{"id":484,"date":"2016-10-03T23:38:14","date_gmt":"2016-10-03T23:38:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rsoftsolution.com\/blog\/how-to-feed-the-world-with-sensors-data-and-local-production.html"},"modified":"2016-10-03T23:38:14","modified_gmt":"2016-10-03T23:38:14","slug":"how-to-feed-the-world-with-sensors-data-and-local-production","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rbsitsoftwaresolution.in\/blog\/how-to-feed-the-world-with-sensors-data-and-local-production.html","title":{"rendered":"How to feed the world with sensors, data and local production"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

Today, food and agriculture entrepreneurs took the stage at the White House lawn for\u00a0SXSL 2016<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0discuss the potential and limits of\u00a0technology\u00a0to feed a burgeoning world population.\u00a0According to the most recent available estimates from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)\u00a0793\u00a0million people<\/a> in the world do not have enough to eat today.<\/p>\n

And with a global\u00a0population expected to grow to\u00a09 billion by 2050, the U.S Agency for International Development (US AID)\u00a0expects that agricultural production will need to increase by at least 60%<\/a> from current levels to serve our nutritional needs.<\/p>\n

The founder of Food + Tech Connect<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 a media company\u00a0that focuses its reporting and events\u00a0on\u00a0improving our global food systems \u2014 Danielle Gould, moderated the discussion.<\/p>\n

Gould\u00a0pointed out that in recent years, consumers have been driving big\u00a0trends in food production and retail \u2014 they want\u00a0more food that\u2019s produced locally, organically, and with ingredients that are clearly listed by producers.<\/p>\n

Retailers like CostCo, Whole Foods and Meijer are all selling local and organic food today, Gould noted. While\u00a0consumer packaged goods juggernauts\u00a0have lost billions in the past decade as consumers rejected their chemical-laden products,\u00a0and flocked instead\u00a0towards brands with more of a natural bent.<\/p>\n

\"SXSL<\/p>\n

SXSL 2016 \u2013 Feeding the Future panelists (clockwise from top left): Will Allen, Caleb Harper, Danielle Gould, Nikiko Masumoto and Maria Rose Belding.<\/em><\/p>\n

The founder of Growing Power Inc.<\/a>, Will Allen, said these trends are a good thing, and could encourage a more distributed and equitable\u00a0approach to food production. But such consumer demands can only be met\u00a0if the U.S. makes an investment in new agricultural infrastructure,\u00a0Allen suggested.<\/p>\n

Growing Power\u00a0advocates for and teaches urban agriculture in order to bring nutritious, fresh foods and food-related jobs into neighborhoods\u00a0that lack access to them\u00a0otherwise.<\/p>\n

Allen<\/a>\u00a0specifically spoke of\u00a0indoor, greenhouse, hoop house, rooftop and wall farms, all built using technologies that can partially replace outdated methods that he said are depleting our soil and other environmental resources.<\/p>\n

He lamented that large, outdoor farms, due to climate change and pollution, have become unsustainable, whether they\u2019re\u00a0raising fruit in tropical climes and shipping it to cold weather states, or\u00a0cultivating fish in the oil-polluted waterways of Louisiana.<\/p>\n

A peach farmer and author named Nikiko Masumoto<\/a>, with Masumoto Family Farm<\/a>,\u00a0added that inspiration and inclusiveness should be part of the country\u2019s investments in agriculture.<\/p>\n

She and Allen both referenced the fact that the current generation of farmers are quickly aging and will soon\u00a0be hoping to retire.<\/p>\n

While she grew up in the industry, she said, farming has not\u00a0held a public image as an inclusive industry, welcoming of women and men of different ages, races or sexual orientation.<\/p>\n

Maria Rose Belding<\/a>, a\u00a0co-founder of\u00a0MEANS database,\u00a0spoke of accessibility of another kind.<\/p>\n

\u201cAccess to good food can happen in low income communities, but good food is not a given. It is not available to everyone at a price that everybody can afford. It\u2019s really important to recognize that even if we can advance [the production and distribution of] good food for\u00a0people living above the poverty line, we have to also do it for people living below,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

MEANS Database<\/a> is a tech non-profit in the food recovery business. It works with groceries, restaurants, caterers and other food businesses that have excess inventory to adhere to state and federal health laws, but get that inventory to pantries and other organizations that can feed hungry people.<\/p>\n

Rose Belding also said, \u201cYou should not have to pay to do the right thing,\u201d in order to help feed the world.<\/p>\n

A director for MIT\u2019s Open Agriculture lab<\/a>, Caleb Harper, said he agreed. Too\u00a0often, discussions about\u00a0hunger and climate change feel dire and hopeless, he said. He attributed part of that hopelessness to the fact that farmers\u00a0have\u00a0lost some of their communal power\u00a0to corporate practices, namely companies staking out intellectual property claims around\u00a0technologies that can help produce more or better\u00a0foods.<\/p>\n

Harper\u2019s\u00a0team of researchers and\u00a0engineers are aiming to infuse some optimism into the industry, in several ways.<\/p>\n

MIT Open Ag is\u00a0teaching kids and techies about food, hoping to turn some of them into farmers. And they\u2019re building a massive, open database of agricultural data, and agtech software, so that anyone who wants\u00a0to get involved in feeding the world can do so without paying a lot to get started or keep a competitive edge.<\/p>\n

Across the board, panelists said they were eager to see new technologies like sensors and chemical analysis give consumers great information about their food, and to see how an increasingly distributed food system \u2014 comprising rooftop, indoor, greenhouse and other farms \u2014 could begin to eradicate hunger and create new jobs in urban neighborhoods across the U.S.<\/p>\n

Photo credit: Masumoto Family Farm<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Featured Image: Matt Wade<\/a>\/Flickr<\/a> UNDER A CC BY 2.0<\/a> LICENSE<\/small><\/p>\n

Article source: https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2016\/10\/03\/how-to-feed-the-world-with-sensors-data-and-local-production\/?ncid=rss<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, food and agriculture entrepreneurs took the stage at the White House lawn for\u00a0SXSL 2016\u00a0to\u00a0discuss the potential and limits of\u00a0technology\u00a0to feed a burgeoning world population.\u00a0According to the most recent available <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":485,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17],"tags":[23],"class_list":["post-484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-networking-and-communication","tag-network-and-communication"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t