3,075 research outputs found

    Blockchain For Food: Making Sense of Technology and the Impact on Biofortified Seeds

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    The global food system is under pressure and is in the early stages of a major transition towards more transparency, circularity, and personalisation. In the coming decades, there is an increasing need for more food production with fewer resources. Thus, increasing crop yields and nutritional value per crop is arguably an important factor in this global food transition. Biofortification can play an important role in feeding the world. Biofortified seeds create produce with increased nutritional values, mainly minerals and vitamins, while using the same or less resources as non-biofortified variants. However, a farmer cannot distinguish a biofortified seed from a regular seed. Due to the invisible nature of the enhanced seeds, counterfeit products are common, limiting wide-scale adoption of biofortified crops. Fraudulent seeds pose a major obstacle in the adoption of biofortified crops. A system that could guarantee the origin of the biofortified seeds is therefore required to ensure widespread adoption. This trust-ensuring immutable proof for the biofortified seeds, can be provided via blockchain technology

    Towards a new healthy and sustainable food model. Transition of food policies: from “C40 to Barcelona”

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    Treballs Finals de Grau de Nutrició Humana i Dietètica, Facultat de Farmàcia i Ciències de l'Alimentació, Campus de l'Alimentació de Torribera, Universitat de Barcelona. Curs: 2019-2020. Tutor: Itziar de Lecuona[eng] The concern for sustainability has risen in recent years because of the harmful consequences we are suffering. Although vegetarian dietary patterns have been widely adopted in order to mitigate the environmental footprint, the possibility for other diets to have similar outcomes has been highly discussed. The transition of the food system model towards a healthier and more sustainable one is urgently necessary and while meeting the committed goals of COP21 and 2030 Agenda is still possible. An integrative and multisectorial approach will be efficient if the established actions tackle issues across the food supply chain at all levels, from food production to food consumption. At the consumption extent, feeding the 2050 expected population is possible if a healthy and sustainable diet (omnivorous dietary patterns with very limited animal source content) is implemented globally with scope for adaptation to regional culture and preferences. Aligned with this mission, Barcelona is a pioneer city in the national context by being committed to international organizations, such as C40 Cities, to reduce their impact on climate change and apply measures based on strong and high-quality evidence such as a reduction of red meat in school canteens.[cat] L’empitjorament del canvi climàtic en la última dècada ha fet que la preocupació per la sostenibilitat s’hagi convertit en un tema emergent essent la implementació d’una dieta vegetariana, una de les modificacions més comunes. Tot i així, estudis recents corroboren que no és necessari eliminar les fonts d’origen animal per aconseguir un impacte mediambiental similar al de les dietes vegetarianes. Tanmateix, la transició cap a un sistema alimentari més saludable i respectuós amb el planeta s’ha de realitzar amb urgència ja que encara és possible assolir els objectius fixats pel COP21 i l’Agenda 2030. El nou sistema ha de destacar per la integritat entre els diferents sectors i és per això que les accions requerides per tal que el procés sigui eficaç han d’estar adreçades a tots als fases de la cadena alimentària des de la producció fins a la distribució. Serà possible alimentar la població mundial estimada al 2050 si s’adopta una dieta omnívora modificada (amb un contingut molt reduït de productes d’origen animal) que a part de ser saludable també és respectuosa amb el planeta. Barcelona ha estat pionera, en aquesta mateixa línia, a nivell nacional pel seu compromís amb diverses organitzacions mundials, com és la C40 Cities o amb els objectius de les Nacions Unides, per tal de reduir la seva petjada ecològica. Això s’ha aconseguit a través de la implementació de diverses normatives, basades en evidència científica d’alta qualitat d’entre les quals destaca la reducció de la carn vermella als menjadors escolars

    AGRICULTURE 4.0 - THE USE OF SMART TECHNOLOGIES FOR HIGHPERFORMANCE AGRICULTURE

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    Given that the labor market in Romania has an acute shortage of labor (about 1 million people), in agriculture this lack is felt even more acutely because the population in the villages is declining and aging, thus it is increasingly difficult for Romanian farmers to find labor, let alone skilled labor. One solution can be the digitization of agriculture, ie the introduction of the latest management concepts, sensors, automation, robots, etc. in the modernization of work processes in agriculture, thus reducing the need for labor, while increasing productivity and efficiency in agriculture

