Walmart to salad growers: If you want to sell, you have to blockchain

The L.A. Times reports:

Produce companies that want to sell lettuce and salads at Walmart and Sam’s Clubs will have to learn the skills of cryptocurrency traders, the giant retailer announced Monday.

By the end of January, 2020, Walmart will require California-based produce companies such as Dole, Taylor Farms and Fresh Express to join a blockchain-based supply chain that the mega-retailer has been experimenting with for nearly two years to enable Walmart to trace the source of food-borne illness.


Shifting to the encrypted system of shared information made famous by bitcoin would enable Walmart and its suppliers to contain and limit recalls involving Walmart and Sam’s Club stores, a $280-billion grocery empire.

“We’re requiring our suppliers of fresh leafy greens to be able to trace back their product to the source, to the farms, in seconds and not days or weeks,” Frank Yiannas, Walmart’s vice president for food safety, said Monday.

The move by Walmart could upend the way the produce industry controls its supply lines — a system that lags behind not just last century’s “digital age,” but the current era of “smart” interconnected devices and data encryption capabilities.

An article , well worth your time.