Food cold chain technologies such as computer vision, artificial intelligence and data analysis are tracking fresh produce from the farm to trucks to stores in an effort to reduce food waste.

The moment a strawberry is picked in the field, it begins to decay. From there, it’s a race to deliver it fresh to the consumer. This was easier a few generations ago when most people worked in agriculture and lived close to food production. Distributing food today is more complex as more consumers rely on supermarkets to get food.

Today, delivery of perishable food relies on what’s known as the food cold chain. This vastly complex distribution of food from farm to fork relies on maximizing the quality and longevity of crops.

Adding artificial intelligence (AI), computer vision and cloud computing to food inspections, trucking and refrigeration is bringing efficiency to food logistics.

“The goal is straightforward and pretty simple,” said Dan Hodgson, a partner with Linn Grove Ventures, a Fargo, North Dakota-based agricultural venture capital group. “The environment around that crop, whether it’s on a truck or a plane, has to be just right all through its journey  —  it’s in the journey where it gets complex.”

Keeping strawberries at the right temperature, humidity and airflow is only one problem. The fruit also needs to be delivered to the right markets in the right amounts on the right days, where it will actually be purchased.

“Managing quality means managing many different people at each stage of distribution and the different speeds it happens at,” Hodgson added.

“Sensors and cloud computing are helping to really get handle on it.”

That’s where a smartphone app for food inspectors can help, according to AgShift, an agtech AI firm in Santa Clara, California. The company uses algorithms to assist with food inspection at different stages of distribution.

“Let’s say we’re looking at 20 strawberries,” said Miku Jha, CEO of AgShift. “Two different inspectors might come back with two different results. What the technology does is to help those inspectors make more objective observations.”

Photographing produce and sending the pics to the cloud for analysis allows AgShift to leverage computer vision and deep learning algorithms to assess the quality of produce each time it’s inspected on its journey.

“Digitization and automation really make an impact on efficiency,” Jha said.

More accurate inspections give sellers better insights into the shelf life and pricing of specific shipments of produce. Knowing the quality of each box of strawberries — and other perishables — serves as a baseline for many kinds of decisions in the food cold chain.

Tech Before Planting

The food supply chain starts well before seeds are even planted in the ground. Produce farmers literally map out every inch of field with GPS technology, already knowing what factors could affect planned crops.

“We have to predict literally a year in advance what our needs are going to be because we contract for all of our lettuce and broccoli acreage,” said Bruce Taylor, CEO of Taylor Farms in Salinas, California.

“If we lose a customer, we’ve got too much lettuce. If we gain customers too fast, we run short. And so it’s a huge planning exercise.”

Taylor said it’s so precise, the operation plants its greatest volume of head lettuce a few months in advance of the biggest salad day of the year in the United States: Mother’s Day.

“It’s important we nail the harvest on that one,” said Taylor.

Taylor Farms is known for being an early adoptor of technologies like computer vision, cloud computing and robotics in the field, especially its move toward automated harvesting.

Self-Driving Food Distribution

With the buzz of self-driving vehicles in the news, it’s easy to imagine the cornerstone of food distribution — trucking — would go driverless.

“It would be a wonderful thing,” said Steve Geraci, director of fleet operations at Certified Freight Logistics, a company that provides produce distribution for Costco in Santa Maria on the California central coast.

Not only would it increase efficiency but it also would address labor shortages.

“Recruiting drivers is such a nonstop issue for us because over-the-road trucking is a lifestyle and it’s not for everybody,” he said.

Geraci points to governmental policy decisions that could take years to sort through before food distributors get into driverless truck technology. However, there’s a lot to be said for the advancements in the refrigeration units on Costco’s trailers.

“They have a lot of computing power,” he said. “They’re constantly monitoring the engine, the temperature, moisture and the inflow and outflow of the air circulating in the box.”

The information is transmitted to the cloud where the current status of the unit can be accessed in real time while the truck is on the road.

“It’s something we didn’t have five years ago,” said Geraci.

Food Cold Chain and Solving Waste

United Technologies Corp. (UTC) is working on food cold chain technologies aimed at solving the problem of food waste.

