Food is a global issue. Once upon a not very long time ago, food was largely regional. If the weather was favorable in your area, you and others grew plenty of food for your family and for the surrounding area. If it rained too little or too much, you were probably looking at a pretty rough winter. The next region over though was largely unaffected. Or if you wanted strawberries in March, you were probably just going to have to wait a couple of months until they were in season again. Now, you can get pretty much any food you want any time you want it. Basically, strawberries are in season somewhere and the food supply chain is robust enough to get them from there to your corner grocery store. Corn grown in Iowa goes all over the world, same with rice in China. Your last Big Mac might have come from a cow raised in Brazil. In a lot of ways, this is a great thing. Despite there being many more people on the planet than there were when food was local, more of them are fed.
However, it also comes with a couple of downsides, the biggest of which being that the food supply chain is vulnerable. Now, if the weather or something else disrupts the crops in one area, it doesn’t just affect that area, the whole world can quickly find itself short on corn, meaning many go hungry and the prices for everyone else get higher.
For a year now, COVID and the response to it has put unprecedented strain on our food supply, leading to issues from the local small town to far off villages. The response to COVID led to the shutdown of course of pretty much every restaurant in the country, except for takeout, led to the total disruption of the supply chain. Since people weren’t going out to eat as much, they turned to the grocery stores, which put so much strain on them that even Costco and Sam’s Club had limits on how much of certain items could be purchased, if they were there at all. It’s not that there wasn’t food, it’s that there are multiple food supply chains and it proved impossible to redirect the resources from the restaurant supply chain to the grocery stores. As a result, literally tons of food were wasted. Fortunately the system adjusted in a couple months and most people were only inconvenienced (that’s to say nothing of the unemployed who were relying on food pantries, but that’s a separate issue). Yet, the situation did a lot to show that something as important as our food supply chain is a lot more fragile than most would have thought.
Climate issues raised fears of further disruption just months later when a massive storm ripped through the plain states, destroying millions of wheat crops. Again, we seem to have gotten lucky with how the system has managed to respond and other than a price increase due to lower supply things seem to have remained stable. However, should we be faced with these things happening at the same time, we could be in real trouble. Imagine a pandemic as bad as we feared COVID would be, at the same time as a hurricane that decimates a couple important ports while a drought destroys crops out west. Does that sound far-fetched? Then you haven’t paid much attention last year. Any one of those types of events is happening somewhere in the world at any given point. All it would take is a flap of the butterfly’s wings to get them to line up a little differently.
How to weather such a series of unfortunate events? Right now, we can’t really say. Which is exactly why we need to come together and use our data and other resources to better understand the world we are living in. Only then can we hope to be prepared to handle major disruptions to the things we take for granted. It’s a simple choice, use our data to save and build a better world, or don’t use it, and hope we get lucky again.
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Rubber is used in a ton of products in the developed and developing worlds. It forms door and window seals, it makes gaskets used in power plants, the soles of shoes, and insulates tools for working with electricity. It’s a large part of our daily lives, whether we realize that or not. Still, there is one use for rubber that almost everyone can easily think of – tires. In America, most families have at least one vehicle, likely two. That means every family has at least eight tires (ten if you include the spares) sitting in their driveway every day. The number can actually be quite a bit more than that when you add in the odd three-car household, snow tires and a utility trailer.
All of those tires come from somewhere and for the most part, that somewhere is the Para rubber tree that grows in Southeast Asia. It’s where a lot of tire companies get the raw material to make their tires. I’ll bet you never thought of Goodyear as a farming company, yet that is a large part of what they and others do. As one might expect, some of the very rainforests those rubber trees grow in are struggling due to being cleared for cattle or due to disease. This is making the tire companies and others that make use of those trees a little concerned about the future of the rubber supply chain.
To that end, Bridgestone has started making extensive use of data to improve its farming operations. They are collecting data and looking for ways to determine which clones of which trees are best suited to which kinds of environments in order to maximize yields. They’ve actually worked their data to come up with a thirty-year plan for the most efficient planting. Once they get the kinks worked out, they plan on offering it to other farms as well.
While it is great that Bridgestone is working on ways to get the most product out of the least amount of land, wouldn’t it be great to come up with new methods of transportation that could minimize the need for so much rubber? Obviously, the cities are looking to improve their public transportation systems. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that fewer cars on the roads of LA and New York would make for a more pleasant environment there.
