IDM ¦ The future of agriculture
“The food system, where one third of everything
produced is never consumed, is incredibly
broken,” said David Kat, VP Business
Development at Wasteless. “Imagine
you're going into your favourite supermarket,
and you have the choice of two sandwiches
– one that expires in two days and
the other that expires in five days – which
one are you going to pick? People are wrong
to pick the item with a longer shelf life. The
sooner-expiring product is just as healthy,
just as fresh and just as high quality. With
the help of artificial intelligence, we find the
optimal price points to make that sandwich
more attractive to the shopper by lowering
its cost. The result is retailers waste less, sell
more and are able to reward shoppers for
conscious consumer behaviour, which is extremely
important.”
It's an idea that retailers have tried to
harness over the years, with daily mark
downs on fresh products, but their capabilities
of AI dynamic pricing is a potential
game-changer in food waste globally.
“We calculated that, if all grocery retailers
in the developed world used dynamic
pricing to prevent food waste, that we could
be reducing 500 gigatonnes of greenhouse
gases annually, which is about the annual
output of the UK,” added Kat.
People power
Watching news footage or documentaries
on the state of the planet can sometimes
make you feel a little bit powerless and
Robotics will change the way of our food production
leave you wondering what difference you
can make on a planetary scale. The good
news is, if you've eaten today, you’ve already
made a difference. Every time you
make a food purchase, you're voting with
your wallet, you're voting with your palate,
to slowly shift the agricultural system.
The stories in Follow the Food show
that, to create a secure food system for
the future, that's prepared against climate
change, a population boom or even another
global pandemic, it'll be the application of
multiple solutions from farmers, scientists,
retailers and consumers, all working together,
which will have the best chance of
collectively making a difference.
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Follow the Food: Consumer Power :To find
out more or watch the series in full, you
can also visit http://www.bbc.com/followthefood
and follow @BBCFuture on
Facebook and Twitter for all the latest
from the series.
All photos: Rima Armstrong
Quorn Foods label the carbon foot print of their products on packaging
18 · July/August 2021 ¦ international-dairy.com
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