<story><title>Walmart Requires Lettuce, Spinach Suppliers to Join Blockchain</title><url>https://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2018/09/24/walmart-requires-lettuce-spinach-suppliers-to-join-blockchain/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bayesian_horse</author><text>As I understand it, a blockchain is a decentralized database which does not require the individual instances to have perfect connectivity and perfect trust all the time.&lt;p&gt;I can see why that would be something worth doing in a food chain. To trace, for example, a particular load of soy beans to a customer eating a steak, there are a couple of completely autonomous companies&amp;#x2F;sole proprietors involved. From the original soy farmer, through feed production (maybe multiple factories because the soy is processed and later mixed with other ingredients), feed distributors and transporters, to the cattle farm. Again the individual animal can change hands multiple times, for example a bull calf can be fed soy based milk exchangers at a dairy farm where it was born, then be sold to a farm that raises it to market (with pigs there can be three different farmers from piglet to market maturity), then to the slaughterhouse, the meat goes to food processors and then into a distribution channel.&lt;p&gt;Easily a dozen or two separate legal entities. I can see why it could be hard to connect each of them to a central database reliably may be tricky.</text></item><item><author>code4tee</author><text>IBM is quietly brushing its Watson mess under the carpet and now they’re trying to focus on blockchain. However this is just as substanceless and full of marketing fluff as Watson was.&lt;p&gt;There’s nothing being done here that couldn’t or shouldn’t just be handled with a traditional database. Having IBM “run it” also sort of defeats the whole decentralized aspect of blockchain technologies.&lt;p&gt;You don’t need “blockchain” to track where your produce came from. This is just a marketing play through and though.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>SkyPuncher</author><text>&amp;gt;  does not require the individual instances to have perfect connectivity and perfect trust all the time.&lt;p&gt;The blockchain does not solve the trust issue in this scenario.&lt;p&gt;Blockchains only work there is a verify unit entirely enclosed in the system - including the origins of any &amp;quot;unit&amp;quot; on the system.&lt;p&gt;* Bitcoin&amp;#x2F;Ethereum&amp;#x2F;etc - &amp;quot;coins&amp;quot; are a completely digital concept fully enclosed by the system. &amp;quot;coins&amp;quot; are generated in a predictable, consensus based manner with consensus based means of exchanging their value.&lt;p&gt;* Distributed Filesharing - &amp;quot;files&amp;quot; are stored in encrypted in a verifiable manner. I have an identity (or multiple identities) on the system which I can use to verify the source. Trust does become a factor in something like Civil where credibility is attached to a trust that an author actually published something.&lt;p&gt;* Food - involves a physical good that cannot be verified by the &amp;quot;blockchain&amp;quot;. I can verify that SOME item went through a certain set of checkpoints. I can possibly verify that the SAME item went through a certain set of checkpoints. I cannot however verify the authenticity of any item before entering into the system. I have to rely on a middle-man (e.g. Walmart, Kroger, Whole Foods, etc) to verify authenticity at the origin point. They also have to implement safe guards that ensure goods cannot be tampered with between checkpoints. That relies on trusting the middleman to have appropriate safeguards in place.</text></comment>
<story><title>Walmart Requires Lettuce, Spinach Suppliers to Join Blockchain</title><url>https://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2018/09/24/walmart-requires-lettuce-spinach-suppliers-to-join-blockchain/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bayesian_horse</author><text>As I understand it, a blockchain is a decentralized database which does not require the individual instances to have perfect connectivity and perfect trust all the time.&lt;p&gt;I can see why that would be something worth doing in a food chain. To trace, for example, a particular load of soy beans to a customer eating a steak, there are a couple of completely autonomous companies&amp;#x2F;sole proprietors involved. From the original soy farmer, through feed production (maybe multiple factories because the soy is processed and later mixed with other ingredients), feed distributors and transporters, to the cattle farm. Again the individual animal can change hands multiple times, for example a bull calf can be fed soy based milk exchangers at a dairy farm where it was born, then be sold to a farm that raises it to market (with pigs there can be three different farmers from piglet to market maturity), then to the slaughterhouse, the meat goes to food processors and then into a distribution channel.&lt;p&gt;Easily a dozen or two separate legal entities. I can see why it could be hard to connect each of them to a central database reliably may be tricky.</text></item><item><author>code4tee</author><text>IBM is quietly brushing its Watson mess under the carpet and now they’re trying to focus on blockchain. However this is just as substanceless and full of marketing fluff as Watson was.&lt;p&gt;There’s nothing being done here that couldn’t or shouldn’t just be handled with a traditional database. Having IBM “run it” also sort of defeats the whole decentralized aspect of blockchain technologies.&lt;p&gt;You don’t need “blockchain” to track where your produce came from. This is just a marketing play through and though.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>stinky613</author><text>But everyone involved is entering the information into the same IBM software front-end (&amp;quot;Food Trust&amp;quot;)... So all players involved are using the same front-end and the same back-end, and only Walmart &amp;amp; IBM have the ability to change anything. How does a blockchain benefit anyone (other than IBM) in this situation?</text></comment>