In the U.S. it is estimated that up to 25 percent of fruits and vegetables are thrown away, at a cost of $35 billion a year.
The problem is not only that this wasted food could feed people, it is also adding to climate change. According to the United Nation’s Environment Program, “wasting food is not only an inefficient use of ecosystem services [like water] and of the fossil fuel-based resources that go into producing them, but also a significant contributor to global warming. In the USA, organic waste is the second highest component of landfills, which are the largest source of methane emissions.”
One of the major problems is that much of our food travels long distances and through many hands as it journeys from farm to plate. And as it travels, the temperature often changes dramatically. Vegetables sit in the extremely hot sun after being picked, for example, and even the temperature within a refrigerated semi varies widely.
While eating more local food is one answer to the problem (the food then travels far less), better tracking of food as it is stored and transported would also allow for more produce to reach our mouths less expensively.
Today Intelleflex, a company based in Santa Clara, California, announced they have made this technology possible. The system uses RFID tags and a cellular reader that includes a global positioning device (GPS), to help identify a case of tomatoes sitting at the airport, for example. But beyond that, the tags also now record temperature and time data and immediately sends all the information to a cloud-based network.
This system has several benefits over what currently exists in the food industry. It allows companies to more easily manage produce and to better gauge the shelf-life of food. Tomatoes sitting in the sun on the runway for hours then should be sold before those that sat inside the cool airport before being loaded onto the plane.
But perhaps most importantly the company says using the reusable tags is cheap. At $1 a use or less, ensuring a $500 pallet of fruit arrives safely to consumers is cost effective even for small producers. The system also does not require expensive software to run it, and makes the data available to producers via the cloud.
What is exciting then is that this type of technology can potentially help transform the food system. By allowing farmers to easily and cost effectively track food, small and midsized producers will be able to meet new food safety requirements demanded by their distributors. And if our food system can better integrate local small and midsized farms into the larger network of supermarkets and restaurants without waste, we will also be able to deliver safer, more nutritious food to people everywhere, for less.