Blockchain in Grocery: Enhancing Food Transparency & Traceability

In the wake of this year’s large E. coli outbreak, Walmart notified its leafy green suppliers that they must be using blockchain technology to trace their products before the end of 2019.

Walmart, one of the world’s largest retailers, has been piloting blockchain projects with IBM for the past 18 months. It is banking on this relationship to put pressure on the entire sector to give consumers what they want from the food industry: more transparency.

In Europe, Carrefour also recently began using blockchain to track food products on several of its product lines.

If food fraud is properly addressed, growth in the food sector can be expanded. Over the next decade or so, we should not be surprised to see the disruptive nature of blockchain technologies generate tensions among grocers, processors and producers as they try to cope with grocers’ impositions.

Other sectors made traceability a priority decades ago. Drugs, car parts, minerals and so on can be tracked to their sources in seconds. Consumers know the technology exists and are putting the pressure on grocers. It’s time for the food industry to catch up.