claims

for agricultural subsidies ((OLAF), 2021). Such

misuse leads to signiﬁcant ﬁnancial losses (Camp-

Souei, W. B. S., Hattab, M. A., Sliman, L., Ben Djemaa, R. and Allouche, F. K.

AgriTrustChain: A Decentralized Certiﬁcation and Edaphic Data Traceability Framework with Zero-Leak for Sustainable Farming Using Blockchain.

DOI: 10.5220/0013960300003982

Paper published under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

In Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics (ICINCO 2025) - Volume 2, pages 621-632

ISBN: 978-989-758-770-2; ISSN: 2184-2809

621

bell, 2024), (Manning and Kowalska, 2021b), dis-

rupts fair distribution of agricultural aid (D

ecodeurs,

2022), and undermines trust in certiﬁcation frame-

works (Roberts and Bryant, 2006). However, despite

the progress made, most existing blockchain-based

solutions for agriculture remain limited in scope and

adaptability. Many focus solely on product trace-

ability within supply chains (Sarpong, 2014), ne-

glecting the certiﬁcation of land eligibility (Tuuna-

nen, 2024),(Tian, 2016)and the integration of edaphic

data into decision-making processes (Kamilaris et al.,

2019), (Kshetri, 2018). Additionally, several ap-

proaches lack support for ﬂexible data querying (Kim

and Laskowski, 2018), are not tailored to speciﬁc crop

requirements—such as olive cultivation—and often

fail to ensure the privacy of sensitive land and farmer

data. Furthermore, the absence of standardized mech-

anisms for verifying soil analysis provenance com-

promises data reliability (Even et al., 2025). Existing

platforms also tend to overlook the regulatory and en-

vironmental compliance dimension (Theocharopou-

los et al., 2001), making it difﬁcult to align certiﬁca-

tions with national or international sustainability stan-

dards.

These limitations highlight the need for a com-

prehensive, secure, and intelligent framework that not

only leverages blockchain’s immutability and trans-

parency but also integrates domain-speciﬁc knowl-

edge, supports ﬁne-grained traceability, and facili-

tates stakeholder collaboration through veriﬁable and

tamper-proof digital certiﬁcations (Yang et al., 2021).

This research work aims to address key challenges in

the secure management and certiﬁcation of agricul-

tural land data. The primary objective is to design

and implement a blockchain-based platform that al-

lows the secure sharing of agricultural data, with a

particular focus on soil information and land suitabil-

ity for olive planting.

Our ﬁrst goal is to establish a decentralized system

that ensures:

• Full traceability of soil data, including the Or-

ganic Matter (OM), Electrical Conductivity (EC),

Hydrogen Potential (pH) and Bicarbonate orga-

nized by soil depth (0-20 cm, 20-40 cm, 40-60

cm). In addition to the Normalized Difference

Vegetation Index (NDVI) of land.

• Reliable and secure data access for farmers to

support informed decision-making and optimize

plantation strategies based on the NDVI;

• Proof of data integrity through the immutability

and transparency offered by blockchain technol-

ogy;

• And efﬁcient, trusted sharing of shared data

among key stakeholders such as farmers, re-

searchers, and institutional partners.

Our second goal is to enable the digital certiﬁcation

of land eligibility for olive cultivation in a transpar-

ent, tamper-proof, and veriﬁable manner, based on

the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI).

The generated certiﬁcation will be stored on the

blockchain and made accessible to diverse stakehold-

ers.

To address these challenges, we introduce

AgriTrustChain—a permissioned blockchain-based

framework speciﬁcally designed for the management

and certiﬁcation of ELRs. AgriTrustChain aims to

provide data security, privacy preservation, traceabil-

ity, and non-falsiﬁability through a modular and scal-

able architecture. It includes ﬂexible data storage and

retrieval using IPFS (InterPlanetary File System), en-

hancing interoperability and usability across hetero-

geneous systems. Furthermore, AgriTrustChain inte-

grates a blockchain-based digital certiﬁcation mecha-

nism that leverages NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) to

represent unique land suitability certiﬁcates for olive

cultivation. These NFTs link to detailed edaphic

parameters stored securely and immutably on IPFS,

ensuring provenance and data integrity. This ap-

proach guarantees transparent, tamper-proof certiﬁca-

tion aligned with validated soil analysis and sustain-

ability standards. The use of NFTs enables easy veri-

ﬁcation, transfer, and tracking of land certiﬁcations on

the Ethereum blockchain, while off-chain agronomic

rules are applied through a dedicated validation en-

gine.

