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The food we buy in grocery stores and restaurants has a story to tell from where it comes from and every step it took on its journey to your table. Blockchain technology can help tell that story.
The story that many food companies want to tell these days is about security. At the start of this year, a E.coli the epidemic has triggered the recall of tons of pre-packed Roman lettuce all over the country. At the time the source was traced to the Yuma, Arizona farms, the epidemic had hit 36 states, attracting more than 200 people and killing five between March and June, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Blockchains are able to identify sources of outbreaks more quickly and, in doing so, tell those stories about food safety, according to Mark Parzygnat, director of the blockchain program at IBM (NYSE: IBM). Technology creates a digital ledger whose information is constantly synchronized and verified. With the blockchain, food companies can quickly track and track every single food item, a slower process with current paper-based systems. A search for the source of a contaminated product used to take Walmart (NYSE: WMT) seven days, due to dependence on documents, before the retailer adopted blockchain, Parzygnat said. Now with technology, searches require only 2.2 seconds.
"You save a lot of time, save a lot of money and save people," he said during a biotech agency forum last week at the North Carolina Biotechnology Center.
Blockchain is not necessary for all organizations; for a small group, a database could be sufficient, said Parzygnat. But if an organization is doing more things with its data and the external parties need to access it, a blockchain might make sense. In addition to food, industries that could benefit from the blockchain include financial services, retail and insurance, said Parzygnat.
Walmart, the nation's largest food retailer, now uses blockchain with some of its suppliers. The company had participated in an 18-month pilot study with the IBM test blockchain in its food supply chain. In September, Walmart announced that it would adopt the technology and notify its leafy green suppliers that they should also use it.
Potential blockchain food applications are starting to attract technology startups. San Francisco-based mature.io recently raised $ 2.4 million in initial funding to support the development of a "food blockchain", a technology platform that the company claims will digitally connect growers, laboratories, retailers and others operators in the sector. The founders of Ripe.io focused on food after working in finance and financial technology.
Blockchain offers more than rapid traceability. In agriculture, it offers new ways to validate goods as they move along the supply chain, according to Andy Kennedy, co-founder of Durham, NC, FoodLogiQ food traceability software startup and forum speaker. Kennedy, who is also the interim director of the Global Food Traceability Center at the Institute of Food Technologists, said that when food is transported over long distances, deterioration is inevitable. But he added that blockchain, in combination with sensors, can reduce deterioration.
Sensors can monitor conditions such as humidity and temperature in food and truck storage areas, sending this information to the blockchain, Kennedy noted. The analysis of data can identify problems, for example when a driver changes the refrigeration temperature to improve the fuel economy of the truck, he said. Temperature fluctuations also pose problems in grocery stores. With sensors constantly charging environmental conditions on the blockchain, growers and retailers would be able to do so … Next page "
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