Global Food Security topics

Robotics and drones are becoming increasingly important in agriculture, horticulture, animal husbandry and nature management. By applying Big data, we can save energy and raw materials and we can avoid unattractive working conditions. Plus we can also increase food production and improve food quality.

Agriculture causes a lot of greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, climate change is a threat to global food production, whilst population growth and higher incomes are increasing the demand for food. Future-proof agriculture aims to meet this demand through innovative forms of agriculture like circular agriculture, climate-smart agriculture or urban agriculture.

How can human protein consumption become more sustainable? Our current meat consumption is not sustainable, because a lot of land, water and feed is needed to produce animal proteins. It is a challenge to make the society eat differently and think about alternatives to animal proteins. Fortunately, there are plenty of options for alternative proteins, such as seaweed, algae, insects or pulses.  Are you up for the challenge and will you design the new meat substitute?

Food waste occurs everywhere: at harvest, during storage and transport, in supermarkets and the hospitality industry, but especially at the consumers' home. The average Dutch person throws away around 41 kg of good food every year, which is almost half of all waste! Together we can reduce and prevent food waste in various ways such as developing new techniques and technologies or by stimulating behavioural change amongst consumers.

Food security is a broad concept. As the world population grows, it becomes more difficult to feed all mouths. By 2050, the world's population is expected to have grown by more than two billion to a total of nearly ten billion. There is a lot of food available in the world, but the distribution is not optimal. Food security issues target many different questions, one of the important question being: How do we distribute the available food?