How IoT will transform global food production

By 2050, the world’s population will likely have increased by40 percent. According to the Food Aid Foundation, some 11 percent of the world lives in hunger— so how will we gear up to expand our reach to two billion more people than are here already?

To no small degree, the answer is the Internet of Things.

There are three areas in which IoT will help humankind to remain nourished: food production; food distribution; and nutrition tracking. IoT enabling economies of scale at a cost of fractions of a penny per meal.

Food production already benefits from the application of real-time interaction between sensors, connected machinery, and data analytics— all enabled by the always-connected benefits of IoT.

Field sensors feed algorithm-driven systems alerting when the ground is dry, short of nitrogen, or under pest attack; GPS steers driverless machinery to till ground efficiently, taking advantage of natural topology and placing seeds at their optimal location. The data collected can be mined to discover new elements of the harvest. We can take advantage of new patterns and improved dead reckoning.

According toZest Labs, as much as 40 percent of food is wasted in the distribution process, providing a rich opportunity to unlock hidden nutritional value. The addition of RFID chips, and even GPS units, to shipping containers and vehicles, has already had an impact on general delivery efficiency.

With increasingly-affordable, more resource-capable, IoT devices, this capability can be profoundly improved, providing shippers and receivers with the ability to control what isincontainers: adjusting refrigeration levels, for instance, as temperatures fluctuate; or adjusting de-humidification systems to protect against the damage done by excessive moisture when shipping fruit.

In a few short years, huge swaths of that 40 percent of spoiled-in-transit food may be back in the nutritional supply chain.