The remainder of the paper is organized as fol-

lows. Section 2 provides background information

on blockchain and smart contracts. Section 3 dis-

cusses how these technologies can be leveraged in

the agricultural sector. Section 4 presents the pro-

posed solution and describes the architecture of the

AgriTrustChain platform. Section 5 outlines the im-

plementation details and reports the experimental re-

sults. Finally, Section 6 concludes the paper and high-

lights potential directions for future work.

2 BACKGROUNDS

This section presents an overview of blockchain tech-

nology and smart contracts, emphasizing their signif-

icance in the agricultural sector.

TISAS 2025 - Special Session on Trustworthy and Intelligent Smart Agriculture Systems: AI, Blockchain, and IoT Convergence

622

2.1 Blockchain Technology

A blockchain is a decentralized digital ledger

that records transactions in sequential blocks (Ben

Slama Souei et al., 2021),(Abdelhamid et al., 2024).

These blocks are stored across numerous nodes, with

each node representing a copy distributed over multi-

ple computers. The system ensures security by cryp-

tographically linking each new block to the one before

it, making tampering virtually impossible (Di Pierro,

2017). Unlike traditional systems, it does not rely on

a central authority, such as a bank, for management or

oversight. As new transactions occur, all nodes in the

network automatically receive the updated version of

the ledger (Nofer et al., 2017).

2.2 Smart Contract

Multiple blockchain platforms (Kuo et al., 2019),

such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Hyperledger, sup-

port the development and deployment of smart con-

tracts. As deﬁned in, a smart contract is essentially a

code module that operates on a blockchain (Zou et al.,

2019). It is referred to as a ”contract” because it rep-

resents an agreement whose logic governs the control

and exchange of digital assets, tokens, or services. A

smart contract acts as a software entity that offers ser-

vices through the blockchain by embedding a speciﬁc

sequence of transactions, which are triggered either

by predeﬁned events or by explicit calls from network

nodes (Souei et al., 2023).

Smart contracts enable secure and automated in-

teractions between untrusted and anonymous partici-

pants, eliminating the need for centralized authorities,

legal frameworks (Hamdi et al., 2025), or third-party

enforcement. Additionally, they enhance the integrity

of transactions by ensuring they are transparent, veri-

ﬁable, and irreversible (Mohanta et al., 2018).

The lifecycle of a smart contract consists of two

main phases: the off-chain development phase, where

the contract is designed and coded, and the on-chain

execution phase, where the contract is deployed and

triggered within the blockchain environment (Souei

et al., 2023).

Beyond cryptocurrencies, Smart contracts have

found applications across a wide range of domains,

offering automation, transparency, and trust in de-

centralized environments. In the healthcare sec-

tor, projects such as MedRec (Ekblaw et al., 2016)

leverage smart contracts for secure and interoper-

able management of medical records (Lee et al.,

2022). In supply chain management, based on

blockchain trusted platforms (IBM, 2025) uses smart

contracts to enhance traceability and product safety

by recording transactions on the blockchain, (Bhat

et al., 2021),(Ghannem et al., 2024),(Vasanthraj et al.,

2025). The energy sector has also seen adoption

through peer-to-peer energy trading platforms like

Power Ledger(Powerledger, 2025), which use smart

contracts to automate energy exchanges between con-

sumers and producers. Moreover, in agriculture,

smart contracts support transparent subsidy distri-

bution (Xiong et al., 2020) and crop insurance au-

tomation (LB, 2022), as demonstrated in initiatives

like AgUnity (AgUnity Pty Ltd, 2025). These ap-

plications highlight the transformative potential of

smart contracts across multiple sectors, as noted in

recent surveys and systematic reviews (Xu et al.,

2019),(Casino et al., 2019).

