Food Security
7 June 2020
Food security has never been more relevant with diseases such as Mad cow, African swine fever (ASF) and now COVID 19. Consumers more than ever want to know where their food has come from, how it has been treated and the journey it’s been on. PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) estimates that every second kilogram of beef sold in China under the banner of being Australian isn't Australian beef.
Food security, as defined by the United Nations’, means that all people, at all times, have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food needs for an active and healthy life.
The UN estimates that the current world population of 7.6 billion is expected to reach 8.6 billion in 2030, 9.8 billion in 2050. Farmers must produce 70% more food by 2050 to feed the population which amounts to 1bn tonnes more wheat, rice and other cereals and 200m more tonnes of beef and other livestock 72% of which will be consumed in developing countries, up from the 58% today.
Increasing food production is not the only solution to address current and future food requirements but also the need to improve data accessibility, transparency and tracking of food from producers to consumers to avoid such huge loses. Preliminary estimates show that up to 1.3 billion tonnes of food are lost and wasted per year, equivalent to 24% of all food produced for human consumption.
Inefficient supply chains, large intermediaries, lack of market access, technology limitations and indirect distribution channels are cited as key contributing factors to such losses. Better systems through commercialisation and better access to technologies and finance across the supply chain will deliver growth opportunities with the knock on effect of higher incomes for farmers and agricultural SMEs.
Axichain is leading the Track and Trace solution with our blockchain technology authenticating the product with clean data, tracking the product from farm through the supply chain and all the way to international destinations and plate. Consumers can have more confidence that they know what they are eating and where it came from.
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