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Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has joined eight other companies in launching a five-year initiative intended to increase the visi- bility of female-owned businesses. The plan was announced during Wal-Mart's Women's Economic Empow- erment Summit in Washington, D.C., in March and is being supported by the Women's Business Enterprise National Council, which is the largest third- party certifier of businesses owned, controlled and operated by women in the U.S. The companies involved have agreed to track and report their sourcing efforts from self-identified and certified female-owned businesses over the next five years. In addition to Wal-Mart, Procter & Gamble Co., Coca-Cola Co., PepsiCo Inc., Exxon Mobil Corp., General Mills Inc., Campbell Soup Co., Johnson & Johnson and Mondelez International Inc. are participating in the collaborative program. Pamela Prince-Eason, chief executive officer of the women's coun- cil, believes the collaboration will make a difference for female-owned suppliers as the large companies "challenge each other." "These companies have great power in the marketplace," Prince-Eason said. "They all bring great products to consumers. They're all the company of choice that women-owned businesses want to do business with and, really, any [business] wants to do business with. So there's value in coming together and really talking about the commitment." The nine companies will disclose to the women's council their annual spend- ing on products from female-owned businesses over the next five years. The women's council will collect the infor- mation and report the aggregate spend- ing each year. The practice is nothing new for Wal-Mart, serving as an extension of the retailer's five-year, global women's Country Plant C Pl 2300 SE 28th Street | Bentonville | 479.273.9969 www.themeadowsinbentonville.com Our family caring for your family with honor, dignity and respect. Assisted Living Community Thursday, June 1, 2017 19 NWA Democrat-Gazette Walmart Shareholders is truly unique is to create this trusted system of record. You've never before had the ability for an entire ecosystem to look at data and be confident that everybody else is looking at the same data and that everybody else trusted the same set of data." Yiannas said transparency and trace- ability are not new concepts in food safety, but recent technological advance- ments have made the development of a shared digital database more of a real- ity. It's more likely now for farmers and producers — even in remote places around the world — to have access to a smart device and insert data into a blockchain. McDermott predicted it will take some time, but the reception from different players has been good so far. The bigger view Ultimately, Wal-Mart and IBM hope to extend their work across the entire food system. "This isn't IBM and Wal-Mart," McDer- mott said. "This needs to be something that the larger ecosystem uses. … Each retailer has a huge number of farms. Each farm has a huge number of retailers. So you want to make sure that people don't have to use 50, 100 different systems. At the end of the day, this is most useful if everybody is using it." Investments in blockchain technol- ogy are expected to increase this year, according to a study conducted by Deloitte. The research firm polled 308 execu- tives at companies with $500 million or more in annual revenue and 55 percent said their organizations would be at a competitive disadvantage if they failed to adopt the technology. Even more, 42 percent of respondents in the consumer products and manufacturing industry plan to invest $5 million or more this year. Sodero said it makes sense for Wal-Mart to invest in blockchain for its food business because of the retailer's size and scale. But he believes that the global company will face competition in the race to adopt a standard others will eventually follow. "We already know for a fact that when there's a new technology out there, there will be this interplay of power," Sodero said. "So they better get this right and they better get adoption. They need people to adopt their own technology so that they can be sure that this becomes the standard." Wal-Mart's blockchain tests could be wrapped up in April, according to Yian- nas. The companies will evaluate results and determine the next step, including the possibility of rolling blockchain out on a larger scale. Yiannas said the technology looks "very promising" and has value to all stakeholders, including consumers. He imagined a day when customers can pick up a food item, scan it with a smart device and retrace its route through the supply chain. "Everybody is doing a lot more online shopping," Yiannas said. "When you buy something online you have the ability to track where it's at and where it's going. It's an idea that should be available to the food system in the 21st century. So we're going to work really hard to make the idea reality." Safety v Continued from Page 18 Wal-Mart backs female-owned f irms ArkAnsAs DemocrAt-GAzette See FirmS, Page 25