3 RELATED WORKS

In this section, we highlight how blockchain and

smart contracts can be leveraged in the agricultural

sector. The integration of blockchain technology

and smart contracts into the agricultural sector offers

promising solutions to long-standing challenges such

as traceability, transparency, and trust among stake-

holders.

Blockchain ensures secure and immutable record-

ing of transactions and data, making it ideal for track-

ing the origin and movement of agricultural prod-

ucts throughout the supply chain (Demestichas et al.,

2020). The work proposed by (Chun-Ting et al.,

2020) presents a blockchain-based platform using

Ethereum to ensure trustworthy farm-to-fork trace-

ability of agricultural products. The platform utilizes

blockchain technology, speciﬁcally Ethereum, to se-

curely store and manage data collected from IoT sen-

sors throughout the agricultural supply chain. It em-

ploys smart contracts to automate ﬁnancial transac-

tions and enforce trustworthiness, ensuring data in-

tegrity, transparency, and traceability from farm to

fork. The paper authored by(Hua et al., 2018) ex-

pose a new distributed, peer-to-peer system designed

for agricultural product provenance. This approach

aims to improve food safety, reduce costs, and build

trust across the whole supply chain. The system main-

tains a shared, ledger-based record of farming activ-

ities, transportation, and handling processes, provid-

ing transparency, data integrity, and trust among all

participants.

Smart contracts, as self-executing programs de-

ployed on the blockchain, automate agreements be-

tween parties, reducing the need for intermediaries

and ensuring that terms are enforced without human

intervention. The work (Hua et al., 2018) primar-

AgriTrustChain: A Decentralized Certiﬁcation and Edaphic Data Traceability Framework with Zero-Leak for Sustainable Farming Using

Blockchain

623

ily concerns agreements related to the production,

processing, and distribution of agricultural products.

These agreements include, but are not limited to,

compliance with standards such as organic or green

certiﬁcations, proper usage of fertilizers and pesti-

cides, quality testing, and traceability of operations

like fertilization, irrigation, and testing procedures.

The work proposed by (Vangala et al., 2022) explores

enhancing precision agriculture through the integra-

tion of blockchain and mobile vehicles in IoT envi-

ronments. It introduces AgroMobiBlock, an authenti-

cated key agreement scheme that ensures secure data

exchange. By leveraging elliptic curve cryptography

on hybrid blockchains, the approach minimizes com-

putational and communication overhead.

These technologies can enhance efﬁciency in pro-

cesses such as land certiﬁcation, where systems based

on smart contracts are adopted (Roberts and Bryant,

2006) to generated trusted certiﬁcation. Each cer-

tiﬁcate is commonly represented as a Non-Fungible

Token (NFT) (Colamartino et al., 2025), ensuring its

uniqueness and traceability (Ramirez Lopez and Mo-

rillo Ledezma, 2025),(Rao et al., 2025). To han-

dle storage of large ﬁles such as PDF documents,

decentralized storage solutions like the InterPlane-

tary File System (IPFS) are employed. IPFS gen-

erates a Content Identiﬁer (CID), a cryptographic

hash that uniquely references the content off-chain

(Enaya et al., 2025). In addition, many crop in-

surance based blockchain platforms are proposed in

literature (Vasanthraj et al., 2025), (Eswaran et al.,

2025).These platforms leverage blockchain’s features

to improve transparency, trust, and efﬁciency in the

crop insurance process(Liu et al., 2025). Further-

more, Blockchain technology is increasingly uti-

lized to build transparent and tamper-proof sys-

tems for product authentication (Aissaoui et al.,

2025),(Cordeiro and Ferreira, 2025) and fair trade

compliance (Owsianowski and Bitsch, 2025). By

recording product origins, manufacturing processes,

and supply chain movements on an immutable ledger,

stakeholders can verify the authenticity and ethical

sourcing of goods. The work proposed by (Tegeltija

et al., 2022) presents the SAFE platform that ad-

dresses the challenges of organic agriculture cer-

tiﬁcation by streamlining administrative processes

for producers and enhancing consumer trust through

blockchain-based data security. the SAFE plat-

form(Tegeltija et al., 2022) collects sensor data di-

rectly from the ﬁelds to support certiﬁcation, ensur-

ing that information remains tamper-proof. Further-

more, it is fully aligned with organic food legislation

to guarantee compliance and legitimacy (Rao et al.,

2025).

