True Cost Accounting

XPRIZE

An open-source standard metric to inform and measure aggregated nutritional, health, and environmental data across the food supply chain (production, processing, distribution, and retail) and transforming this data into the true cost of commercial food products.

This breakthrough should incorporate new technologies such as blockchain, traceability, data standardization and management, etc.

NickOttens

@ScotBryson, since you shared your feedback in the Challenging in Financing discussion, you might have thoughts on this as a potential breakthrough as well.

We want to know if anybody is already working on this and what the global impact of this would be -- in order to help us decide if this needs an XPRIZE competition.

@hakiman, @mnishaq and @iliopoulosC, I'd be interested in reading your thoughts as well!

ACESChris

This will be the key to solving food insecurity... Last year for the Visioneering event I submitted Informatics at the Nexus of Food, Energy, Water and Health, the INFEWH-ture project. There are more people dying from obesity related conditions than starvation, and the diseases on this side of food are massively expensive!! We have the availability of all kinds of sensors, and the power of machine learning to help us understand what all of the data means. We need to move up in context. There is some great work here from the Global Alliance for the Future of Food. https://futureoffood.org/whats-the-true-value-of-true-cost-accounting/
Imagine how much food could be crated by reducing excess consumption, and the economic impact of diverting the trillions of dollars that are used to treat diabetes, heart disease and cancer. Limitations of this planet will demand that we drive to efficiency, and this is the tool that will insure we are making quality decisions. Check in with Lawrence Haddad at GAIN https://www.gainhealth.org/ They are doing some really great work.

ACESChris

This just posted... TEEBAgriFood Bulletin: The Hidden Costs of Cheap Food
enb.iisd.org/food/the-hidden-costs-of-american-food/html/enbplus184num22e.html

NickOttens

@Climatechange, @nnimbkar, @Kenneth, I wonder if you have thoughts on this potential breakthrough. Would it have significant impact? Is this is something XPRIZE should, and needs to, pursue?

arshimehboob

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.

NickOttens

@StanleyWood, @ulazimy, @ismael_gerhardt, what is your take on this potential breakthrough? Do you agree with the comments so far?

Elaine71

In "developed" countries we have to take a few steps backward and accept produce grown by small farmers. It is all very well to set up these systems in areas like India where an improvement at all in information and participation is a great boon but in North America and in other developed nations the farming population is minimal and aged. More people must be led to farm even on very small scales.

The best way to do this is probably through the farmers markets and other close-to-home ways of marketing.

Elaine71