Wastage of food is one of the significant drawbacks for all. It is not only causing damage to money but equally damaging the environment. This is an important matter of concern that needed to be taken care of. The source has reported almost 40% of annual food products either go to waste or thrown away. Costing more than $600 billion approx per year to the world economy and not only that, it affects the environment to a large extent.
Apart from other non-essential reason, the quality supply chain can be blamed for the same. This is a problem that brings the technology into the agriculture. The technique involved all the way from farming to the storage of food.
Technologies To Reduce Food Waste:
For instance, a British robotic company has combined Artificial Intelligence and Robotic technique to bring an accurate farming model. “Farming As A Service”.
The model includes delivering a farmer with the best knowledge about the land. Such as what part of the area is good and where to plant the seed. Also, it aims to draw a profit map for them to highlight which section they should use to grow. The technical team expects, using the technology, it can reduce the wastage and usage of chemical to 90%.
Smarter Movement
Food transit is essential, carrying food from the farm to store. There are also innovations to constant monitoring of the food during the transport.
A team of scientist from Switzerland have developed a technique to monitor the sensor of the food during the process of carrying the product to the storage. They have developed the sensor which can constantly monitor the fruit, and send regular feedback of the food condition. It also helps to monitor the temperature of the container.
A startup Zest Labs bringing the same technology to the market, that can help you make a smarter decision by checking the real-time date of the food.
Smart Sanitization
In addition to the supply chain, there are another startup ebeam Technologies. This is a comet group brand, introduced to sanitize the crops and other dry food they use the electron beam technology.
Likewise, the liquid food packaging treated before packaging and processing stage. They have designed the technology is a way that it can accomplish the entire process without damaging the corp and even the test of the crops. The technology is still under development as they are partnering with other food giants to test the parameter of the technology.
The most significant aspect of the technology is it can sanitize the food without impacting the primary quality of the food. That makes it a great technique to prevent the food from being damaged. They made an early test on the coriander and they are able to sanitize the coriander only reducing the only minimum percentage of oil. This is roughly three times lesser than when tested with steam.
The startup is closely working with the food safety institute to develop the technology even further. The institute is working to bring skill and competence around the technology.
One essential element about the technology is missing is the information and feedback like supply chain. The next step of developing the technique to little further is to add the information section for each crop.
Smart Data
Cargill’s food giants are experimenting to bring the transparency between the end users and the supply chain stuff, by constantly monitoring the crop. They are using Blockchain technology to track the food closely from all the way to the firm to market.
It is a smart technology that any curious customer can find out the information about the crop. Every food is marked with unique ID mark. To complete the information, SMS the code to the tracker. You will get the information about the crop and its origin. All the information is stored in the Blockchain.
The project is not large scale rather only a limited amount of information can be stored. The technology cannot even provide the information about how the information stored about the food we eat.
Therefore, Blockchain played an important role in keeping up with the transparency level and to all level of information.
Final Thoughts
Preventing the wastage of food is very important, not only monetary factor but also an environmental factor. The damage is not limited to economic impact, but also it has a greater impact on our health and also the environmental damage. The aforesaid technology is just the handful effort of making the initiative more efficient.
But unless we all are concerned about our own health and our environment, technology can’t do much about this regard. Technology can also show you the way, but it is you who can take the real steps.
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