Abstract – Dimitra Springer Link
Dimitra Springer Link – The UN’s Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 12 seeks to achieve sustainable food production and consumption. Including reduced food loss and waste; SDG 2 proposes the goal of zero hunger. In pursuit of these goals, technology arguably has a central role, at every level of the food value chain. To establish this role, the authors identify and examine current technologies aimed at increasing food production. And suitably redistributing unused food, as tactics to combat food loss and waste. With the shared end goal of reducing food insecurity. A proposed 2 × 2 typology illustrates how existing technologies can influence food production, distribution, and consumption, as well as influence the stakeholders in the food production–consumption chain. These insights also inform a research and development agenda pertaining to the need for technology applications. That can increase food production and/or reduce food waste effectively enough to achieve the goal of zero hunger.
Subheading
Achieving sustainable food production and consumption and reducing food loss and waste represent central features of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 12; zero hunger is the primary objective for SDG 2. Both priorities reflect relevant concerns about both global food insecurity. And staggering estimates of food loss and waste; according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service (2010, p. 1), about 30% of the 430 billion pounds of food available goes uneaten, amounting to $162 billion in food lost, or “1.2 pounds of food per person per day.” Other estimates similarly approximate that one-third of all food produced gets wasted and that farms lose 20 billion pounds of food annually (FoodPrint 2018), due to overplanted fields, damage to crops from pests and weather, or low market prices that make it unprofitable to harvest and transport products (Azevedo 2021). Yet globally, nearly 200 million people lack “consistent access to enough food for an active, healthy life” (Brown et al. 2019, p. 980; see also Gustafson 2022; UNWFP 2021), and 600 million people suffer from hunger (Bernabe 2022).