However, another phenomenon has cropped up or rather accelerated in the last year. That is people moving out of the cities. Whether they are leaving because of taxes, unrest, or COVID, people over the last year have been moving from the cities to the suburbs and people from the suburbs into more rural areas. Yet, their jobs are often far away and even in the digital age, people still have to commute occasionally, or they desire to visit friends, or their favorite restaurants. How to deal with this? Currently, the only thing resembling a mass transit system on this scale is the interstate and more cars on those roads clearly does nothing to reduce the need for rubber.
One of the most promising proposals is the Hyperloop. Initially conceived of as a pair of underground tubes between San Francisco and LA, it would send passengers in pods at speeds up to 700mph, just a bit below the sound barrier. The travel time between the two cities would be around 35 minutes.
Of course, Musk said at the outset that he didn’t plan on developing the Hyperloop himself, leaving it to others to pick up the torch. Fortunately, Richard Branson’s Virgin has done so and has already run successful tests. If this technology can be completed and applied throughout the country, it could revolutionize modern transportation and make it much easier and cheaper to move around the country. That would be a great thing for reducing emissions as well as the need for rubber.
What’s your data worth?
If you are coming here to TARTLE you probably have at least a basic knowledge of blockchain. On the off chance you are new here, blockchain is most commonly associated with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It is a means of recording information that relies on unique lines of code that are copied on nodes around the world rather than on a centralized server. This makes it secure since the information exists in many copies at once and every transaction is recorded. Every time that your favorite crypto changes hands a record of that translation is made and copied. That means every blockchain node in the world contains a record of every owner going all the way back to its origin. If you think about it that is pretty cool. It’s like being able to take a dollar bill out of your wallet and instantly being able to see everywhere it’s been and everyone who has ever had it in their own wallet. As cool as this is, is it possible to use this same technology elsewhere?
The answer is a resounding ‘yes’. We’ve actually seen an example of what that looks like in pop culture just recently. There is a scene in The Mandalorian in which Boba Fett, after getting his armor back from Mando, shows him a chain code, showing everyone who has owned the armor from Boba back to the first one. That is literally an example of blockchain being applied to a material object in a mainstream science fiction show. Again, that’s pretty cool. It shows knowledge of blockchain is getting out in front of the regular population.
However, that’s still fiction. How might that work in the real world? Think about those guys who are selling knock off versions of high end things like Rolex watches or Gucci bags or maybe the real thing but heavily discounted. So discounted that maybe you go home and wonder if you just bought something that was stolen. How would you prove it? And even if you could, how could you make sure that it got back to whomever the rightful owner is?
If the manufacturer was making use of blockchain technology, it would be simple. There would be a code on the device, or even a chip within it that could transmit the code so anyone with a receiver could check it out. That code would then be checked against a blockchain registry demonstrating authorized chains of custody. If the person you bought that killer watch from isn’t on the registry, then yeah, you bought something stolen.
This can also be used for detecting inefficiencies in a supply chain. If a given shipment has been out of scanning range for longer than expected, it would send up a warning flag that either the system isn’t working the way that it is supposed to or that someone is trying to do something nefarious.
We’ve also made mention of how blockchain could be used to keep secure track of things like property titles, without the need for middle men like banks and title companies.
With blockchain already firmly established as the means through which cryptocurrencies are traded, it is only a matter of time before it starts breaking more into the mainstream. Given that many companies now accept various cryptos as valid means of payment, that crypto is regularly discussed on national news programs, and it has even begun to penetrate pop culture, this time is not far away. In just a few years, it is highly likely that you’ll be purchasing a new car, home, wedding ring, and a host of other things with a blockchain based chain of ownership.
This is the way.
At risk of sounding like a broken record, COVID has dramatically changed the way we do a lot of things. One of the single biggest changes to how we live now has been in our buying habits and the retail world has had to adapt accordingly. This is of course obvious, but in any industry there is a demand for data that is more granular than just whatever is obvious on the surface. For that, you need a way to track purchases. Fortunately, this kind of system has already been in place for years in the form of bar codes. Most of those little rectangles of black lines on every product that you purchase was first issued by a company called GS1 US. Because this company issues most of the bar codes out there, it is one of if not the biggest aggregators of purchasing data in the world. It is their data that has shown through cold hard analysis the massive shift to online shopping.
How massive is that shift? So massive that in the first month of COVID lockdowns online shopping grew as much as it would have in eight years of normal growth. We are now approaching the one year mark since the first lockdowns were initiated in the US. During that time, online shopping has only grown, driven by continued restrictions, some businesses going under, and people who would just rather not deal with masks or other issues that arise when going out to the store.
