As the climate crisis begins to impact countries globally, and fundamentally alter how food is grown and stored, humanity’s food concerns continue to become more complex.

This is a problem only being compounded by the war in Ukraine, which has had an unprecedented impact on global food supplies.

Both countries produce a combined total of 14% of the planet’s wheat supplies and 30% of the world’s wheat exports, as well as 60% of the world’s sunflower oil.

While the war in Ukraine continues, combat on the ground there and sanctions in Russia mean that grain exports have been a point of contention for many months.

Despite this, both sides have now agreed to restart shipments, with the first since the start of the war having now left Ukraine ports. However, this doesn’t change the fact that next season’s crops are not being planted due to combat on the ground.

While this is undoubtedly a pressing concern, it’s one that has reachable, tangible solutions – the climate crisis and its impact on global food supplies is considerably more complex.

DIGIT spoke with Ifeyinwa Kanu, founder of food sustainability company IntelliDigest, about the global food crisis, the effects of climate change, and how tech solutions could help.

The climate and global food crises

Our growing population is putting increasing pressure on global resources, which in turn puts further pressure on our planet’s biodiversity. This threatens our food welfare, as well as raising global temperatures.

It will be essential moving forward that world leaders begin taking steps to combat this growing threat and modernise areas such as traditional farming to circumvent the worst impact of these changes.

Kanu said that IntelliDigest is looking to ensure that “no child goes to bed hungry” globally. The firm’s technology helps to empower global food sustainability through technology and innovation and capacity building.

“We develop solutions to help stakeholders in the food system from farm to fork to improve their transition to becoming a more sustainable sector, and really make an impact in addressing the global climate challenge, but more importantly, being able to get more good food to more people, in the most efficient and sustainable ways,” Kanu comments.

“That is our focus at IntelliDigest; ensuring that people understand the impact of the food they eat on their health and on the environment,” she adds.

IntelliDigest was founded in 2016, at a time when the global issues dominating the headlines today were not as pressing of an issue. However, the planet was still experiencing disproportionate availability, an obesity crisis and food insecurity – there were no shortage of challenges.

“We know at that point that over 800 million people were hungry, but the problem has been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic as well as the Russian/Ukraine crisis,” Kanu says.

“We now have more than two billion people who are currently obese, and the number of people who are hungry or at food banks is unbelievable. It is absolutely staggering. I think a lot of damage has been done.”

At 40 degrees centigrade, the recent UK heatwave – the hottest day ever recorded in the UK – was also the first time that farmers had to deal with such direct environmental factors on their crops.

The heatwave caused fruit and vegetables to die on the vine, with farmers voicing concerns that further extreme weather events destined for the UK and the subsequent possible droughts could ruin harvests this year.

“We cannot continue to grow food the way we do; we cannot continue to distribute food the way we do; we cannot continue to consume food the way we have been. We need to completely rethink both ‘farm to fork’ and how we engage with food.”

Supply chain woes

Kanu notes that people often aren’t aware of the over-abundance of food available in the western world. There is a feeling amongst the population that there’s so much availability that you don’t need to worry.

However, when the Covid-19 pandemic struck, panic buying and the resulting empty shelves revealed to the general population the fragility of our current food systems, which Kanu says are “not working”.

She adds: “What Covid-19 exposed us to is that we really don’t have it all, depending on the global supply chain, which is not sustainable and is very fragile.

“What we are seeing is a huge problem where even the resources to grow food are becoming an issue,” Kanu comments.

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She continues: “It’s really making the whole issue more complex and putting a lot of pressure on the producers, especially farmers, on how they can meet these enormous aims.”

With the onset of mass digital transformation projects and abundant data, supply chains have become so optimised to the point that one pain point or failure in the system can create havoc.

Kanu comments: “What Covid-19 exposed to us is that it [the current supply chain] is not something that is sustainable.”

She adds: “It made it difficult for us to be able to go back to the way things used to be in the past. It simply means that if we’re going to move forward in the future, we need to rethink the way we do things as much as possible.”

According to Kanu, global food production and distribution contributes to 30% of the global greenhouse gas emission compared to every other sector, and the vast majority of that is linked to land use, as well as food movement and food waste.

Utilising technology

If we want to change agriculture’s impact on the global climate, it is important for farmers to look at adopting more sustainable practices while consumers learn to plan their meals, Kanu says.

Kanu says she can see agriculture processes moving towards innovative technology such as robotic systems and information modelling.

Information modelling involves using data to automate and improve processes. This is driven by consumers engaging in planning meal consumption thereby providing insight for other stakeholders in the food system such as farmers, hotels/restaurants, retailers, etc. to plan production and select sustainable processes that are more efficient.

Kanu stressed the importance of consumers rethinking the way they engage with food to improve the impact of the food we eat on our health and environment using existing technologies.

Kanu adds: “We are also looking at consumer and satellite data as well as the application of large data mining artificial intelligence to improve food production, distribution, and consumption across the food system from farm to fork. These are the strengths that we will see in the future.”

Additionally, technology can play a huge part in the management of diseases. Research has been carried out to explore how ecosystems can be adapted. Kanu lays out some areas that she sees the technology being utilised in the future.

“Whether in terms of growing different types of flowers within the farm, or the types of crops that are being mixed, and how crop rotations are carried out to ensure effective pest management so you don’t need to put a lot of pesticides into the farm, these are the trends that will define the future of farming, and a lot of these technologies are currently being developed,” she says.

“What we see now is a demand to move away from more of mono-cropping into more regenerative agricultural practices.”

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