Cargill Invests Digital Engineering to Develop Hyperledger Grid

United States-based agricultural conglomerate Cargill has announced that it is investing digital engineering resources to develop Hyperledger Grid, according to an announcement on Jan. 25.

Hyperledger Grid is a recently announced project from Hyperledger that aims to streamline supply chains by using blockchain technology. Cargill — the U.S.’s largest privately held company with $114.7 billion in revenue — states that the Hyperledger Grid can “accelerate development of blockchain and other digital solutions for the global food and agriculture supply chains.”

Cargill notes that Hyperledger Grid has provided a suite of tools with which it can address agricultural supply chain issues such as traceability, food safety and trade settlement. The announcement did not include specific details regarding the nature of Cargill’s investment.

The ag giant has previously explored blockchain technology applications in its business. In October 2018, Cargill partnered with Archer Daniels Midland Co., Bunge Ltd. and Louis Dreyfus Co. to digitize international grain trading by using blockchain and artificial intelligence technologies. The four firms, known as ABCD, plan to integrate blockchain technology on different levels of the supply chain, including shipping, storage, and customer experience.

Louis Dreyfus Co. completed its first blockchain-based shipment in January 2018, sending soybeans from America to China using the Easy Trading Connect blockchain platform.

Hyperledger is a large collaboration that is hosted by the Linux Foundation and includes IT giants the likes of IBM, SUP, Intel, and financial institutions JP Morgan and Deutsche Börse. On Dec. 11, Hyperledger announced that it onboarded 12 new members, including Alibaba Cloud, a subsidiary of the e-commerce giant; financial services firm Citigroup, Deutsche Telekom, one of the largest telecoms providers in Europe; and European blockchain trading platform we.trade, among others.