“We grow and produce enough food on the planet to feed 10 billion people,” said John Mandyck, chief sustainability officer at UTC and co-author of Food Foolish: The Hidden Connection Between Food Waste, Hunger and Climate Change.

“We live on a planet of 7 billion and only about 6 billion are getting enough food so that, right there, tells us that we have a 40 percent inefficiency in our system, where about 40 percent of our food never makes it from our farm to our fork.”

Solving food waste with greater cold chain efficiency not only means meeting the nutritional needs of the world’s population by 2050 but also, according to Mandyck, it addresses significant issues of carbon emissions.

The United Nations reports that food thrown away represents 3.3 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide.

“If you measured that as a country, food waste would be the world’s third largest emitter of greenhouse gases,” he said.

Mandyck envisions reducing food waste by introducing basic food cold chain technologies to places in the world such as India or Africa where it’s not unusual for half the harvest of a crop like tomatoes to be lost in shipping.

“If those farmers had access to capital to use a small refrigerated truck, they could get 100 percent of the tomatoes to market, get better return on their investment and feed more people,” said Mandyck.

Mandyck’s team has helped design a simple truck cooling system for India and China, where the technology can get food to those underserved. While these aren’t the intelligent cloud-synced trucks UTC develops for the North American and European markets, these lower cost refrigeration trucks maintain 40 degrees Fahrenheit, which can prolong the life of perishable foods.

Perhaps the biggest waste of food happens in the richest countries where farmers sometimes let crops rot because they can’t get a profitable price, supermarkets discard surplus produce, and consumers buy too much food and end up tossing it.

“What we’re doing is helping to connect the dots with people who are focused on this,” said Kevin Fay, executive director of the Global Food Cold Chain Council. “What we found is there are a lot of programs on food waste, but not a lot of are working together.”

Fay believes that solving food waste is a huge deal, one that unlocks solutions to other major global issues.

“Seventy percent of our fresh water supply around the globe is used for agriculture,” said Fay. “If we’re wasting 40 percent of the food we grow that means we’re wasting 30 percent of our fresh water supply.”

New technologies like cloud databases and AI can help cut food waste. Fay points to consumer apps such as YourLocal, which alerts users about supermarkets offering discounted food that could otherwise be discarded.

“By connecting the dots, you’re able to feed more people, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, reduce waste of fresh water and improve the economic lives of society around the world,” said Fay.

Future in Farm Data

Time-to-destination is one variable that many companies like to optimize in the supply chain, and even more so in food cold chaining, said Giby Raphael, director of logistics and asset management solutions at Intel’s Internet of Things Group.

Making faster airplanes, ships and trucks only helps to a certain point, said Raphael. Feeding more into the pipeline helps achieve speed, but at the expense of excessive wastage and cost.

Thus, a holistic approach to optimization is needed and the ability to extract high quality data from the end-to-end supply chain is key to reducing food waste.

“There needs to be a myriad of technologies and standards that come together to make this possible,” he said. “The technology is enabling cheap, granular and high quality data through the ‘internet of things.’”

Sara Menker, CEO of New York-based Gro Intelligence, takes a similar global view in using data to decrease food waste.

“What excites me is making data about the food ecosystem a utility,” Menker said.

She said information is one of the most powerful assets in farming, distribution and marketing. Yet getting access is one of the biggest challenges. The information exists  — yet  there simply is no central portal to get at it cost effectively.

Menker’s organization takes large amounts of global agricultural data on the entire food ecosystem and cost effectively synthesizes it for users, including consulting firms, hedge funds, governments and other groups.

Hodgson of Linn Grove Ventures agrees that information is the key driver in improving the food cold chain.

“The more I know about the soil and its conditions, the health of the crops while they’re growing, the condition of a crop after harvest when it’s on a truck  — all of it means the higher quality product I can bring to market.”

See the original post on the IQ by Intel site here.

 

July 4 is right around the corner and for the estimated 80 percent of households that own grills or smokers, that means one thing – barbeques.  Grill masters can make sure they don’t leave their diners with a nasty case of food poisoning by following USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service food safety tips.

