Best Of

@NickOttens
A paradigm shift in both urban and agriculture development planning is required in order to ensure access to urban food security, improved environmental management
and enhanced rural-urban linkages.
To advance the uptake of nutrition sensitive behaviours, we have to concieve, plan and handle an integrated inclusive approach through nutrition education/awareness campaigns, involving governments, private players and CSRs to promote nutrition literacy in grassroots levels.

Currently, approximately one-third of the world’s population is living in urban slums and informal settlements.

Urban consumers are almost exclusively dependent on food purchases and variations in food prices and income directly translate into diminished purchasing power and rising rates of food insecurity, thus compromising dietary quantity and quality. Urban consumers generally rely on purchased foods, mainly from rural areas or imported into the country.

Rural Producers/consumers must build the knowledge of farmers in integrating nutri-rich and biofortified plant species in their existing systems as the the diversification of crops in the farm is declining as a result the dietary diversity or food basket of the household has also been narrowing.

Agriculture research organisation International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) has joined hands with Eleven01 (blockchain platform) and KHETHINEXT (mobile-based agricultural solutions provider) to implement the deep technology for increasing productivity and incomes of the small farmers in India, with an idea is to deliver traceability to farmers, consumers and other agriculture value chain actors by automating trust through distributed ledger technology. This can have implications on both the input and output supply chains.

Blockchain will, in fact, become the competitive edge for brands competing in the competitive FMCG space and big food chains will have no choice but to use blockchain for ensuring accountability, traceability and quality of the food. With blockchain, the food supply chain gets simplified as the data management across a complex network that includes farmers, brokers, distributors, processors, retailers, regulators, and consumers gets simplified and transparent. Improved data sharing can also help reduce the USD 1 trillion problems of food waste. Farmers and all members of the supply chain can access all the information throughout the chain. This will make the entire supply chain more democratic and efficient resulting in lesser food wastage and higher remuneration being paid to the stakeholder adding the greater amount of value.

Smart contracting between corporate farming firms and farmers can result in easier contracting for the leasing of land. Ethereum is an open source blockchain project that was built specifically to realize the possibility of smart contracting.
Across the globe, farm sector is heavily dependent on government subsidies. However, with blockchain, the distribution and delivery of subsidies can become more transparent resulting in the targeted disbursement of subsidies plugging pilferage in the existing system.

I think you forgot the link, @SteveK8!

The urban homestead; http://urbanhomestead.org routinely produces 7,000 pounds of food on 1/10th of an acre, and sell their wares to individuals and restaurants in the community. It's a bit labor-intense, though.

In one of my presentations, I show concepts for a website that include support for hyperlocal growing with a "Community" section to connect growers and buyers.

"Certified Growers" who agree to minimum standards for water, fertilizers, pest control measures, etc. get to list their wares on the website with photos, user reviews, mapping, business hours and so on. The idea is to help micro-growers establish relationships with local buyers. The idea being discriminating buyers will prefer the higher quality that hyperlocal can produce. Visitors to the website can also opt-in to get alerts from growers when crops are ready for harvest.

The website includes a "Pest Control Wiki," and Companion Plant listings for growers, and "Crops in Demand" listings to align the efforts of growers with the preferences of their customers.

A "Farmacopeia" section of the website has a list of plants, a map of the world, and a list of edible parts with nutritional values.

Click on a plant in the list, and the map will show where in the world it naturally grows, along with a list of edible parts with nutritional values. The edible parts list could expand to include other uses for plants besides food, but food is the primary purpose at this time.

Click on a region of the global map and the list of plants that naturally grow in that region is shown.

You could take the "Farmacopeia" concept further and index medicinal uses of plants, and list recipes, companion foods, etc.

Another section of the website includes a "Dashboard," a personal page that every user of our hydroponic system gets to use if they want to. When connected to the internet, our system can help users increase harvests and control costs by tracking the use of water, fertilizers, and pH adjusters. We can also track, log and graph nutrient solution temperature, manifold pressure, air temperature, UV index, Windspeed, Barometric Pressure, Relative Humidity, Sunrise, Sunset, and Solar energy and Battery power stats when solar power is in use, and more.

As an example, if there is a surge in water use, we can send them a text alert and suggest possible causes and solutions.

To maintain healthy profits, growers will do better by selling directly to individuals and businesses like restaurants, grocers, institutions, etc. Unless they can add significant value, distributors may not have much of a role to play here.

Probiotics for soil, autonomously deployed, remotely monitored.

This breakthrough focuses on adding genetically modify bacteria & microbes to the soil, fermenting them at large scales and combining them in different amounts or ratios to improve soil health and consequently plant and human health and the environment.