How Solana is transforming cross-border agricultural trade

Solana-based real-world assets (RWA) marketplace AgriDex helped complete a cross-border agricultural trade between a South African producer and a London importer.

The importer paid for the shipment of over two hundred bottles of extra virgin olive oil and multiple cases of wine from a farm and vineyards in South Africa.

According to the announcement, AgriDex facilitated the trade payment over the Solana blockchain and charged 0.15% to each side of the trade. In contrast, traditional payment methods incur significantly higher fees from both parties.

Solana outperforms traditional systems for cross-border trade

Seeing this reduction in transaction and remittance costs, as well as faster settlement times, Adrian Vanderspuy, owner and CEO of Oldenburg Vineyards, said:

“The funds came into our AgriDex account in seconds rather than days, and the fees were 5 British pounds ($6.45). We look forward to continuing our partnership and bringing more of our stock onchain.”

In an interview with Cointelegraph, Henry Duckworth, co-founder and CEO of AgriDex, explained how the Solana-based marketplace eradicates the complexities of multiple currencies, diverse legal frameworks and excessive documentation by tokenizing agricultural contracts.

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With further adoption in onchain settlements, the resultant savings can be redirected to the producers. Duckworth explained:

“Many of the world’s farmers are underpaid, and the environmental impact of trade is poorly understood. A primary goal of the Agridex system is to ensure better and more profitable payments for farmers, while also offering financing based on their declared trade flows.”

Passing on the savings

Agridex’s current focus is on uplifting small-scale farmers who are often underpaid, especially in cocoa, wheat, and sugar production. “By ensuring better, faster, and more direct payments to farmers, we aim to incentivize community planting. By supporting the buyers from these farmers, we hope to foster improved productivity and planting practices,” he added.

The South African wine will arrive in London on July 29, and the olive oil will arrive a few days later, completing the first-ever agricultural trade on Solana.

In addition, AgriDex is also facilitating the sale of farmland in Zambia to a Mauritian sustainable development entity and the sale of bakery machinery from South Africa to Zimbabwe. Each of these trades is valued at over $500,000.

Duckworth advised the exporters to maintain transparency in their operations and empower the buyers with a range of data points that instill trust.

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