Dole Food Company – a global heavyweight in the fruit and vegetable sector – has reportedly disclosed details of a plan to enhance the adoption rate of Distributed ledger tech, over the course of 5 years. 

Specifically, the expansion plan – revealed via the firm’s  2020 Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability Report – is an initiative following it being onboarded as a founding member of IBM’s Food Trust 3 years ago. 

Per the report, Dole will have a thorough examination of its existing food tracing networks and make them more efficient, including the target of finalizing the integration process of blockchain-powered product-tagging and advanced traceability features, for all its divisions by 2025. 

Dole has been applying the features blockchain offers for its salads and fresh vegetables supply chains and has initiated data sharing to a particularly chosen group of retail clients starting last year. 

“Blockchain cuts the average time needed for food safety investigations from weeks to mere seconds. Produce that’s been logged via blockchain can be instantly tracked back through the supply chain, giving retailers and consumers confidence in the event of a recall” Dole reportedly claimed. 

The report also revealed that security features have been added to the solution, to help retailing clients of its blockchain program steer clear from accidentally slipping valuable proprietary data to other entities throughout the network. 

Dole also disclosed a plan to release a consumer-facing feature, enabling scanning packages of salad or vegetables, to gain detailed information recorded across the product’s supply chain.