A smarter, more transparent, efficient, and sustainable supply chain: that’s what many supermarket chains have been dreaming of. However, this goal is something that is difficult to reach due to the complexity of food supply chains, where food waste, and bottlenecks are still major issues (IBM Food Trust, 2020; Parfitt et al., 2010). In fact, 50% of produced food is estimated to be lost when it moves from the farm to the consumer, due to issues such as inefficient harvesting, transportation, inventory problems, and packaging (Lundqvist et al., 2008). This shows that there is still major room and potential for improvement in food supply chains, and that is exactly what IBM is trying to solve with Food Trust.
Food Trust relies on blockchain in order to bring back transparency into the supply chain (IBM Food Trust, 2020). It does so through heavily encrypted ledgers, in which IBM’s customers can easily track different food items in their specific supply chains. The ledgers are continuously updated, and only accessible if a customer has the right permission. These permissions have been implemented to prevent one of blockchain’s greatest criticisms: the ability for other individuals to put in fraudulent information (Baraniuk, 2020). This process allows customers to be up to date on the journey certain products are making, which in turn gives insights into inventories, the dwell times of certain items, which food items may be at risk, the temperatures of certain items, and so on. This data then offers the potential to make improvements to the supply chain as products move in real-time, and creates transparency for consumers and companies alike.
Food Trust is already being adopted by many different companies. In 2019, IBM reported that 200 companies had already joined the network (IBM, 2019). Companies such as Nestle and Carrefour have been making use of Food Trust in order to be able to show customers where food comes from directly in the supermarket, and to improve the quality of products in their supply chain (Alexandre, 2019). For example, Carrefour’s customers can scan the QR code on certain products to see where it is from, and when the product was harvested.
What do you think? Do you think that blockchain has the potential to change the way supply chains work? Do you think IBM has the potential to reduce waste significantly?
Alexandre, A. (2019). Carrefour, Nestlé Use IBM’s Blockchain Platform to Track Infant Formula. Cointelegraph. https://cointelegraph.com/news/carrefour-nestle-use-ibms-blockchain-platform-to-track-infant-formula
Baraniuk, C. (2020, February 11). Blockchain: The revolution that hasn’t quite happened. BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-51281233
IBM. (2019). IBM BrandVoice: The Food on Your Holiday Table May Have Been Verified by Blockchain. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/ibm/2019/12/23/the-food-on-your-holiday-table-may-have-been-verified-by-blockchain/
IBM Food Trust (p. 17). (2020). https://www.ibm.com/downloads/cas/E9DBNDJG
Lundqvist, J., de Fraiture, C., & Molden, D. (2008). Saving water: From field to fork—Curbing losses and wastage in the food chain. (SIWI Policy Brief). SIWI. http://dlc.dlib.indiana.edu/dlc/bitstream/handle/10535/5088/PB_From_Filed_to_Fork_2008.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
Parfitt, J., Barthel, M., & Macnaughton, S. (2010). Food waste within food supply chains: Quantification and potential for change to 2050. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 365(1554), 3065–3081. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2010.0126
