Walmart turned to blockchain to improve food traceability, speed up investigations, and reduce the friction of paper-based supply chain records. According to the source material, tracing certain food items in a traditional system can take 7 days, while a blockchain-based process can cut that search time to 2.2 seconds.
Food safety became the entry point
Pressure on food supply chains grew more visible after the pandemic. Consumers wanted clearer information on where food came from, and shipping congestion made delays more damaging for perishable goods. Walmart, the global retailer known for its grocery business as much as its broader retail footprint, chose blockchain as a way to address long-running problems in food logistics: fragmented records, slow traceability, and weak visibility across multiple participants.
In this context, blockchain is presented as a distributed digital database that records information in time-stamped, tamper-resistant blocks shared across a network. That structure fits supply chains well. When a food safety issue appears, the hardest part is often not recognizing that something went wrong, but identifying the source and mapping where affected products moved. The source notes that outbreaks of foodborne disease can take weeks to trace under older processes, delaying recalls and exposing more consumers to risk.
Two pilot projects started in 2016
Walmart launched two proof-of-concept blockchain projects in 2016. One focused on mangoes sold in Walmart stores in the United States. The aim was to capture the path of the fruit from its origin to store shelves. Frank Yiannas, Walmart’s former Vice President of Food Safety, used sliced mangoes bought from a nearby Walmart as a benchmark test and asked his team to find the farm of origin quickly. Using conventional methods, the team contacted distributors and suppliers and got the answer in nearly seven days.
Working with IBM, Walmart then built a blockchain-based food traceability system that let participants across the chain record and share data in real time. The second pilot centered on pork in China, where food safety concerns had been prominent. Walmart used blockchain to track pork from farms to processing facilities and then to retail stores, creating a fuller view of product movement across the chain.
IBM partnership followed in 2017
After the pilot programs, Walmart formally partnered with IBM in 2017 to continue developing and deploying the food traceability system. The article places this effort against the backdrop of major food safety failures, including a romaine lettuce outbreak in early 2018 that led to five deaths and more than 200 hospitalizations. It says the investigation into the source took almost a year because traditional recordkeeping made tracking goods slow and cumbersome.
Beyond recalls, the source argues that blockchain can support a broader upgrade of the food system. Data on production date, time to shelf, sale timing, and storage conditions can all be recorded in one shared ledger. That can help farmers, transport companies, processors, and retailers isolate problems faster and reduce waste across the chain.
Fraud detection and transparency are part of the pitch
The article also points to food fraud as a major use case. Expiration dates, freshness claims, and origin labels are harder to manipulate when each handoff is recorded in an immutable system. One example cited in the source involves meat sold in China as Australian beef that was actually horse meat. The argument is simple: with blockchain-based records, both retailers and consumers could check provenance much faster.
For Walmart, blockchain is framed less as a standalone technology project and more as a shared record system for farms, processors, logistics providers, and stores. The same infrastructure is meant to support faster traceability, stronger food safety controls, and clearer visibility across the supply chain.