Annually the CDC estimates that 48 million Americans (at least 1 in 6) get sick from food poisoning year, resulting in roughly 128,000 hospitalizations and 3,000 deaths.  Foodborne illness is more frequent during the warm summer months for two reasons:  1) harmful bacteria multiply faster in warmer temperatures, and 2) more people are cooking and bringing food outside away from refrigerators, thermometers, and washing facilities of a kitchen.

If you can remember four safe food handling steps—Clean, Separate, Cook, and Chill—you can help protect your family and guests from getting sick, whether you’re outside at the grill, away from home, or in your own kitchen.

 One of the most common mistakes is thinking that meat has been cooked enough by looking at its color.  The color of your burger, whether it’s brown or pink, does not indicate that it’s safely cooked. One in four burgers turns brown before it has reached the safe internal temperature of 160°F (according to USDA Food Thermometer Fact Sheet).  Using a food thermometer is the only way to tell if your burger has reached a safe internal temperature.

Some people also falsely believe that the quality of your meat—specifically whether it is organic or grass-fed– may mean that it does not need to be cooked as much to be safe to eat. Don’t let this fool you.  Whole cuts of beef, pork and lamb should be cooked to 145 ˚F and allowed to rest for 3 minutes before eating.  All ground beef, pork and lamb burgers should be cooked to 160 °F before being eating.  All poultry (ground and whole cuts) should be cooked to 165 °F before being eating.

There is no better time than the present to adopt the four safe food handling steps to greatly reduce your risk of foodborne illness:

• Clean: When grilling, be sure there are plenty of clean utensils and platters. Pack plenty of napkins and moist towelettes for cleaning surfaces and hands.
• Separate: When grilling, use separate plates and utensils for raw meat and cooked meat and ready-to-eat foods (like raw vegetables) to avoid cross-contamination.
• Cook: Meat and poultry cooked on a grill often browns very fast on the outside. The only way to know they’ve reached the right temperature is by using a food thermometer. Never partially grill meat or poultry and finish cooking later.
• Chill: Don’t leave perishable food at room temperature for longer than two hours (or 1 hour if outdoor temperatures are above 90° F) to minimize bacterial growth. If you’re away from home, make sure you bring a cooler to store those leftovers.

By following the four safe food handling steps, you and your family can avoid foodborne illness, especially in these hot summer months when the risk is increased.  So fire up the grill, grab that thermometer, and have a food safe summer!

The $201.3 billion 2018-‘19 state budget signed yesterday by Governor Brown includes $671.7 million for CDFA.

“This is a budget that is focused on the challenges and opportunities in the future for California agriculture,” said CDFA secretary Karen Ross. ” I believe we have a budget that makes crucial investments in positioning us for that future.”

The spending plan includes the following:

Combating Climate Change

The budget includes significant investment in programs that further reduce carbon pollution and support climate resiliency efforts, including $99 million from the Climate Change Investment Fund for CDFA’s Dairy Digester Research and Development and Alternative Manure Management programs and $5 million for the Healthy Soils Program. The June passage of Proposition 68, the California Drought, Water, Parks, Climate, Coastal Protection, and Outdoor Access For All Act of 2018, is the source of $18.6 million for the State Water Efficiency and Enhancement Program (SWEEP) and $8.5 million for the Healthy Soils Program.

Citrus Pest and Disease Prevention

$15 million is provided to enhance Asian citrus psyllid and huanglongbing suppression activities, a California program that partners with the USDA as well as the citrus industry.

Bee Safe

A new program that will start with a $1.85 million budget appropriation intended to improve the health and survival of honeybees by increasing foraging opportunities, reducing pesticide exposure, and providing funds for enforcement of existing laws at the local level to promote and protect California’s beekeeping industry.

Cannabis Licensing and Enforcement

The budget includes an increase of $28.3 million for ongoing regulation of cannabis cultivators within California.

Use of Antimicrobial Drugs on Livestock

There is an increase of $2.668 million appropriated for the ongoing regulatory program for the use of antimicrobial drugs on livestock, as required by SB 27, signed in 2015.

