When you live in a densely populated county like India, it is not easy to skip your sight from people who are starving. Did you know, global food loss and waste amount to one-third of total food production? It is heartbreaking to see large containers of food waste excluded from homes, restaurants, social gatherings etc. The question is, how can we solve this? 

The solution does not come easily. For instance, there are traditional approaches such as waste collection measurements and questionnaires to tackle consumer behavior- which is the most important contributors to food waste.

The current emergence of the digital era opens the door for food market transformation that drives sustainability. 

 The food consumption market is already embracing digital innovation. Today, consumers use applications to record purchases, monitor their consumption patterns and plan meals with tailored recipes. People can also track food freshness by installing smart reusable sensors for food containers. Digitalization has made consumer waste traceable and measurable, thus allowing the problems to become visible. This can help change behavior. With AI, consumers and producers would be familiar with the information far exceeding what traditional waste collection measures and survey methods currently offer.

AI and food waste 

AI is more than a good Samaritan. It offers a significant ROI for companies that use it. It could help generate up to $127 billion a year by 2020 in the food industry. Food waste is a problem before it even hits consumers' refrigerators.  

A company called Winnow Solutions uses AI to identify and weigh food waste in commercial kitchens. The company's AI automatically assigns a dollar value to each scrap plate dumped into its smart waste bin. AI helps the company identify waste foods correctly more than 80 per cent of the time and is improving as it learns, which is up to 10 per cent more accurate than kitchen staff. 

Even in Kerala, corporate offices have placed AI-powered devices in canteens to monitor food waste. Every time a person deposits waste food from their plates to the bin, the weight of the food will be displayed on the monitor. This was installed to monitor the excess amount of waste.  

AI isn't just for the kitchen. An Israeli startup, Wasteless, developed a dynamic pricing algorithm for perishable products. The company was able to track an item's price in real-time and adjust it based on the expiration date. In addition, the company integrates with a store's inventory management system to automatically discount items with shorter shelf lives.  

Using this model, a store retailer is said to have reduced food waste by 39 per cent while boosting revenues by 110 per cent and still maintaining a positive net margin. 

Need for systematic and sustainable approaches 

Despite what digital innovations and business applications can offer, the steps to control food waste remain fragmented. It requires the capacity of players along the value chain to interpret the food waste information into consumer predictability, organize the production and processing business accordingly and grow the multi-dimensional market. Systemic approaches are needed to scale up disruptive business models for a more sustainable, conscious market.  

The broader digital transformation at different parts of the value chain further proves the necessity of much more systematic and sustainable approaches in the system. Furthermore, the uptake of technologies such as precision agriculture and smart cold chains additionally requires the set-up of a data-driven ecosystem.  

Additionally, governments must guide the market towards sustainable solutions and safeguard key values. Innovations by all stakeholders must consider the specific social and economic routes of food waste in each society and market segment for effectively transforming the agri-food systems of the future. 

Sources:

Forbes

Green Policy Platform