How does food technology support sustainability within the F&B value chain and associated businesses?
FOUNDER OF MAXITERRA, GMBH
“F&B companies have been quick to move in responding to the increased consumer demand for healthy, fairly-priced food products with limited negative impact on the environment. Given the huge diversity within and complexity of food value chains, technology will continue to have a big role in making the F&B value chains more sustainable by:
1. Enabling end-to-end traceability of all food products: monitoring of deforestation and farm emissions, measuring farmer incomes, use of inputs including water, farming methods, logistics-related emissions, benchmarking of packaging and measuring food waste within the F&B value chains
2. Optimizing input use & efficient farming techniques: Technology allows for big farm operators to minimize their input use and optimize their operations by maximizing incomes and minimizing environmental impact
3. Connecting consumers more directly to primary producers: Consumers want to be directly connected to the primary producers of the food they eat and technology is making these farm-to-fork linkages efficient easier
4. Facilitating the scaling up process: By reaching hundreds of millions of smallholder farmers quickly and efficiently, technology is also making it easier to scale up solutions.”