Blockchain and IoT Integration Solutions in Agricultural Data Management: From Data Collection to Trust Verification

The effective management of agricultural data is critical for enhancing transparency and security in modern farming, yet more than ever does traditional centralized systems face risks of data tampering, high storage costs, and insufficient trust in multi-party collaboration. This study proposes a blockchain and IoT-integrated system that introduces two key innovations: (1) a multi-role trust mechanism enforced by smart contracts—where reporters, validators, and administrators interact through cryptographically verifiable workflows, eliminating reliance on any central authority; and (2) a hybrid on-chain/off-chain storage architecture combining Ethereum with the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), which reduces storage costs by over 99.9% compared to pure on-chain storage while preserving data immutability. This system bridges IoT-driven data collection and blockchain-enabled trust verification and offers a tamper-resistant platform for agricultural workflows. A citrus orchard case study is used in this paper to validate its effectiveness in real-time monitoring, disease detection, and automated task management. Limitations in scalability and farmer usability highlight needs for distributed optimization and user-centric interfaces. • A blockchain and IoT-integrated system is developed to manage agricultural data with a focus on real-time monitoring, automated validation, and decentralized storage. • The system ensures data integrity, traceability, and multi-party trust through Ethereum-based smart contracts and hybrid blockchain-IPFS architecture. • Its effectiveness is validated through a citrus orchard case study, demonstrating secure disease detection, task reporting, and tamper-proof data management.