By enabling real-time data sharing and reducing

the risk of fraud or data manipulation, blockchain

and smart contracts are transforming agriculture into

a more transparent, reliable, and sustainable domain.

4 AGRITRUSTCHAIN

PLATFORM

This research focuses on the development of the

AgriTrustChain platform. AgriTrustChain allows;

• The storage of land and soil data on the

blockchain based on IPFS;

• The real-time retrieving of land and soil data from

the blockchain and displaying it on an interactive

cart.

• The generation of land certiﬁcation is automat-

ically triggered on the smart contract and NFT.

Information of certiﬁcations will be stored using

IPFS and retrieved through the interactive cart.

As illustrated in Figure 1, the AgriTrustChain plat-

form’s architecture is designed to enable secure,

transparent, and efﬁcient data management and certi-

ﬁcation processes within the agricultural ecosystem.

The architecture of the AgriTrustChain platform is

Figure 1: Architecture of the AgriTrustChain platform.

based on a layered design, comprising four essential

layers.

1. Business Layer: it is the interface between end-

users and the system, handling data input, visu-

alization, and interaction. It serves both human

and machine actors, ensuring seamless communi-

cation with the underlying platform. It is com-

posed of two components. The ﬁrst is called the

IoT Devices component, and encapsulates physi-

cal sensors deployed in agricultural environments

that capture real-time data such as soil electrical

TISAS 2025 - Special Session on Trustworthy and Intelligent Smart Agriculture Systems: AI, Blockchain, and IoT Convergence

624

conductivity, organic matter , pH and bicarbonate

levels, and GPS location. It enables automated,

trustworthy, and timely data acquisition. The sec-

ond is called User Interface (UI). It is a web ap-

plication that provides stakeholders with access to

the system. Users can visualize the stored data

displayed on an interactive cart and access the cer-

tiﬁcations.

This layer facilitates the usability and accessibil-

ity of our decentralized systems. It links cyber-

physical systems (IoT) with blockchain via intu-

itive interfaces.

2. Application Layer: it decouples computation-

intensive and non-transactional operations from

the blockchain, improving scalability and perfor-

mance. It orchestrates data ﬂows between the

business and smart contract layers. It is com-

posed of three components. Firstly, the Data Col-

lection Service, this module aggregates raw data

from IoT devices and manual inputs, performs

data normalization, unit conversion, and prelim-

inary validation before it is passed to certiﬁcation

logic. Secondly, Validation and Preprocessing

Module that applies rule-based methods to assess

whether data meets predeﬁned agricultural stan-

dards. Thirdly, the Off-chain Storage Handler

is responsible for storing large and non-sensitive

data in decentralized ﬁle systems called IPFS,

and recording only their cryptographic hashes on-

chain to ensure immutability.

3. Smart Contract Layer: it comprises the on-

chain logic and rules that enforce certiﬁcation, ac-

cess control, and data storage in a secure and de-

centralized manner. This layer integrates a set

of smart contracts, each serving a distinct pur-

pose. The Storage Contract enables the stor-

age of processed data or IPFS hash pointers on

the blockchain, providing immutable references

for future veriﬁcation. The Retrieval Contract

displays the stored data of terrains and soil on an

interactive cart. The stored data include the Or-

ganic Matter (OM), Electrical Conductivity (EC),

Hydrogen Potential (pH), and Bicarbonate, orga-

nized by soil depth (0-20 cm, 20-40 cm, 40-60

cm) based on the land’s GPS coordinates. In addi-

tion to the Normalized Difference Vegetation In-

dex (NDVI) of each terrain. The Certiﬁcation

Contract encodes domain-speciﬁc rules and is-

sues tamper-proof digital certiﬁcates upon com-

pliance. Finally, the Access Control Contract

leverages Decentralized Identity (DID) systems

and veriﬁable credentials to enforce role-based

permissions, ensuring that only authorized entities

can issue or visualize data.

