How machine learning and blockchain can solve world hunger

According to the UN Hunger Report, more than 800 million people do not have enough food to eat, leaving almost 10% of the total population suffering from hunger (food insecurity) every day. The World Food Program (WFP) reports that more than 48 million people face acute levels of hunger, with the threat of acute malnutrition, starvation and death. Compared to people experiencing acute food insecurity at crisis level or worse in 2020, there will be an increase of close to 40 million people in 2021 suffering from acute food insecurity at crisis level or worse. The UN hunger hotspots report highlights Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Sudan and Yemen as the countries with the highest levels of hunger in the world. Many factors such as conflicts, extreme weather patterns and inequalities caused by economic shocks and health crises, including the coronavirus pandemic, are driving food insecurity around the world. Even the war in Ukraine has worsened the hunger crisis as conflict limits global food supplies, drives up prices and threatens the world’s most vulnerable people and countries.

On the other hand, we waste more than 1.3 billion tons of food worth almost 2.6 trillion dollars. According to the latest UN research carried out to support global efforts to halve food waste by 2030, it was found that almost 931 million tonnes of food, representing almost 17% of the total food available to consumers in 2019, went into the bins of households , retailers, restaurants and other food services.

Somdip Dey

There is still hope in fighting food insecurity

However, we live in an era of the digital age where advances in technologies such as machine learning and blockchain have been eclipsed by the progress of the fourth industrial revolution. With such advances in technology, we still have hope of fighting food insecurity around the world. Machine learning is a data processing method that is able to understand patterns automatically in digital data very well and henceforth the computers are able to perform further actions based on the learned patterns from the digital data. On the other hand, blockchain gives us the flexibility to digitize any physical asset with the comfort of internet security.

Apps focused on food waste, not hunger reduction

In recent years, we have noticed an increase in the development of several applications that aim to help reduce food waste. For example, the OLIO app helps consumers share their leftovers with neighbors, and on the other hand, we have Too Good To Go and Karma-like apps that help reduce food waste at the retail level by enabling stores and supermarkets to sell soon-to-expire food at a discounted price. While these apps help tackle the food waste crisis to some degree, none of these apps proactively help reduce hunger.

Currently, most of the hunger-related apps available aim to reduce food insecurity through a donation-based operation. For example, the ShareTheMeal app from the UN’s World Food Program seeks a donation of $0.80 per meal, which in return buys a meal to be distributed in food-insecure areas of the world. On the other hand, we have the nosh app, which is a machine learning-based food management app that helps consumers buy soon-to-expire food at a discounted price from food vendors, with a portion of the proceeds from the transaction going to hunger-related charities. While these apps are a step toward eradicating food waste and hunger, today’s technologies can be further expanded to address hunger-related issues more effectively.

Today, many key stakeholders in the food supply chain still use distributed paper trails as part of food production, consumption, surplus and waste, making it more difficult to track trends in these statistics throughout the food supply chain. For example, supermarkets may be aware of how much food is sold or stocked in inventory, but they may not have accurate data on consumers’ food consumption and waste habits. Similarly, farmers may have an idea of ​​how much food is produced or sold to warehouses, shops and supermarkets, but farmers may not have accurate information about how much food is wasted at the shop, warehouse, supermarket and consumer level. This dissociation of information about food in the food supply chain creates an abstract layer that makes it more difficult to track and trace data on food consumption and waste, which subsequently makes it difficult to move food surpluses and food waste to food insecure areas to address hunger. -related matters.

The role that digitization and blockchain can play in solving the crisis

To tackle such a problem, the food supply chain needs to adopt standardized digitization of the food data that can be achieved with the help of blockchain technology since such technology makes it easier to trace and verify the source of the data. At the same time, machine learning can be applied to such digitized food data on the blockchain in the supply chain to understand patterns of consumption, surplus and waste throughout the supply chain so that if there is food surplus or waste in areas, it can be moved in the areas affected by food insecurity.

Moreover, blockchain-based cryptocurrencies can also play an important role in reducing hunger. Compared to fiat currencies such as dollars, rupees and pounds, consumers do not need a bank account or have to go through strict financial rules to hold, buy or sell cryptocurrencies. This means that cryptocurrencies can be used by anyone regardless of geopolitical concerns, making such a currency more preferable to be used to eradicate hunger. For example, companies in developed regions such as the United Kingdom and the United States that are trying to reduce food waste can convert part of their profits into cryptocurrencies that can be sent to food insecure areas such as Sudan, Ethiopia and Yemen so that the cryptocurrencies can be used to buy and deliver food in these regions without worry about general questions related to currency conversion and cross-border transfers. However, this type of technological system will require cooperation between various units within the supply chain and authorities. And also calls for the destigmatization of blockchain-based technologies like cryptocurrencies worldwide.

Although it may seem that we are far from achieving this utopia of a world without hunger with the use of technology today, this dream can still come true in a short time if we all become more aware of hunger-related issues and keep an open mind when we adopt such technologies. to create a fairer world – a world without hunger.

The author, Somdip Dey, is a lecturer at the University of Essex, UK