A better way to track various commodities?

Blockchain being applied to real-world problems like tracking pork chops, footwear

Frank Yiannas has spent years looking in vain for a better way to track lettuce, steaks and snack cakes from farm and factory to the shelves of Walmart, where he is the vice-president for food safety. When the company dealt with salmonella outbreaks, it often took weeks to trace where the bad ingredients came from.

Then, last year, IBM executives flew to Walmart’s headquarters in Arkansas to propose a solution: the blockchain. As Yiannas studied their pitch, he said, “I became increasingly convinced that maybe we were on to the holy grail.”

The blockchain — the buzzy, bewildering technology behind cryptocurrencies like