California Nutrition Incentive Program/Healthy Store Refreigeration Program

The budget provides $10 Million to provide nutrition incentives to CalFresh clients who purchase California-grown fruits and vegetables at Certified Farmers Markets, and $5 million for small business or neighborhood stores for the purchase of energy-efficient refrigeration units for fresh produce storage.

Farmer Equality Act of 2017 (AB 1348)

$139,000 is allocated, allowing for the evaluation of opportunities to improve the inclusion of socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers in state and federal farming programs. A report is due to the governor and the Legislature on January 1, 2020 on progress in this regard.

Please see this link for more information about 2018-2019 state budget and CDFA’s portion of it.

 

Recycling plastic is a no-brainer these days. Theoretically, it should be pretty easy. Use up the product, rinse out the container, toss it in the recycling bin. Voila! Off it goes to its inevitable reincarnation. Simple, right?

Not so fast. The reality is unfortunately far more complicated. Americans are locked into a dysfunctional relationship with plastic. Collectively, we generate approximately 33 million tons of plastic trash each year, but less than 10 percent of that actually gets recycled. And even if you wantto recycle the stuff, the multiple types—polyethylene, polypropylene, polystyrene, and so forth—lead to confusion about how and what plastics can successfully be accepted by most recycling programs. This is a common problem with food containers: Are those plastic clamshells that contain greens recyclable? What about that yogurt container? And that ketchup bottle—can the lid go in the blue bin, too? It’s confusing.

“I think the public cares, but they have no idea what the numbers at the bottom of plastics mean,” says Mitch Hedlund, executive director of Recycle Across America, an advocacy group that has created a standardized labeling system for recycling bins. “There is a lack of national communication to help the public know the difference between plastics—what is recyclable and what’s not.”

So what’s an ecologically minded person to do? Crucially, the less plastic you can use, the better. And when it comes to the old “paper or plastic?” question, there’s no debate: “Paper and cardboard are amazing if they’re recycled,” Hedlund says. That’s because paper can be easily remade, and more people understand how to properly recycle it. (Though, as Hedlund points out, paper should be kept separate from other recycling to avoid touching food residue and other contaminants.)

Consuming less overall, choosing paper when given the option, and making recycling easier to understand may sound like simple solutions for the plastic problem, and that’s exactly the point. “We’re in a great position to make a change,” says Hedlund. “But we need everybody to start unifying around common-sense solutions.” Eventually, she explains, a critical mass of people changing their habits creates change. “My five-year goal is for people to say, ‘Remember when recycling was confusing? Remember when most manufacturers weren’t closing the loop? Remember when there was more plastic going into the oceans than there was going into remanufacturing?’” It’s a noble dream—and, with a collective effort, a possible reality.

Want to make sure you’re recycling correctly? The first step is to check with your recycling hauler to make sure you understand their rules—every program is different. With that said, Recycle Across America has pulled together some general guidelines. Below, we’ve pulled those that specifically relate to food and beverage containers:

• Make sure all items are rinsed and clean before going into the recycling bin. Absolutely no food, liquids, or other contamination allowed. Yes, that means that the bottom of your pizza box needs to go in the compost (or the trash). You can, however, tear-off any non-greasy parts for disposable in the recycling bin.
• Separate glass jars from their metal lids.
• Inquire about how to recycle the lids of plastic bottles. In bigger, mixed systems, it’s often preferred to keep them together, but many smaller programs only want the bottle, so the lid should go in the trash.
• Keep aluminum foil, plastic utensils, Styrofoam containers, plastic wrap, or plastic wrappers (including baggies and bags) OUT of the recycling bin. Those items need to go into the trash unless your recycling program specifically gives the green light.
• If you must collect your recycling in a plastic bag, use a clear or see-through blue bag.
• Compostable plastics are great but they don’t belong in a recycling bin (and not even in a home composting bin—only industrial or commercial composting options can take these items).

