Blockchain for Food
The potential of blockchain technology to transform the food industry is a hot topic—arguably the hottest. I started to unpack this at Babson San Francisco’s THRIVE event last month in a conversation on food blockchains with Ami Patel from ripe.io (here’s the recording, if you’re interested).
But we only scratched the surface at THRIVE. Now, we want to go deeper. On Wednesday April 25 at 3PM Eastern, I’ll host a webinar with Lou Izquierdo of IBM Food Trust™, a collaborative network of IBM with some of the largest players in food— Walmart, Tyson, Dole, Nestle, Unilever, to name just a few.
Over seven years with IBM, the last four months with the Food Trust, Lou told me he’s never been as excited by any technology as he is by blockchain. His work in early pilots – including the now famous Chinese mango track down* – is sure to make for fascinating conversation.
This webinar is open to all and you’ll have a chance to ask questions (details and log-in information).
*Frank Yiannas, VP Food Safety for Walmart decided to put his team, and the blockchain they had built, to the test. He bought a packet of sliced mangoes and brought it to the office. “I told them to trace it back to the farm,” he says. After numerous phone calls, faxes, and emails, the results were in—six days, 18 hours, and 26 minutes later… He then did a live demonstration of the blockchain system in front of the media, tracing the same packet of sliced mangoes. “We put in the code, and we traced it back to the farm in 2.2 seconds,” he says. “So we’ve gone from seven days to 2.2 seconds. This isn’t a lab. This isn’t theory. This is the real world.” The rest of that story is here.