Walmart, Sam’s Club tell suppliers to get on blockchain network
Walmart and Sam's Club are calling on suppliers of leafy green vegetables to upload their produce data to a corporate blockchain ledger within a year to enable end-to-end traceability of vegetables back to the farm where they were grown.
"This has literally gone out to dozens and dozens of suppliers. If you think about this food system, our suppliers will source from other suppliers and farms," said Frank Yiannas, Walmart's vice president in charge of food safety. "We believe this will impact hundreds of food establishments."
Last year, Walmart and Sam's Club joined nine of the world's largest food retailers in piloting IBM's Food Trust Solution, a blockchain distributed ledger network based on the Hyperledger protocol. Along with Walmart, the testring consortium includes Dole, Driscoll's, Golden State Foods, Kroger, McCormick and Company, McLane Company, Nestlé, Tyson Foods, and Unilever.