    Future Internet for Safe and Healthy Food from Farm to Fork

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    At the present time, we are facing an emerging problem which will become even more urgent and critical in the coming decades: the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) estimates an increase of the world population from the current 6 billion people to 9-11 billion people by 2050 leading to a doubling of world-wide food demand. It is generally believed that that smart, data-rich ICT-services and applications, in combination with advanced hardware, can provide the much needed breakthroughs to producing enough good quality food in a safe and environmental-sound way. Therefore, the EU’s Future Internet Public-Private Partnership (FI-PPP) program (www.fi-ppp.eu) aims to make service infrastructures and business processes more intelligent, more efficient and more sustainable through tighter integration with Future Internet (FI) technologies

    Vision Research Agenda to 2025

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    The TP Organics Vision Research Agenda was prepared between June 2007 and July 2008 on the basis of wide-ranging discussions with farmers’ organizations, scientists, organic traders and retailers, and EU-wide umbrella organizations representing a variety of commercial, non-commercial and civil interests. Up to now, research projects and national framework programmes on organic agriculture have addressed immediate technology gaps in organic agriculture and food production. This Vision has been politically expedient and has given rise to a greater number of producers and professional skills for the task of serving unexpectedly fast growing consumer driven markets. Thus, many organic research projects had a short term perspective only. In contrast to this, our vision takes a long-term perspective on the research needs of organic agriculture and food systems. The three strategic research priorities presented in the vision focus in particular on the inconsistencies between economy, ecology and social cohesion in agriculture and food production and propose research activities and insightful learning concepts for organic and other farming systems

    Barriers to the development of carbon farming technologies in Europe: The case of Liquid Natural Clay (LNC)

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    Human-related activities are impacting the Earth at a large scale, and the global mean surface temperature increased by 1.1oC above pre-industrial levels between 2011 and 2020. The increase in greenhouse gas emissions released into the atmosphere results in climate change. One large emitting sector is agriculture. However, agriculture has the potential to significantly contribute to the sustainability transition by implementing farming practices where carbon is stored in the soil – referring to carbon farming. Climate change is also affecting the soil negatively and has been a driver for desertification and increased droughts. Carbon farming can play a role in both preventing and combating desertification. Liquid Natural Clay (LNC) is the case for the research and is a niche innovation developed by the Norwegian Agri-tech company Desert Control AS. The technology enriches the fertility capability in sandy soils and degraded lands. Sandy soils contain low soil organic matter, meaning the degree of soil organic carbon is low. Plant growth will increase the amount of soil organic matter and soil organic carbon. Therefore, LNC can be seen as a carbon farming technology. The research explores barriers to the development of carbon farming technologies in Europe and how these barriers can be adapted to the research case, LNC. The research primarily focuses on European Union (EU) policies at the intersection of climate action, agriculture, and technology development, and whether the EU policies are suitable to overcome the identified barriers. The data for the research have been collected by conducting a document analysis, a literature review, seven semi-structured interviews, and attending two conferences. The data collection identified ten barriers, eight of which were addressed by the abovementioned policies. Moreover, it was found that most of the barriers were relevant to the development of the research case, the niche innovation LNC, to varying degrees. The research concludes that the policies are suitable to overcome the barriers to a certain extent. Climate action, sustainable agriculture, carbon farming, technology development, and desertification are receiving more political focus now than ever before. The EU allocates large amounts of money to sustainable innovation, research, and development. In contrast, most policies do not explicitly explain how to overcome the barriers, even though the barriers are addressed in the policies. Although, the increased awareness of the barriers is a start. The abovementioned policies are either communications, strategies, or initiatives. None are legally binding, even though some policy targets are legally binding. However, stimulating positive, voluntary engagement can be equally efficient to increase awareness and facilitate further development
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