Dive Brief:

• In response to customer demand for transparent food product pipelines, Honeysuckle White brand turkeys and Cargill partnered this Thanksgiving season to connect farm-raised turkeys and customers through blockchain, according to a Cargill announcement last month.

• Through Cargill's house-built blockchain platform, Thanksgiving customers can use the code on their turkey's package to access information and photos about the farm where the Turkey was raised.

• Cargill will use the pilot project to assess the viability and success of blockchain-based platforms for food and supply chain traceability in the future.

Dive Insight:

Blockchain platforms offer promising potential for the food traceability market, which is estimated to be worth $14 billion by 2019.

Starting up an in-house blockchain solution is no easy feat, but food giants with flexible resources are helping bring these technologies POCs to reality. Cargill is the largest privately owned company in the U.S. with close to $110 billion in revenue and 150,000 employees, according to Forbes.

Kroger, the largest grocery store chain in the country, and Walmart, the largest retail store chain in the country, are two other industry players integrating modern tech into their operations, from cloud to blockchain. 

In August, the two companies joined other food suppliers on an IBM blockchain initiative for food data management and supply chain tracking. Walmart had already run two blockchain food programs with IBM in the past.

Blockchain has yet to hit its full potential in the enterprise, but applications in the food industry are offering useful test cases for other industries looking to improve supply chain operations. The technology is still in its infancy and will require a steep buy-in from new investors, a hard push for many companies given how behind the industry is in digitization, let alone other advanced techs such as AI.