Link to story

By Ross Marowitz, The Canadian Press

Generations of farmers have relied on knowledge and family expertise to grow food, but the sector is set for a surge of disruption at the hands of made−in−Canada artificial intelligence−powered systems.

AI is now helping farmers across the country to increase yields, save costs and minimize environmental damage. Instead of spreading fertilizer across acres of fields or spraying entire orchards with herbicides, they can now target their efforts for maximum effect.

SomaDetect Inc. of Fredericton is preparing to deliver commercial systems this fall that will test milk and use AI to provide insights to maximize a farmer’s profitability, dairy farmers monitor their herds through the “internet of cows.”

Sensors installed at each milking stall identify each cow, test their milk and quickly provide farmers metrics such as protein and fat counts, indicators of disease, hormones that manage reproduction and antibiotic residuals.

“We are in a fourth revolution in agriculture and AI is absolutely critical,” said co−founder Bethany Deshpande.

However, Deshpande said the use of the technology is at an early stage where farmers are just starting to understand its power and the potential difference it can make on their operations.

“A lot of farmers have been demanding better technology, demanding better products for a long time and I think AI is huge part of how they’re going to get that.”

Montreal−based Motorleaf Inc. has developed a system that acquires data from indoor growing operations and applies artificial intelligence and machine−learning algorithms to identify growing patterns in the greenhouse, which can then be used to predict the size of future harvests.

It’s like giving farmers a virtual assistant, said co−founder and CEO Alastair Monk, who formed the company two years ago with Ramen Dutta, an agricultural engineer.

“All of those ingredients are going to get mixed up into soup and out the other end comes an algorithm specifically for that greenhouse … so they can make smarter decisions instead of rolling the dice and risking what happens after they make those decisions.”

Yield forecasts are crucial for growers because they indicate how much produce will be available for pre−sold contracts.

Traditional counting methods can be off by 20 to 30 per cent because farmers estimate the yield for the entire crop after counting samples of vegetables, leaves and flowers in a small area.

SunSelect, a California greenhouse customer that cultivates tomatoes, is one customer that abandoned manual predictions after Motorleaf’s algorithms doubled the accuracy of its weekly yield projection, resulting in significant savings for the grower, Motorleaf said.

Systems incorporating machine learning, a type of artificial intelligence, are able to make millions of calculations to detect patterns imperceptible by humans that are required for precision planting, autonomous vehicles and robotics, says Graham Taylor, associate professor of engineering at the University of Guelph and faculty member at Toronto’s Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence.

AI researchers are largely focused on applications for deep−pocketed businesses and tech firms, but its use in agriculture is attracting global interest because of the pressing need to feed a growing global population amid increasing water shortages and a changing climate.

“Everybody’s interested in AI right now and agriculture is a major concern for us as humanity,” he said.

“When faced with these sorts of really scary potential problems that’s going to make (the adoption of AI in agriculture) move a little quicker,” Taylor said in an interview.

A combination of drones and AI technology have helped to alleviate stress on California pistachio and almond crops by watering only where it’s needed, said David MacMillan, CEO of Toronto−based Deveron UAS, that is building one of North America’s largest network of drones.

“In a place like California where your water costs are over $1,000 an acre, there’s all these different value propositions,” he said.

The technology can also be used in Ontario corn fields to target the use of fertilizers to areas that require extra help, saving farmers money.

Canada is well−positioned to be a leader in the field because it has disproportionate strength in artificial intelligence that is supported by government, Taylor believes.

The federal government has earmarked $950 million in funding on technology “superclusters” designed to encourage academia and businesses to work together on strategies to boost fast−growing sectors.

The five selected superclusters include an agriculture group based in the Prairies that will work to make the country a leading source of plant proteins.

The technology carries a potential downside, however: the systems could eventually replace farm jobs such as manual picking and weeding, Taylor said.

Robots can milk cows, pick apples and weed cabbage patches. Yet farming jobs that require physical activity or the operation of machinery in unpredictable environments are moderately threatened by automation, according a McKinsey report.

“Things like weeding, those tasks might be replaced,” Taylor said.

“But I don’t think you’re going to see completely automated farm facilities in the near future.”

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