Emerging technologies in the 4th Industrial Revolution, such as IoT, are revolutionizing traditional industries.
Midstream tech startups, which include food safety and traceability, logistics and transport, processing tech raised $1.3billion in funding in 2018. Farm management, sensing and IOT software increased to $945million in that same period.
This is a global issue with China and India investing several billion dollars in agri-food tech.
Today’s global food system is not sustainable long term, neither for the population nor for the earth. Billions of people are left without food and high food waste comes at a high ecological cost.
The current technological transformation taking place has a double bottom line: creating social value with improved transparency as well as significant economic value with enhanced supply chain efficiency.
Every year 1.3 billion tonnes of food is wasted globally. IoT technologies can reduce these levels, effectively lower costs to scale, increase transparency in food systems, empower consumers to make informed decisions and advance innovation in the field
4th Industrial Revolution technologies have the potential to help disrupt frood systems, change the current outlook of consumers and create more effective production systems.
Trackers on logistical assets are compiling critical data about the supply chain, allowing small devices bring the biggest of changes.
The IoT in particular has great potential to collaborate with blockchain to significantly improve food safety and shelf life, reduce food loss and adulteration within the supply chain.
This newly founded visibility also has value in extreme cases, such as food outbreaks and recalls; tracking a bad shipment that has been disbursed to many locations can now be easily tracked with each crate or other logistical asset being traced.
IoT solutions are best equipped to deal with new food safety legislation that have been enacted in recent years in Europe and that are likely to be passed by dozens more countries in the near decade.
The capabilities of IoT are tremendous and growing by the day; sensors make it possible to track the trajectory of products and monitor the transportation and storage conditions such as temperature, humidity and gas. Companies can then optimize the conditions of food transport, and the data can be utilized to improve shelf life management while also ensuring that sourcing is ethical and sustainable.