How Food-Tech Innovation is tackling the Sustainable Development Goals.
Last month, I had the opportunity to present the results of my research on an integrated business model approach for the UNSDGs (United Nations Sustainable Development Goals) at the Goals on Tour Exhibition, at the Seeds & Chips Global Food Innovation Summit.
The event included a vast array of speakers, from institutions and political leaders to young change-makers, and served as a showcase for some of the most innovative entrepreneurs of the moment. From farm to fork, food-tech can surely play a crucial role towards the achievement of the UNSDGs by improving resource efficiency in food systems, increasing traceability and reducing waste.
Regarding food systems efficiency, the meat industry has undergone some especially interesting events in the past months. Even though veggie-burgers are not a novelty, a new wave of plant-based “meat” is grabbing the market’s attention. On April, Burger King’s roll-out of the partnership with Impossible Foods (a start-up producing burgers made of soy-heme, that “bleed” and taste like meat) started supplying beef-less Whoppers nationwide in the U.S.
At the beginning of May, the IPO of BeyondMeat (a company producing plant-based meat alternatives) surpassed the U$3 billion mark, and closed the first day of trade 163% above its IPO price. It was Nasdaq’s best-performing first-day IPO in nearly two decades, and by the beginning of this week, it had increased its initial price another three-fold. Moreover, the company was seed invested by Tyson Foods Inc., a company that produces 1 out of every 5 pounds of meat consumed in the U.S., and is now heavily investing in animal-free solutions.
Alongside the promises of improving human health and animal welfare, these innovations represent a paradigm change in an industry that accounts for 51% of global greenhouse-gas emissions and 45% of global surface area for livestock systems. Therefore, representing significant positive impacts on climate-change and global resources constraints.
Informational technologies like block-chain are also playing a pivotal role in harnessing innovation in food systems. While block-chain helps to ensure data transparency and integrity, it allows traceability throughout the supply-chain. By doing so, it allows a smart inclusion of citizens and corporations, and the rewarding of good-practices in the form of value-transfer.
Traceability is extremely important to allow corporations to safeguard human rights throughout the value chain, and be accountable for their breaches. As highlighted by Kerry Kennedy during her speech at Seeds & Chips, innumerable cases of human rights abuses still happen in the supply chain of major corporations, and developed countries are not an exception. Through the example of the modern slavery case in the tomato fields in Southwest Florida (USA), it becomes clear how traceability plays a crucial role alongside certification and due-diligence when it comes to defending human rights.
Finally, the joint application of technologies like block-chain and artificial intelligence allows unprecedented waste-reduction at the retail level. Addressing food waste is extremely important for the achievement of the SDGs since, accordingly to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), roughly one third of the food produced in the world for human consumption every year — approximately 1.3 billion tons — gets lost or wasted.
Water, land, energy, labor and capital are squandered in great proportion by food loss and waste, and unnecessary greenhouse gases are emitted both in the production process and by the landfills, contributing to global warming and climate change. Taking this into account, companies like Wastless are using machine-learning to reduce waste (up to 33%) and increase revenues by applying dynamic pricing for grocers, therefore enabling an unprecedented transition to more sustainable retail systems.
Undoubtedly, food-tech innovations are creating the technical means to make our production and retail systems incredibly more efficient. But in order to bridge this sub-optimum gap, it is absolutely necessary that governments provide legal frameworks that can effectively and timely foster innovation, and that information is accessible to the population so it can reflect actively on conscious consumption patterns.
For more information:
1. “Risks associated with processed meats.” Archives of Internal Medicine.
2. “Livestock & Climate Change.” Goodland &: Anhang, 2017, Worldwatch.org.
3. “A Global Assessment of the Water Footprint of Farm Animal Products.” Mekonnen &: Hoekstra, 2012.
4. “Global Initiative on Food Loss and Waste Reduction, “Key facts on food loss and waste you should know”, FAO. Accessible at: http://www.fao.org/save-food/resources/keyfindings/en/
