This year, we honor the first ever anniversary of the International Day of Awareness of Food Loss and Waste. It also occurs amid the global pandemic of COVID-19, which has triggered a global wake-up call to the need to transform and rebalance the way our food is produced and eaten.
The COVID-19 pandemic appears to face major food security threats in many nations. Disruptions of supply chains, quarantine measures, closing of a large portion of the catering sector and schools … All of these measures have resulted in a lack of markets for suppliers and manufacturers, making the problem much more complex while faced with high levels of food waste.
“Startups with emerging technologies will play a vital role in the post-COVID recovery effort and could offer a solution to the potential problems that we will face as a society. This recent investment will be a crucial lifeline for many game-changing innovators and represent the continuing dedication of the food sector to providing safe, balanced and trustworthy food systems.”
Food waste has become a big worldwide problem, as it is produced in vast amounts and poses a threat to the atmosphere. The processing of bio-based products and organic fertilizers from food waste is a feasible strategy for the management of food waste. The processing of food waste into bio-based and organic fertilizers has thus become key to achieving environmental sustainability, which is expected to drive the development of the food waste management industry.
Internationally, if food waste was a country, it would be the third-largest polluting country in the world. When food rots in the landfills, the powerful greenhouse gas methane is released. But the main source of emission comes from growing the food; even though it is composted, food waste also wastes the manure, fuel and other materials that have been used to produce it.
Every year 20kg of food is wasted per person. It is not only about the loss of money it is also causing an environmental disaster. To create an awareness to the people about this problem and also to make a change several anti-food waste companies are appearing in the food tech industry.
Reducing food losses and waste is important in a world where the number of people impacted by hunger has been gradually increasing since 2014, and tons and tons of edible food are wasted every day.
Here are the few companies that use food waste as the ingredients
When a former Starbucks engineer heard about the problem of coffee cherry waste — tiny fruits that contain coffee beans and typically end up rotting on coffee plantations — he produced a new method that converts the fruit into flour and a startup was launched to produce it which is formerly known as Coffee Flour. It is the ingredient that can be added to drinks, baked goods and other products, also helps the coffee farmers to raise their incomes.
When sunflower seeds are refined for their oil, the end product is a rough, dried, wood-like “oilcake” that is commonly used as animal feed. But the ingredients contain more protein than meat, and the creators of this startup noticed that it has value as a food for humans. They discovered a way to process the oilcake with steam, heat, and pressure so that it could be puffed up and made into chips.
Fopo is the European company which saves fruit and vegetables that are on the point of being wasted, freezes them and turns them into a powder that contains most of the nutrition of an original fruit, but can last for as long as two years. The organization originally intended to distribute the powder to non-profits to combat malnutrition but tends to be marketing to customers at the moment.
Things you need to know about booming startups of combating the food waste
Below list represents the top food recycling startups in the world
Too Good To Go and Olio are the interesting apps for fighting food waste.
Too good to go help the food stores to sell their excess food in order to fight food waste instead of throwing it away. Their mission is to control and reduce wasting foods worldwide, and their vision is to create a world where food produced is food consumed.
OLIO is an app that links neighbours to make sure that surplus food and other items are shared instead of being wasted. The location-based app and website let users list and post a photo of the unwanted food items that will otherwise go waste.
According to the research firm Technavio, the food waste management market is estimated to grow by more than $8 billion between 2019 and 2023. It is said that the main investment is in recycling food waste into bio-products and agricultural fertilizers.
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190828005435/en/
The rules of the game in different industry have been changed by several new technology upgrades and also it has changed the world as well. Among those industries, food industry is wondering still how innovative technologies like Big data, Internet of Things can be applied to its business. There are many challenges for the food sector, which includes the food sustainability as well. In this terms Foodtech is leading the way and in the future food tech will be one of the dynamic sectors in fundraising and M&A operation in the upcoming years.
The main objective of the food sector is to respond to changing times and to satisfy the needs of increasingly demanding customers with healthy and more productive eating habits.
We do have lot of questions running in our mind like how food technology is going to influence on what goes to our plate and how tasty is it going to be etc..
But What is the exact definition Food tech?
Food tech is the combination of food and technology which includes companies and projects that use several technologies like AI, Big Data, IOT for the food production to produce more plentiful and better-quality food products.
There are several startups under each category of Foodtech.
Agtech: The below image includes the startups that disrupt the agriculture. They come up with solutions to increase agricultural production and efficiency using drones, sensors and farm management tools. AgTech is also associated with new agricultural products, next generation farms and urban farming.
The agricultural industry is being revolutionized by automation and robotics. Modern agriculture faces many obstacles that are not overcome by conventional agricultural practices. Farmers have finally begun to embrace automation and robotics to overcome these problems. With the introduction of new technologies in the agricultural sector, agriculture has been made more efficient, affordable, viable and profitable.
When it comes to agricultural robotics, it has different types, such as drones, equipment and more. They are used for smart farming, livestock monitoring and more. The use of this technology allows small-scale farmers who do not have access to smartphones to monitor the development or progress.
Let’s take a look at agritech start-ups that use robotics in the agriculture industry.
The below radar includes several startups from different food tech categories like Food science, food service, food coaching, Food delivery and food retail.
Food science: Start-ups designing innovative agricultural products to meet the need for greater transparency, nutritional and environmental considerations. Items vary from industry advancements to progressive disruptions with the use of new technologies.
Food service: Startups are reinventing the hospitality industry. They are developing the form in which horeca companies are operated today. They also build the requirements for a potential restaurant with robots and cloud kitchens.
Food coaching: Startups addressing the question, “Is my diet safe for me? “And what am I going to eat?”. These programs are targeted at the ultimate client to help them to understand their food purchases and diets in order to meet certain personal goals.
Food delivery: Start-ups responding to distribution problems in the food industry, with home delivery of groceries, restaurant food or meals cooked in their kitchens.
Food retail: Startups that build innovations for the food retail industry, from digitization of the supply chain to enhanced in-store service for consumers.
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