We all need to eat, but today’s #foodsystems are failing.

How we produce and consume food is the biggest driver of nature loss and a major cause of greenhouse gas emissions. Unhealthy diets are leaving billions obese, overweight, or ill, but nearly 830 million are still going hungry. Huge amount of the food we produce is going uneaten – a waste of natural resources, human labor, and money. Neither planet nor people are being nourished.

And our food systems are fragile. #unsustainable production and consumption, and #inefficient #distribution, leave them exposed to disruption. #climatechange change and nature loss are reducing food security around the world, but so are pandemics and conflict.

It’s clear our food systems need to change – urgently – to work with the planet, not against it.

The good news is that food systems can be part of the solution – not just to hunger, but to the nature and climate crises.

By adopting nature-positive production practices, shifting to #healthy and #sustainable diets, and radically reducing #foodloss and waste, we can build food systems that protect and conserve nature while providing everyone with nutritious food, now and in the future.

#foodwaste is a massive global problem. In fact, if food waste were a country, it would be the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, right after the USA and China (FAO). This food loss and waste happens at all stages of the food system. We often hear about food going to waste in our homes or being lost at the farmer’s level. But little is spoken about the food that is lost at the trader and buyer level.

Much of the food we eat is grown, #harvested, and then transported to #warehouses where it is sorted, packed, and stored until it can be sold and transported to the final destination. Traders buy produce in bulk from all over the world, and then they sell this produce to supermarkets, retailers, and wholesalers. If there are disruptions in this system or if food cannot be sold fast enough, it goes off and is thrown out. This has negative consequences for all of us: the #farmers who grew that food don’t get paid, the traders lose profit, and all of the resources that went into growing the food – including the precious water and energy #resources – are wasted too. What if we could ensure all food is sold at the right time, at the right place, and to the right people?

What are food environments? Food environments are the economic, political, and socio-cultural contexts that guide people’s engagement with the food system and decisions around consuming food. When challenged by civil society and governments, dominant companies often like to frame food environments as “consumer choice.” In reality, those environments have been very carefully designed to meet their business goals. Their work has normalized excessive consumption of animal-sourced foods across European countries. The European Food Policy coalition recently published a think piece on food environments. 

How can improving food environments help? Healthy Food #healthyplanet supports breaking free from harmful food environments because they:

• Are an important entry point to drive food system change due to their position between producers and consumers.

• Shape people’s decisions about food by determining what is available, accessible, affordable, and desirable.

• Influence producers in the supply chain through the products they are willing to procure, the prices they are willing to pay, and the standards they are willing to accept.

• Have been, to date, largely neglected by funders in the food space.

Civil society will increasingly demand that healthy, sustainable, and just food environments are normalized, reducing costs currently outsourced to people, health services, animals, and environmental clean-ups.

    #AI for quality control and a dashboard for tracking 👨 💻

To reduce food waste effectively, Invisible Foods is developing several technical components that all combine into one seamless product. The main features are:

• A digitized quality control and analytics system that identifies food that will rot in the near future.

• A marketplace to match products of various quality levels with buyers who can use that specific quality.

• Certification to be validated by FeedUP@UN, and tracking so companies can confidently and reliably communicate how much produce they have saved.

 FOOD FROM SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE AND TRANSGENIC CROPS

There is a growing realization among all sectors of society that nations must adopt #sustainable #agricultural and #industrial practices to realize the goal of providing fresh water, a healthy diet, and adequate living standards, not only in the short term, but also into the distant future. The need to develop higher-yielding crop varieties that will be adapted to local conditions and conducive to sustainable agriculture and remain high yielding in the absence of irrigation and large inputs of petrochemicals (fertilizer and pesticides), is an exceptionally tall order, especially in the short time frame available. Many plant scientists believe that the use of modern biotechnology, molecular breeding techniques, and genetic engineering of crop species can contribute significantly to achieving these goals. Nevertheless, a number of conference attendees from different disciplines expressed skepticism about genetic engineering (transgenesis) of crops, echoing the general fear and distrust of this technology that is prevalent across Europe and the UK, particularly with respect to its close associations with multinational businesses and globalization.

