International Business Machines (IBM) just announced it's now collaborating with major food powerhouses such as:
- Dole
- Kroger (KR)
- McCormick and Company (MKC)
- McLane Company (BRK.B)
- Nestlé (OTCPK:NSRGY)
- Tyson Foods (TSN)
- Unilever (UL)
- Wal-Mart (WMT)
This is significant because IBM is providing the technology backbone. As I explained in The IBM Bitcoin Puzzle the real secret here is blockchain technology. Blockchain is likely to be much more important than Bitcoin, at least in the business-to-business space.
The focus of the collaboration here is about food safety. The key challenge here is that 1 in 10 people get sick each year, and 400K die each year, due to contaminated food. This is a real problem in the real world, as opposed to theory or some patent "research" deep in the bowels of an IBM laboratory.
