This year, more than 345 million people are facing high levels of food insecurity. Among these people, over 9 lakh are fighting to survive a catastrophic hunger/one step away from famine. When a massive number of people go hungry or lack adequate food, it undoubtedly poses a major threat to humanity.
An unfortunate (perhaps, ironic too) side of this situation is food wastage. Did you know that the total food wastage for the edible portion is 1.3 billion tonnes? This food if not wastage could feed a large number of famished people across the globe.
Co-Relation Between Food Wastage, Environment, and Resource Depletion
Food wastage has undesirable implications for the environment. For example, when the waste food ends up in landfills, it generates a greenhouse gas called methane which is 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Moreover, the carbon footprint of food wastage is estimated at 3.3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent to greenhouse gas released into the atmosphere per year.
Let’s also not overlook the resource wastage problem that occurs with food wastage. When people throw away food, they are also wasting precious resources such as land, water, energy, manpower, and inputs (seeds, fertilizers) required to cultivate, store, package, transport, and sell the food. With natural resources exhausting at a rapid rate, food wastage aggravates the situation further.
Sustainable Food Management Through Technology — The Way Forward
United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals 12.3 aims to ‘halve per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels and reduce food losses along production and supply chains, including post-harvest losses by 2030’. While the accomplishment of this goal calls for cohesive efforts from farmers, supply chain participants, consumers, and governments, it is still a mountainous goal.
Technology can address the problem at a much larger and faster scale. Here are some groundbreaking digital innovations that are already making a difference:
Modern food preservation technologies such as natural preservatives, nanotechnology, high-pressure processing, pulsed electric field equipment, and irradiation can enhance the longevity and freshness of food.
These technologies reduce or destroy microbial growth in the food, thereby minimizing food wastage, especially in supply chains which are longer or operate at varying temperatures.
2. Food Upcycling
Food upcycling technology refers to repurposing food that otherwise would have gone waste. Surplus food, unused foods, imperfect-looking foods, and food by-products can be upcycled to create new, valuable, and high-quality products. For example, making chips from fruit or vegetable peels, gluten-free flour from coffee plant fruit, and juices from ugly fruits are a few examples of food upcycling. Some innovative startups are also exploring this concept to produce biomethane and bioplastics from food waste.
This technology can be crucial enable to the shift from a linear economy to a circular economy.
3. Food Sharing Apps
Food sharing apps are a great way to prevent the wastage of surplus or soon-to-expire foods. Many restaurants and grocery supermarkets leverage these apps to provide real-time information to customers on discounts or offers available on soon-to-expire foods.
Restaurants, grocery stores, residential communities, private establishments, NGOs, and food banks can connect on these apps to redistribute surplus food among the needy instead of dumping it into trash cans.
4. Smart Packaging
Smart packaging technology reduces food wastage by monitoring the freshness and quality of food. There are two types of smart packaging:
A new trend that is picking up in smart packaging is the use of biodegradable packing materials made from bamboo, rice husk, sun-dried areca palm leaves, etc.
5. Smart Labeling
Smart labeling technology allows customers to scan labels through QR codes, image recognition, sensors, microchips, etc. It helps them to make informed decisions on their purchases based on the food quality, freshness, temperature, ingredients, origin, storage instructions, and nutrition.
When they purchase the right food, there will be lesser or negligible wastage between farm and fork.
6. Smart Storage
New-age storage solutions such as refrigerators, storage bins, and pantries are connected to wi-fi and equipped with interior cameras, sensors, and RFID. They have several functionalities based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT). These solutions help minimize food wastage in commercial kitchens, grocery supermarkets, food manufacturing companies, warehouses, and cold storage facilities.
They provide alerts to the users to track expiration dates, find forgotten or lost foods to avoid repurchasing and automate purchases of replenishments.
7. Supply Chain Food Waste Tracking
An estimated 30% of the food produced globally is lost or wasted somewhere along the food supply chain. This is primarily due to a lack of availability of food monitoring tools and poor coordination across the value chain.
Food waste tracking apps and software with blockchain, advanced analytics, and imagery can improve traceability and transparency in the supply chain. Supply chain participants can track the food by its origin, harvesting time, ripe time, temperature, physical and chemical properties, expiry date, and transit route to prevent spoilage and wastage.
8. Demand Forecasting
AI-driven demand forecasting models can be useful to avoid food wastage due to overproduction, surplus inventory maintenance, or oversupply. These models can ensure that food is produced in the right quantity and delivered to the right place at the right time. These models eliminate inaccuracy and human judgment errors in demand prediction.
Conclusion
Food waste management technologies are integral to fighting hunger, climate change, and sustainability challenges. However, it is equally important to create awareness and training about these technologies at the farm and community level for holistic impact.
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