Technological innovations for sustainable food systems

Addressing food insecurity

According to the Sustainable Development Goals Report of 2020, 2 billion or 25,9% of the global population experienced moderate or severe food insecurity in 2019. This is an increase of 22,4% in comparison with 2014. Almost 690 million people were undernourished in 2019, up by nearly 60 million from 2014.

COVID-19 poses an additional threat to food systems, as it indirectly reduces purchasing power and the capacity to produce and distribute food, which affects the most vulnerable populations. In 2020, up to 132 million more people may suffer from undernourishment because of COVID-19. One of the most important challenges is how countries are able to develop sustainable agriculture that ensures sufficient quantities of highly nutritional food.

Establishing sustainable agriculture means looking beyond aspects of nutrition and food security, however. We also need to consider the environmental, social and economic dimensions of agricultural practices. In particular, more attention should be paid to securing protein sources, as more consumers want sustainable food that has less of an environmental impact. This is why there is a growing necessity to provide plant-based meat-like foods (PBMs), cultured meats and land-based aquaculture as a means of protein intake.

Smart agriculture

Smart agriculture uses sensors to collect data about soils and crops and their evolution. In order to complement the expertise of farmers, this data can be analysed and become an information base for better decisions. Training of consultants and advisory services is essential. However, the expertise of a farmer and his skills are still the most important components.

Thanks to the technological evolutions of Earth Observation satellites and the strategic investments of public organisations in Earth Observation programmes like Copernicus and Landsat, we’re moving away from an explorational phase into an era where we now have sound socio-economic reasons to position satellites in a lower orbit.

Space and airborne observation systems can provide global, high-quality and near real-time digital information on various parts of the agro-food value chain. This is confirmed, in several examples, by the Earth Observation technology combined with deep learning-based advanced analytics and data fusion techniques.

Apart from improving crop quantity and quality, these technologies will also help balance the economic, environmental and societal responsibility of the global agro-food domain.