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12 NWA Democrat-Gazette Walmart Shareholders Thursday, May 31, 2018 NWA Democrat-Gazette File Photo Aneasha Moore of Centerton looks over frozen chicken last year at Sam's Club in Bentonville. Sam's Club is offering premium members free shipping on nearly every item available on its website. The free-shipping announcement comes about a month after Sam's Club revealed that it was closing 63 clubs — or about 10 percent of its stores — across the U.S. Many of those closings were in areas where the population hadn't grown as expected. Some of the closed stores will be converted into e-commerce warehouses. Sam's Club has said the first store to be converted into an e-commerce cen- ter is in Memphis. Furner said Tuesday that the center should be ready to ship items by the end of March. The Memphis center will be in- structive for Sam's Club as it builds out an e-commerce supply chain to new areas, according to the company. Other regions being considered for e-commerce centers include Tex- as, central Florida, Chicago, Southern California, the mid-Atlantic and the Northeast. "With free shipping for Plus [mem- bers], we're more aggressive on direct to home e-commerce than we've ever been," Furner said. "Another piece of that strategy is building out a Sam's Club unique supply chain that en- ables us to get closer to members, and it makes ordering on SamsClub.com easier and faster." Sam's v Continued from Page 6 Walmart imagines drone-aided farming Walmart Inc. can imagine a grocery business aided by farm-related drones, which could be used to pollinate crops, monitor fields for pests and spray pes- ticides. The Bentonville retailer offered a glimpse into potential uses for the tech- nology in a series of patent applications published by the U.S. Patents and Trade- mark Office in March. The country's largest grocer detailed "systems and methods" for unmanned vehicles to per- form farm-related functions, most nota- bly, beelike drones capable of collecting pollen and depositing it onto plants. The applications have not been ap- proved by the government office but are signs of Walmart's desire to develop solutions to farming problems, accord- ing to experts. It also signals Walmart's ongoing efforts to find ways to get fresh food to its stores cheaper, faster and more environmentally friendly as it com- petes with Amazon.com, Kroger, Aldi, Lidl and others for grocery sales. "Increasingly, you're seeing compa- nies that interface with the consumer like Walmart and their competitors be- coming more and more interested in how food is produced and what inputs are used to produce the food," said Bert Greenwalt, professor of agricultural economics at Arkansas State University. "That's relevant to them as they court the changing taste in preferences of con- sumers, their customers." Grocery sales are vital to Walmart, accounting for roughly 56 percent of the company's revenue. So it's no surprise the retailer has focused its attention on ways to battle growing competition. Walmart has lowered prices, im- proved the selection and quality of its assortment and introduced conve- nience-based services for shoppers. The retailer has opened 1,100 online grocery pickup locations across the U.S. with plans to expand the program to more than 2,000 by the end of the year. Walmart has recently announced plans to expand its grocery delivery service to about 800 stores this year. Brett Biggs, Walmart's chief financial officer, told investors in early March that the company had figured out ways to trim almost three days out of the supply chain, improving the freshness of items. Walmart has been working with IBM on block-chain technology to improve the transparency and traceability of food as it moves through the supply chain. The company recently unveiled a technology called Eden, which was de- signed to curb food waste and improve the quality and flow of fresh food. "Eden's suite of apps helps Walmart associates better monitor and care for fresh fruits and vegetables that are wait- ing to be shipped from distribution cen- ters to stores," Parvez Musani, Walmart's vice president of supply chain technol- ogy, wrote in a blog post. "That could mean more efficiently ripening banan- as, predicting the shelf life of tomatoes while they're still on the vine, or prior- itizing the flow of green grocery items from the back of the store to the shelf." Walmart will not reveal additional details about its plans to deploy drones on farms to further benefit its grocery business. But a company spokesman said in a statement that Walmart is "always thinking about new concepts and ways that will help us further enhance how we serve customers." According to the patent applications, Walmart said monitoring and defend- ing crops against crop-damaging pests is "paramount to farmers." The retail- er wants to patent a system that would use drones to identify pests and then dispense an insecticide specific to the type of pest. Walmart said in the application farm- ers typically have to use multiple chemi- cal sprays to fight off pests, which can be expensive and "may not be looked upon favorably by consumers." "This can reduce the use of the inputs or the pesticides in particular," Green- walt said. "So you could make claims regarding sustainability, reduced impact ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE See DRONES, Page 24