September 8, 2023
As part of the IAOM (International Association of Operative Millers Eurasia) conference held on 31 August and 1 September 2023, a panel was held by and between me acting as the Chairman of Advisory Board of Cropto, the economist Erkan Öz and the academician Ismail Hakkı Polat, moderated by Dr. Eren Günhan Ulusoy who is the chairman of the said association at 11:30 on the second day of the conference. Both the panel and the lunch following it were sponsored by Cropto.
The speakers explained their views on agriculture tokens and how they might affect the future of agriculture, and expressed their visions. In answering a question asked by Chairman Ulusoy, Erkan Öz briefly explained the Bitcoin system pioneering the crypto industry, its infrastructure and its coin. Then Polat and Türün explained the notion of asset-backed token from different points of view. They talked about the pioneering asset-backed token Tether indexed to the US$. Here I would like to tell you something I learned later: Last year Tether (listed as USDT) reached a transaction volume of US$ 18.2 trillion to overtake Visa and MasterCard.
Picture of the settlement volume in the world last year:
Tether is backed by cash US$ deposited in banks or cash equivalent government bonds indexed to the US$. I had given the details in my previous article dated 19 August 2023.
Ismali Hakkı Polat explained what could commodity-backed tokens do when they are used in agriculture. He informed that not only agricultural products but also fertilizer and its raw materials can be tokenized into the blockchains and digital medium. I explained that all agricultural trading activities, including freight, can be tokenized, and that trades and futures contracts that are currently fulfilled at Chicago prices can be tokenized on the blockchain. Erkan Öz drew attention to the similarity between tokenization of wheat and barley dating back to ancient times and identified with Göbeklitepe using high technology and the Sumerian promissory note tablets dating back to times before the invention of writing and used for documenting agricultural debts. He emphasized that the blockchains and Bitcoin are as important and revolutionary as the invention of writing. Commenting that the people in general have not understood this revolution yet, Öz said “It will take time for people to understand they are living in a very important age.”
As the panel draws to a close, Chairman Ulusoy asked me what problems do the Cropto tokens solve and what needs they meet. I told him that the Cropto Tokens are backed by real assets, the said assets are stored in licensed warehouses, only one token is issued and audited per kilogram of such product, that our target with the Cropto family of tokens is to enable people to trade these tokens in not only TÜRİB but also such decentralized exchanges as UniSwap. I added that such trading lies beyond passive investments, agriculture tokens can turn agricultural products waiting to be sold in silos for months into liquid assets having a financial value, farmers can tokenize their assets by using the Cropto, that they can raise funds without using any bank. My explanation may have been a little lesser clarified, so please take this article into consideration.
An important area of use of agriculture tokens is that it they will not only enable people working at other industries to invest in agricultural products, but also enable small farmers to raise funds for trading and producing their products. In the big picture, we know that Russia is the agricultural warehouse of the world and exports most of its annual export volume of 33 million tons through the straits of Turkey. Russian smalltime farmers and even regional cooperatives have, like their Turkish counterparts, limited access to bank loans. They do not have systems like ELÜS and TÜRİB in Turkey. Why not Russia and even Kazakhstan and Ukraine create a new digital exchange using tokenized Russian wheat instead of creating a similar system based on old and new centralized principles? Maybe they will use the blockchain-based decentralized exchange to be formed by Cropto in near future and gain access to new financing means. Thus both Russian and Turkish people may invest their small savings in such financing means and invest in the bread they ate.
Cropto proceeds in such manner to carry the center or, if you will, the decentralized part of global agriculture to Turkey by technologic means through our technologic vision, so that the future of the Black Sea Grains Corridor may be affected.
Long may Cropto run.
Cemil Şinasi Türün
Chairman of Advisory Board
Cropto - Trademark of AgriFintech Finansal Teknolojiler A.Ş.