Blink:

I am an advocate for the AI technology being designed/implemented to solve our planet’s health and environmental issues. Today I would like to provide an update and give kudos to the startup Freshflow who has developed software to help grocers reduce food waste.                       

Read On:

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization released their report “The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2023” earlier in the month. They estimated between 691 million to 783 million people faced hunger last year. If you were to look at the median of their calculations roughly 735 million, it equates to 122 million more people went hungry than in 2019 before the pandemic disrupted the world. They also revealed nearly 30 percent of humanity or approximately 2.4 billion people did not have access to adequate food last year (2022) and 3.1 billion people were unable to afford a healthy diet. Note: Given the complexity of measuring world hunger, the U.N. defines hunger as the long-term or persistent inability to meet minimum dietary requirements. Alarming! A major setback to the U.N.’s charter of eliminating hunger by 2030.

Solution? There is no one solution. It will take a variety of innovative solutions in the global food system to eliminate hunger. A good starting point I addressed in my original Innovative Planetary Technology post would be precision agriculture, Agritech, the use of AI technology and technological innovation to improve the efficiency and maximize output of agricultural processes. However, I am concerned the progress of AI data driven agriculture will be slowed down by the ravages of climate change. Consequently, I believe a pressing problem we are currently contending with is the environmental impact of reduced food waste which can also generate numerous solutions to eliminate hunger. Note: The UN estimates 17 per cent of total food produced annually goes to waste at both the retail and consumer level. Fresh produce (fruits and vegetables) at retail is a leading contributor of food waste primarily attributed to antiquated (e.g., manual) stocking systems. Freshflow, a Berlin- based software company has developed an AI-powered automated forecasting platform to predict the amount of produce a retailer will need. Different data point factors analyzed include weather, season, and local events as well as historic retailer data to forecast supply and demand. An early adapter, one of Germany’s leading grocery retailers has already experienced 30 per cent less food waste which also resulted an estimated 17 per cent revenue boost.

Remember, the management of waste reduction in produce throughout the global food system thanks to AI driven platforms like Freshflow, is an immediate solution to fight hunger by reallocating the unused produce normally wasted.

Opinions Welcomed!