4. Execution Layer: The foundation of the entire

architecture, this layer is responsible for executing

transactions, maintaining consensus, and securing

data permanence. It is composed the Blockchain

Network where smart contracts are deployed and

transactions are conﬁrmed. It ensures data in-

tegrity, fault tolerance, and consensus.

Agritrustchain allows the collection, analysis, and

sharing of agricultural data on the blockchain. Fur-

thermore, it generates digital certiﬁcations of the el-

igibility of agricultural land for olive tree cultivation

in a transparent and tamper-proof manner.

5 IMPLEMENTATION AND

EXPRIMENTS

In this section, we present the implementation details

of the AgriTrustChain platform. In addition, we de-

scribe a series of experiments conducted to evaluate

the effectiveness and correctness of our proposed so-

lution. Figure 9 exposes the software architecture of

our platform, where the ﬂow of data is exposed to il-

lustrate the main purpose of our solution.

Figure 2: The software architecture of AgriTrustChain.

5.1 Implementation Details

The proposed architecture has been designed to

enable transparent, secure storage and retrieval of

land and soil information. In addition, it enables

the automated certiﬁcation of agricultural land us-

ing blockchain technology, IoT integration, off-chain

storage, and privacy-preserving computation. The im-

plementation of this architecture involves a synergy

of decentralized technologies and conventional sys-

tem engineering practices across four layers.

AgriTrustChain: A Decentralized Certiﬁcation and Edaphic Data Traceability Framework with Zero-Leak for Sustainable Farming Using

Blockchain

625

5.1.1 Business Layer: Human and Device

Interaction

The Business Layer is composed of two components.

First, the IoT Devices component that encapsulates

sensors that collect real-time environmental and soil

data. The sensors used include pH probes, electrical

conductivity meters, GPS modules, visible and near-

infrared (VIS-NIR) spectrometers, and ion-selective

electrodes. These devices are programmed using Ar-

duino microcontrollers and communicate with a cen-

tral gateway via HTTP protocols. The NDVI data

are extracted from satellite imagery to assess vege-

tation health and land eligibility.Seconds, User Inter-

face component A ReactJS-based web application al-

lows users to register land plots, submit data from IoT

or manual inspections, and view issued certiﬁcates.

For user authentication, we chose to handled it using

Decentralized Identiﬁers (DIDs) compliant with the

W3C standard through Ceramic Network platforms.

5.1.2 Application Layer: Off-Chain Intelligence

and Preprocessing

The application Layer is responsible for reducing on-

chain computation and enhancing scalability via its

three components.

1. The Data Aggregation Component is imple-

mented as a lightweight Node.js server that acts

as the entry point for collecting, validating, and

preprocessing agricultural soil data collected from

both IoT gateways and user input interfaces. Built

with Express.js, the server exposes a RESTful

endpoint (/api/submit) where incoming data is re-

ceived in JSON format. Upon reception, the

server invokes a dedicated validation module that

checks the consistency, type, and range of critical

parameters such as pH, bicarbonate levels (mg/L

and meq/L), electrical conductivity (salinity), and

organic matter percentage (MO). If the data is

valid, it is timestamped, normalized, and stored

temporarily in an in-memory data store for fur-

ther use. This module plays a crucial role within

the Application Layer of the decentralized archi-

tecture by bridging raw input with intelligent off-

chain validation mechanisms. Figure 3 exposes

a snippet of code of the validator in the node.js

server.

2. The Validation Engine Component is a modu-

lar and extensible Java-based rule engine that

encapsulates the domain-speciﬁc business logic

for evaluating the suitability of agricultural

land—particularly for olive tree planting. This

component operates at the Application Layer of

Figure 3: Snippet code of validator in the node.js server.

the decentralized platform, speciﬁcally within the

Off-Chain Intelligence and Preprocessing sub-

layer. It encodes expert-veriﬁed agronomic

thresholds—such as the acceptable range for

NDVI as rule conditions that are programmati-

cally evaluated. When land data is received, the

engine validates each parameter, determines its

compliance status, and compiles a structured eval-

uation report. The output is serialized to JSON,

hashed for blockchain anchoring. Designed for

interoperability, the engine ensures that only com-

pliant and traceable data proceeds to the smart

contract layer, reinforcing the platform’s integrity

and trustworthiness.

