The Future Of Artificial Intelligence And Robotics In Global Food Security

The world's food insecurity is nothing new since its stark effects are prevalent in low-income countries and are often linked to poverty, conflicts, climate extremes, soil degradation, post-harvest losses, pests, and diseases. Billions of people experience the severity of food insecurity in different forms, resulting from drought, worsening fiscal constraints, currency devaluations, substandard food produce, water shortages, rise in food and oil prices.

According to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), food security means having, at all times, both physical and economic access to sufficient food to meet dietary needs for a productive and healthy life. So, food security is not merely about producing sufficient food but also investing in sustainable food production that is affordable and has nutritional value. The principal focus is to produce enough food consistently to feed your "own" people with a surplus to provide for the nutritional needs of other countries. Food quality and quantity are strategic measures to control the long-standing drivers of acute hunger and its adverse impact on an already broken food system. Before the Covid19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war, parts of the world, especially in Africa, were susceptible to hunger due to staggering cases of conflicts, climate, and market shocks, food losses (at the stage of production, postharvest, and processing), and food waste (at the end of the food chain as a result of the retailer and consumer behavior).

The direct economic consequences of food waste (excluding fish and seafood) run to the tune of $750 billion annually. FAO estimates that nearly a third of the world's food is lost or wasted along the food chain from the farm to the marketplace. Similarly, developing countries suffer more food losses during agricultural production, while in middle-and-high income regions, food waste at the retail and consumer levels tends to be higher. Rapid rise in population, anthropogenic (human-caused) greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs), loss of biodiversity, and eco-systems are a growing concern. However, biological threats account for 40 percent of global food loss, which poses one of the biggest upsets to food security. These country-specific events put a strain on resources and disrupt food supplies globally.