That is only part of the story though. While some businesses have been destroyed by COVID restrictions, others have sprung into existence in the last year while others that were only niche businesses in 2019 are now mainstream. Take curbside pickup. There were a few restaurants and grocery stores that were already exploring these options. Walmart in particular – being highly data driven – had already identified that many preferred to not deal with going in the store. So when the lockdowns started to roll out, they already had the infrastructure in place for something that has now become a major part of their business. Not that these things are always flawless. If you aren’t careful, you can get a lot of interesting substitutions in your order. Fortunately, data analysis can help identify if there is a systemic issue that needs solving or if such things are merely anomalies.
One of the most interesting businesses that is well suited for the COVID world is Carvana. This business not only lets you buy vehicles online, it will deliver them to your door. They include several high resolution photos so you can get all the information you need on the car before making a purchase. That definitely helps if you are someone who would rather not deal with car salesmen and driving around to different car lots, sometimes taking days before you find one you like.
In many ways, COVID has merely accelerated trends that were already in motion. Even before 2020, businesses like DoorDash, GrubHub, UberEats and others were gaining steam. Shipt, Shopify, and others have shared similar explosive growth. It isn’t only relatively new companies or places like Walmart that have been moving in this direction though. Even established businesses with high end items like jewelry stores in New York City have gotten in on the game. I have it on good authority that it is possible to by jewelry for your fiancé from NYC while never leaving your desk in New Mexico. If you ask us, that’s a little wild, but a little awesome too.
The only thing we would like to add is that too many of these businesses are still reacting, operating on old data. TARTLE, through our data marketplace we can connect businesses to individuals directly, allowing them to identify trends just as they are getting started, if not before. In that way, we can help shape the future in a way that is better for everyone.
What’s your data worth? Sign up and join the TARTLE Marketplace with this link here.
Recently, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) initiated a lawsuit against Ripple, one of the major cryptocurrency companies. Why? Apparently for the crime of raising money without registering with the government. The suit doesn’t even allege that Ripple committed any kind of fraud or misled its clients in any way. It seems that the SEC is mad that Ripple (and other crypto currency companies) are using the blockchain system to handle transfer of money and goods outside of the normal system. Why would that make them mad? Because they don’t get to control it, and if they can’t control it, they can’t get any money from it.
It could be argued that in suing Ripple, the SEC is betraying a lack of understanding of what blockchain really is. After all, in a system in which people all around the world are part of the network that maintains the blockchain system, how can you hope to change that system by suing just one company? Blockchain and various crypto currencies will continue to exist without Ripple. Or any other single company.
However, an alternative reading is that the SEC does understand blockchain and is threatened by it. If so, they are making an example of Ripple, sending a message that they are determined to get control over digital currency one way or another. That begs the question – why would they find it threatening?
Unfortunately, that is all too easy to understand. The very nature of the blockchain system makes it unfriendly to the legacy banking and government bureaucracies. How so? There are three main pillars of the blockchain system that make it the threat that it is. Let’s take a look at them.
Pillar 1: Decentralization – One of the main features of blockchain is the fact that it is decentralized. What does that mean? It means that all of the information stored in the system, whether it’s currency, transaction records or shared information, it isn’t just on a bunch of guarded servers in a single location, as with a bank. Instead, every node in the chain has a complete record of the system within it. A transaction occurs and within seconds, a record of that transaction is stored on nodes around the world. This means that people don’t need to rely on those legacy institutions whenever they make a transaction. The decentralization grants freedom.
Pillar 2: Transparency – Now, someone might well be thinking this doesn’t make any sense. Isn’t a major feature of blockchain that it is anonymous? How can it possibly be anonymous if it’s transparent? Yes, this seems a little contradictory. However, the transparency comes from the fact that the information is in all of those different nodes. Since so many have access to the information, it is very transparent. Which has the added bonus of making it virtually impossible to commit any fraud. You can’t really cook the books behind closed doors when anyone can come in at any time and check the books. The anonymity comes from the fact that your identity itself is encoded and anonymous. Can the system still be hacked? Yes. However, it’s much harder to do and thus much less frequent than it is when it comes to legacy systems.
Pillar 3: Immutability – This one also relies on the nature of the blockchain. The records of your transactions within the system are always there, in many nodes around the world. That means if someone tries to hack a node or two to engage in some blackhat activity it will be detected and flagged by the other nodes that will see the disparity between their records and that of the hacked nodes. In short, the records can’t be fraudulently changed.
All of this makes the blockchain system of Ripple and other crypto companies more secure and freer than that of our legacy systems. No wonder they find it a threat and want to find a way to control it.
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