3. The Off-Chain Storage Module is a key compo-

nent of the decentralized application’s Applica-

tion Layer, responsible for storing detailed land

and soil data in a secure and tamper-proof manner

using IPFS. Implemented in Node.js, this mod-

ule leverages services like Web3.Storage, which

abstracts and simpliﬁes interaction with the IPFS

network and Filecoin storage layer. Upon receiv-

ing a ﬁle, the module ﬁrst validates and formats

it, then uploads it to IPFS using the Web3.Storage

API. Once the upload is successful, the system re-

turns a Content Identiﬁer (CID)—a unique hash

representing the content. This CID serves as a

permanent and veriﬁable reference to the stored

data and is later anchored on-chain in a smart con-

tract. By separating large or rich data from the

blockchain and storing only the CID on-chain, the

module maintains scalability while guaranteeing

the authenticity of off-chain resources. Figure 4

exposes a JSON validation report on the console

generated by the Application Layer.

TISAS 2025 - Special Session on Trustworthy and Intelligent Smart Agriculture Systems: AI, Blockchain, and IoT Convergence

626

Figure 4: Validation report generated by the Application

Layer.

5.1.3 Smart Contract Layer: Certiﬁcation Logic

and Storage

The smart Contract Layer is composed of four smart

contracts . Smart contracts are developed using So-

lidity and deployed on a permissioned Ethereum-

compatible blockchain, ensuring transparency and

immutability while maintaining governance and ac-

cess control. It consists of four main smart contracts:

• Storage Contract. This contract store metadata

and content hashes (CIDs) from IPFS onto the

blockchain. Each data set is represented by a

hash and associated metadata. An example of

the data set used is available online.

This en-

sures the veriﬁability and integrity of off-chain

data without overloading the blockchain. Further-

more, it minimizes gas consumption by record-

ing only lightweight transactions instead of large

data-heavy ones.

• Certiﬁcation Contract (NFT-Based). This con-

tract implements the certiﬁcation logic. When a

plot of land meets the eligibility criteria (validated

off-chain), a non-fungible token (NFT) is minted

to serve as a digital certiﬁcate. The NFT ad-

heres to the ERC-721 standard, ensuring unique-

ness and traceability. The full implementation of

this contract is available online

.The certiﬁcate

includes:

– Link to the off-chain PDF report (IPFS hash),

– land information,

– Certiﬁcation metadata (e.g., MDVI, eligibility

status).

This NFT acts as an immutable, veriﬁable, and

transferable proof of compliance and can be used

in audits or loan/insurance applications.

https://github.com/MedAmine221/NDVI-Certiﬁcates-

Blockchain/tree/main/certiﬁcates

https://github.com/MedAmine221/NDVI-Certiﬁcates-

Blockchain

• Access Control Contract. Security is enforced

through a role-based access model. It uses Solid-

ity’s AccessControl features to assign roles like

Farmer ROLE and ADMIN ROLE.

• Retrieval Contract. The Retrieval Contract pro-

vides read-only access to stored data. This con-

tract allows:

– The visualization of stored land and soil infor-

mation on an interactive map using GPS coor-

dinates,

– The access to the generated certiﬁcation, lands

are linked to a PDF certiﬁcate if their NDVI

falls within the acceptable range.

These smart contracts are developed and tested using

the Trufﬂe framework, and their state is veriﬁed using

Etherscan tools .

5.1.4 Execution Layer: Blockchain and Network

Infrastructure

The Execution Layer serves as the core trust engine

of the AgriTrustChain platform. This layer is ex-

posed in Figure 5 and leverages a private Ethereum

blockchain, smart contracts written in Solidity, and a

decentralized storage system (IPFS) to provide veri-

ﬁable, tamper-proof certiﬁcation records. Our smart

contracts are deployed on the Ethereum blockchain.

