description
- During the 21st century, humanity is confronted with the grand challenge to increase agricultural production to achieve food security that can feed a population that is expected to grow to 10 billion people by 2050 against a background of increasing resource scarcity and climate change. This needs to be done while maintaining sustainable agricultural systems as we face challenges such as COVID-19 Pandemic, Ukraine/Russia war, a changing climate, depletion of water and soil resources, and the potential for increased erosion and loss of productivity due to the occurrence of extreme weather events. The National Food Strategy report highlighted the urgency to ensure that people have access to good food as over 1 million UK adults depend on food banks for survival. On a global scale, through access to good food, we can reduce the over 900 million people exposed to hunger and over 2 billion obese people accounting for 50% of the population in UK; a major condition linked to life threatening diseases such as diabetes, cancer and ultimately death. The UN food prices index already show an increase in prices of food which is at their highest since records began 60 years ago. Wheat is forecast to increase 42.7% and reach new record highs. Other notable increases will be 33.3% for barley, 20% for soybeans and 29.8% for oils and 41.8% for chicken. On the other hand there is increasing cost of feed -fertiliser for food production. At IntelliDigest, we have developed a nature inspired robot-iDigest to enhance the recovery of bio-nutrient in food waste to improve local food production. The iDigest is the most efficient and convenient solution to handling food waste and the most optimised for improved nutrient recovery. Each iDigest cycle takes place within 3-4 hours compared to other food waste handling solutions such as anaerobic digester that last for 7--21 days. In addition, iDigest process is completely odour free. More, importantly, the use of bio-nutrient from iDigest process has shown improved nutrient content in food production compared to standard nutrients available in the market. The bio-nutrients will be recovered and used in enhancing local food production in Horticulture/Livestock/Aquaculture/Insect farming. We have a funded trial by STFC Food Network carried out by Crop Health and Protection (CHAP) demonstrating that the bio-nutrient will be a great value in food production. More details can be found here - [https://www.stfcfoodnetwork.org/blog/intellidigest-an-innovative-solution-to-put-food-waste-to-work][0]. [0]: https://www.stfcfoodnetwork.org/blog/intellidigest-an-innovative-solution-to-put-food-waste-to-work