Blockchain technology is still in its infancy and has yet to be widely adopted by companies, but an area in which it is used is IBM Food Trust, a cloud network based on supply blockchain developed by IBM and used by resellers, suppliers and farmers to trace food from the farm to the grocery shelf.
The idea of IBM Food Trust is to create transparency and traceability throughout the food supply chain. It is the only network of its kind and is used by major retailers like Walmart.
In a recent forum on the potential of blockchain technology in agriculture at the North Carolina Biotechnology Center of Research Triangle Park, Mark Parzygnat, director of the blockchain program for IBM, explained how the technology is used to prevent the entry of contaminated products. on the market.
Walmart uses technology to track products such as green leafy vegetable bags and lettuce heads. The technology will allow the company to identify the source of a product and exactly which batches could be contaminated. Walmart is requesting farms that provide them with vegetables to add detailed information about their product to the Food Trust network.
In a letter to his leafy green suppliers, Walmart noted that blockchain technology reduces the time it takes to keep track of a food product from a Walmart store to a supplier within seconds of days and sometimes weeks.
Parzygnat says that blockchain is a technology that changes the world. "It saves a huge amount of time, saves a huge amount of money and saves people," he says.
The idea is to reduce the impact of food recalls through instant access to data. Parzygnat says technology can help reduce the person in 10 who gets sick and the 400,000 victims worldwide due to foodborne illnesses.
Parzygnat and others believe that the blockchain is a turning point like the Internet. They say it will do for data management what the Internet has done for information sharing and communication.
Today, people can not do business without the Internet. Who knows, soon they will not try to do business without blockchain.