A PoA (Proof-of-Authority) private Ethereum net-

work is set up with validators representing different

stakeholders. Smart contracts are optimized using So-

lidity features like struct packing, mapping-based data

access, and off-chain computation to minimize gas us-

age.

5.2 Experiments

In this section, we will expose the experimental setup

and results.

5.2.1 Experimental Setup

We deployed the AgriTrustChain platform on a local

private Ethereum network using Geth conﬁgured with

PoA consensus. Table 1 exposes technical Infrastruc-

ture of the AgriTrustChain Platform.

5.2.2 Test Case Scenarios

To validate the AgriTrustChain platform, we designed

experiments focusing on its main functionalities: (1)

the decentralized storage of land and soil data, (2)

real-time retrieval and visualization on an interactive

map, and (3) automated certiﬁcation generation using

NFTs.

AgriTrustChain: A Decentralized Certiﬁcation and Edaphic Data Traceability Framework with Zero-Leak for Sustainable Farming Using

Blockchain

627

Figure 5: AgriTrustChain Execution Layer.

Table 1: Technical Infrastructure of the AgriTrustChain

Platform.

Component Details

Blockchain Network 3 validator nodes (Ministry,

certiﬁer, expert), 1 client

(farmer)

Smart Contracts Deployed via Hardhat

Frontend ReactJS + MetaMask

Backend PHP or Java via web3.php

Off-chain Storage IPFS via web3.storage

Testing Wallets Generated with MetaMask

1. Scenario 1: Storage of Land and Soil Data on

Blockchain with IPFS. The objective of this sce-

nario is to verify that land and soil data can be se-

curely stored on IPFS and its reference immutably

recorded on the blockchain. Figure 9 presents a

screenshot of the front-end interface of the Stor-

age Contract, where stakeholders can submit data

through the form, which is then automatically dis-

played on the interactive map in real time. Steps:

(a) A farmer submits land coordinates and soil data

(pH, EC, GPS, organic matter) via the React

frontend.

(b) The backend uploads the data ﬁle to IPFS and

obtains the corresponding CID.

tion storeSoilData to save the CID and meta-

Figure 6: Screenshot of the front-end interface of the Stor-

age Contract.

data on-chain.

(d) The contract emits a SoilDataStored event.

Table 2 exposes key Metrics of the Storage of

Land and Soil Data on Blockchain with IPFS Pro-

cess. Metrics Measured:

Table 2: Key Metrics of the Storage of Land and Soil Data

on Blockchain with IPFS Process.

Metric Value

Gas Cost (Storage) ∼ 100,000 units

IPFS Upload Time ≤ 2 seconds

Event Emission Rate 100%

2. Scenario 2: Real-Time Retrieval and Interac-

tive Map Visualization.

The objective of this scenario is to ensure accu-

rate retrieval of stored land and soil data from the

blockchain and its visualization on an interactive

map. Figure 7 illustrates an example of our in-

teractive map, where NDVI data is retrieved from

the blockchain and displayed in real time.

Procedure:

(a) The React frontend queries the blockchain for

soil data using the land ID.

(b) The platform fetches the corresponding IPFS

CID and retrieves the full data ﬁle.

interactive map with soil layers (pH, EC,

NDVI).

(d) The user can select or ﬁlter data points on the

map.

Table 3 exposes key metrics of data retrieval and

visualization. Metrics Measured:

3. Scenario 3: Automated Certiﬁcation and NFT

Generation. The objective of this senario is to

validate that the certiﬁcation process is automat-

ically triggered and the certiﬁcate is issued as an

NFT stored with IPFS metadata. Figure 9 illus-

trates our interactive maps, where a marker of a

TISAS 2025 - Special Session on Trustworthy and Intelligent Smart Agriculture Systems: AI, Blockchain, and IoT Convergence

628

Figure 7: Blockchain-Based NDVI Data Visualization on

an Interactive Map.

Table 3: Key Metrics of Data Retrieval and Visualization.