Arguments against the use of genetically engineered (transgenic) crops and foods appear to be shifting, albeit slowly, from the idea that such foods might be unhealthy or unsafe for individuals or for the environment. First, there is no evidence that transgenic foods are fundamentally unsafe for human consumption. Although it might be possible to create unhealthy foods using transgenic technology (for example, foods that contain an allergenic or toxic compound), food safety regulations are in place to prevent this from happening (currently these regulations are far more stringent than for nontrans genic foods). More importantly, the use of modern biotechnology could lead to the production of foods that are more nutritious and healthier for individuals.

Secondly, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the #environmentalbenefits of transgenic crops outweigh any potential environmental risks. Jonathan Jones addressed issues related to the use of biotechnology to develop more disease-resistant crop varieties. This is an area where transgenic crops can have a major impact on environmental protection and the development of sustainable agriculture. as well as creating a #healthier environment for farm workers and can lower significantly the energy demands of agriculture.

Current arguments against the use of transgenic crops focus on the notion that this technology is fundamentally “against nature” and should therefore be avoided and/or that it is designed to benefit large multinational corporations at the expense of the small farmer. The claim that genetic engineering is against nature can be answered by realizing that molecular breeding is no different from traditional breeding in this respect, and all crops’ plants are the result of genetic engineering.

The more people understand about both traditional and modern biotechnological #plant breeding methods, the more they realize that the use of biotechnology and transgenic crops can play a valuable, sometimes essential, role in our quest to provide healthy #nutritious food for the world and achieve sustainable agriculture on a global scale. Plant scientists therefore have a significant role to play in public education as well as agricultural research and development.

How can we use technology to help produce sustainable food?

Technology can be used throughout the food supply chain to produce safe and sustainable food for us to eat. In farming, precision agriculture makes use of advanced technologies for sensing, data analysis and automation.

• Soil sensors: These allow farmers to precisely measure the nutrient composition of their soil. This helps farmers to plant certain crops where the soil is most beneficial and add exactly the right amount of additional nutrients required, reducing the need for excessive fertilizer use.
• Robotic seeders : These are ultra-light robots that sow seeds with minimal soil compaction compared to heavy-duty tractors. Soil compaction can cause poor root growth which reduces water and nutrient intake for the plant.
• Drones : They create high-resolution images of farmland, allowing farmers to examine farmland in real-time. Drones are fast and efficient and can help to monitor crop health, flooding extent and weed patches. EIT Food has worked with Outfield, an agritech startup, that uses drones to help farmers to reduce food waste by monitoring crop yields.

 What does the future hold for sustainable food technology?

Our food system has faced many challenges in recent years, such as Covid-19 impacting food supply and food security, extreme weather events destroying harvests and migration laws impacting the availability of seasonal workers on farms and in factories. We need solutions to address these challenges as well as others that will arise. To future-proof our food system we need the following to happen.

Ø We need innovative technologies. 

Technologies must be innovative because they need to solve a particular problem within the food production system. Innovation should connect farmers, researchers, and industry together to be able to develop solutions that make modern food production more sustainable, resilient, and productive.

Ø We need technologies to be adopted.

It is not just important for technologies to be created; we need technologies to be adopted throughout the food supply chain. Food producers need to have easy access to technologies. They also need to learn the skills required to operate them effectively and to be able to reap the benefits, such as increased efficiency and profitability.

Ø We need technology to work in harmony with people and planet.

We need to ensure technology does not replace labor altogether. In food production, technologies can be used to save time and protect employees from doing dangerous tasks themselves. Technology solutions should minimize the negative impact on the environment and be able to do something that humans cannot do easily, or at all.

I am eagerly wait for your comments, until then Happy Reading!

Cheers,

Ashiwani