Smart Technology to reduce Food Wastage
Renu Chaturvedi
Email: renu_chaturvedi@isb.edu
ISB Institute of Data Science, Hyderabad, India
More than enough food is produced globally every year to feed the global population. Yet, 811 million people go hungry every day. World hunger affects 9.9% of people globally. https://www.actionagainsthunger.org/world-hunger-facts-statistics.
It is appalling is that around 1/3 or approximately 1.3 billion tons of the entire food produced get wasted and that 95% of the discarded food ends up either in landfills or combustion sites. https://www.unep.org/resources/report/unep-food-waste-index-report-2021.
If food waste was a nation, it would rank as the third highest national emitter of greenhouse gases after the US and China. About 6% of Greenhouse gas emissions come from Food Losses & Waste.
https://ourworldindata.org/food-waste-emissions
The Food Waste Index Report of the UN Environment programme supports SDG (Sustainable Development Goal) 12.3 by providing the most comprehensive food waste data collection, Analysis & Modelling, publishing innovative methodologies for countries to measure food wastage of household, retail, and food services, and by tracking national progress towards 2030 & reporting on SDG 12.3.
Sustainable and scalable open-source powered technologies have been increasingly adopted by grocery store chains, food tech companies, meal-kit companies to address the problem of food wastage. Few examples that leverage ML, AI and or data sciences to reduce food wastage are enumerated below:
LMK Group, A Nordic food-tech company, delivered approximately 1.74 million Meal kits in 2020 directly to customer doorsteps. It uses a bespoke Machine Learning Model built on Azure that predicts customer orders. This prediction has helped LMK achieve 1% or less food wastage in the production sector. It does so by offering food producers & suppliers precise forecasting up to 10 weeks in advance not to grow crops that they will perhaps not use.
https://news.microsoft.com/europe/2021/11/11/tackling-food-waste-from-farm-to-fork/
There is significant food waste that arises from storage of food. Danfoss, a Danish manufacturer, has developed a monitoring service that uses sensors that ensure freezers and refrigerators at grocery stores remain at a particular temperature and alerts the staff if there’s any deviation. This prevents food from going bad and extends the life of food items.
Migros, the Turkish retailer uses AI monitors to check the stock status at racks. It generates alarms regarding their condition so that the store can prioritize & promote these items. Bizerva, a German retail technology leader, combines its innovative weighing technology with retail shelving systems capable of monitoring and checking its inventory. Using IoT and dynamic pricing, prices of full-shelf items are lowered in real-time, making them more attractive to buyers and thereby reducing waste. https://news.microsoft.com/europe/2021/11/11/tackling-food-waste-from-farm-to-fork/
Spoiler Alert software is used by Hello Fresh, a large meal-kit company in the US, in all their Distribution Centres. The software counts, analyses waste, suggests reduction techniques and integrates donation into the workflow to keep food from landfills. Winnow, a software adopted by several hotels in the US uses a smart scale and an attached tablet to weigh and code the waste to suggest waste reduction tactics. Companies like Ikea, Sodexo, and Aramark use software startup- LeanPath that uses a camera to store images of what is being wasted and a scale and a tablet to measure & avoid food wastage. Impact Vision uses advanced imagery to determine the ripeness of Avacado without handling or piercing the fruit. Maersk line uses Remote Container Management Software to monitor refrigerated food in real-time. Freshurety’s technology measures the freshness of produce. Disposable sensors are spread across palettes of food to determine the ripeness and freshness of produce. The produce is then allocated trays to be used differently in the organization- as cut fruit/sold whole/used in cooking etc. thereby minimizing food wastage. https://www.supplychaindive.com/news/4-technologies-food-waste-in-supply-chain/532155/
Food Wastage is a bigger problem in developing countries as most produce is lost in Storage and Transportation. Mavuno Link, an Aagritech solution developed in Nairobi, has reduced 5.2 million tons of food wastage every year. The application has connected farmers, drivers, and customers on a shared digital marketplace platform to spend minimal time on logistics.
“At IBM, we do our best to apply data, knowledge, computing power, and insights to solve difficult problems. The regional winners, Mavuno Link, have embodied the Call for Code Challenge to have developers ambitiously tackle the pressing issues we are currently facing during this pandemic using the power of AI, cloud, blockchain, and IoT,” said Caroline Mukiira, IBM country general manager, East Africa. https://www.businessdailyafrica.com/bd/corporate/technology/nairobi-tech-start-up-leads-region-tackling-food-waste-366076
From predicting consumption patterns and conveying them back to producers on what-to-grow, to helping companies with a resilient supply-chain that captures inventory data in real-time, to using IOT for differential pricing according to expiration date/ time; the whole co-ordinated value-chain of the consumer can be connected. All of this reduces inefficiencies in the food supply chain and helps reduce food wastage. It is possible that in the near future, data science can ensure that no one ever goes hungry in the world.
#IIDS #IBM #ISB #MavunoLink #AI #Agritech #MaerskLine #Freshurety’s #Winnow #LeanPath #SpoilerAlert #HelloFresh # Migros #Bizerva #Danfoss #LMKGroup #foodwasteindexreport #supply-chain #foodwastage
