At the end of last month, American retailer Walmart announced its cooperation with IBM in order to test a blockchain. This way of saving data, which is also behind the success of Bitcoin, offers many advantages for sharing information and ensures better food safety. During the EU Fresh Info Forum Paul-Adrien Genet from Capgemini presented his internship research into the use of this technique in the food sector.
At first, his research focused on the Chinese market for pork. Because of the large number of food scandals, supermarkets there also started using a blockchain. Simply put, a blockchain consists of various links which all contain information. Only if this information corresponds in each link, can a transaction be made final, if not, the system automatically takes action.
“The system is transparent, and you can trace where the information comes from,” Genet says. The use of a blockchain is “impossible to hack, not centralised, based on consensus, cheap and fast,” he sums up. This data could be used in agriculture very well, according to him. The majority of food is produced by small companies worldwide, but this is especially true of the Southern Hemisphere. There, they often do not have the possibility to share data, which means only the large companies do that by means of an agriculturalist, for example. By setting up a blockchain, you can prevent one party getting too much power over another one, on the one hand. On the other hand, the information in the system could be valuable to companies.