Dive Brief:

• Walmart will soon begin using software that calculates climate risk and provides price forecasting for categories like produce, according to a Tuesday announcement.
• Walmart aims to improve its evaluation of medium- and long-term climate risks for the global agricultural supply chain with the software provided by Helios AI, which predicts the price and availability of agricultural commodities using climate risk and artificial intelligence.
• The tech partnership comes as Walmart continues its efforts to boost sustainable sourcing. 

Dive Insight:

The partnership comes at a time when Walmart, which has more than 4,600 locations in the U.S. and handles thousands of produce SKUs daily, says it’s looking to strengthen its food supply chain.

The USDA has estimated that 30% of food loss occurs during agricultural production and harvest, and flags unpredictable weather as a key driver of food loss.

Alongside the new partnership, Helios announced a new suite of features that include the ability to assess climate risk and provide weather projections for a year into the future as well as the ability to change the timeframe of charts and key performance indicators, instead of pre-defined timeframes, according to the announcement. 

The company also plans to provide historical pricing and price estimates for fruits and vegetables with the upcoming addition of global, country and regional averages and ranges. Customers will be able to interact with prices by origin region or shipping point and analyze prices by variety, grade and organic status.

The partnership stemmed from Helios winning Walmart’s 11th annual Open Call competition for entrepreneurs, making it the first Walmart Open Call winner in the software category. The pitch event, during which companies met with the retailer’s merchants, took place at Walmart’s headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, in September. 

Last spring, Walmart announced it would pilot agriculture technology that provides real-time information on crops and can improve sourcing decisions around produce. That partnership with crop supply intelligence company Agritask uses remote sensing and data analytics tools in various regions in the U.S. and Mexico to provide hyperlocal information on blackberry and cherry crops grown by certain suppliers.