Metric Value

Blockchain Query

Time

≤ 1.5 seconds

IPFS Retrieval Time ≤ 1.5 seconds

Map Rendering Time ≤ 1 second

Data Accuracy 100% match with input

suitable land contains a button that opens the PDF

certiﬁcation.

Figure 8: Interactive Map Displaying Markers with Online

PDF Certiﬁcations.

Procedure:

(a) The platform analyzes NDVI data based on pre-

deﬁned eligibility rules.

(b) If the land meets the criteria, the smart

contract function generateCertification is

triggered.

ing certiﬁcation metadata (land ID, owner ad-

dress, NDVI value, IPFS CID).

(d) The certiﬁcation appears on the interactive map

and can be veriﬁed publicly in a PDF format.

Table 4 exposes keys metrics for certiﬁcation and

NFT generation.

Metrics Measured:

Table 4: Keys Metrics for Certiﬁcation and NFT Genera-

tion.

Metric Value

NFT Minting Time ≤ 5 seconds

Gas Cost (Minting) ∼ 150,000 units

Certiﬁcation Retrieval ≤ 2 seconds

Integrity Veriﬁcation 100% success

Figure 9 depicts the interactive maps, where each

terrain marker provides detailed soil data informa-

tion.

Figure 9: Terrain soil data displayed on a carte.

5.2.3 Discussion

The experimental evaluation of AgriTrustChain

demonstrated its efﬁciency, security, and transparency

for decentralized agricultural certiﬁcation. Table

5 exposes a Summary of experimental results for

AgriTrustChain platform. Data storage on IPFS and

anchoring on the blockchain were completed in less

than 3 seconds with consistent event emission. Real-

time data retrieval and visualization on the interac-

tive map were accurate and responsive, while au-

tomated NFT-based certiﬁcation ensured 100% data

integrity and immutability. Public veriﬁcation con-

ﬁrmed full transparency and auditability of certiﬁ-

cation records. Although minor delays in IPFS re-

trieval and the need for simpliﬁed identity onboard-

ing were observed, the platform showed promising

scalability and usability. These results conﬁrm that

AgriTrustChain: A Decentralized Certiﬁcation and Edaphic Data Traceability Framework with Zero-Leak for Sustainable Farming Using

Blockchain

629

AgriTrustChain is a viable and trustworthy solution,

with future improvements planned for AI-driven val-

idation, gasless transactions, and enhanced privacy

through zero-knowledge proofs.

Table 5: Summary of experimental results for

AgriTrustChain platform.

Scenario Execution

Time

(s)

Gas

Cost

(units)

Success

Rate

Integrity

Data Stor-

age (IPFS +

Blockchain)

2.8 100,215 100% 100%

Data Re-

trieval &

Map Visu-

alization

2.7 – 100% 100%

Certiﬁcation

& NFT

Minting

4.9 156,900 100% 100%

6 CONCLUSION

Computer science has brought transformative ad-

vances to the agricultural sector by enabling data-

driven decision-making, automation, and intelligent

resource management. Distributed systems, partic-

ularly blockchain, offer a robust solution by provid-

ing tamper-resistant data storage, enhanced traceabil-

ity of land and soil records, and decentralized ac-

cess control. By integrating these technologies, agri-

culture can reach a higher level of trust, account-

ability, and efﬁciency. In this paper, we introduced

a blockchain-based platform called AgriTrustChain

combining IPFS for decentralized storage, interactive

soil data visualization, and NFT-based land certiﬁca-

tion. The implemented platform conﬁrm its potential

to ensure efﬁcient data management, accurate visu-

alization, and transparent certiﬁcation. Future work

will focus on large-scale validation, integration of ad-

vanced analytics for automated soil assessment, and

interoperability with multi-chain ecosystems. Further

enhancements will target security, scalability, and us-

ability to facilitate broader adoption by agricultural

stakeholders. Finally, developing standardized frame-

works and interoperability protocols will be crucial

to ensure seamless data exchange across stakehold-

ers, paving the way for a transparent and sustainable

agricultural ecosystem.

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