Food(plus)Tech

Events

Food(plus)Tech

The 7th Hot Topics event examined the urgent issue of sustainable food and how technology can help both producers and consumers move to a more sustainable system.

The intersection of food, technology and sustainability agendas is relatively unexplored in the UK, but is gaining ground in the US and represents a significant area of opportunity for innovation.

Technology to raise awareness

The University of Minnesota have created a great video to summarise the urgency of the problem we are facing

A recent Hackday organised by Food + Tech NYC looked at using open data to make sense of the food system:

Ellen Gustafson at TED eloquently launched the 30 Project to tackle the twin issues of hunger and obesity.

Technology to connect consumers with sustainable food

Foodnation is an app to help people in UK and Ireland discover local food, and winner of the Geovation Ordnance Survey challenge 'How can Britain feed itself?'

The Sustainable Restaurant Association has created an app on the Orange DoSomeGood app platform to allow users to map restaurants that provide sustainable food.Seafood Watch is a Monterey Bay Aquarium app for choosing sustainable fish in restaurants and shops. It provides up-to-date recommendations for US users, and allows users to contribute places where they have found sustainable fish.

Fooducate is an US app for those interested in buying the healthiest options. Users scan the barcode of food items in order for the app to grade the product nutritionally and even offer better alternatives.

Zero Waste Scotland's 'Love Food, Haste Waste' app includes a ¨blender¨ that allows users to enter the leftover ingredients in their fridge and cupboards, whizzing up suggested recipes from a selection of over 350.

Seed to Plate is a website to help design and maintain your own vegetable plot.

The Green Award winning River Cottage 'Land Share' app builds on the website of the same name, aiming to connect people who want to grow their own food with those who have space to share

If you really want to go it alone, Wild Edibles is the app to advise you on how to forage for your own food created by 'Wildman' Steve Brill a well-known forager and environmental educator.

The Trojan Egg Project uses design to tackle various issues in the UK's food supply chain; a Bee Tagg on eggs linking consumers to information about it's origins via their smartphone.

Technology in agriculture and horticulture

The National Trust created the MyFarm project to allow a large group of the public to have a say in how a working farm is run.

Wired profiled some of the technologies behind precision agriculture in their December 2010 issue.

Sustain, the alliance for better food and farming, has a City Harvest project about urban farming: www.sustainweb.org/cityharvest which is linked to Capital Growth, the campaign to create new food growing spaces in London. NY Times also profiled urban agriculture earlier in the year.

Botanicalls is a company producing sensors that send twitter messages, texts or calls when a plant needs watering. The technology was developed by NASA for moon and mars missions.

H₂O Farm is a system for hydroponic fodder production that lets you grow grass indoors without soil, at a rate of seed-to-feed in 7 days.

Blog by Dr. Natalie Hummel, Extension Entomologist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Entomology at Louisiana State University Agricultural Center, on iPhone apps for use in agriculture.

A recent Green Futures article looks at why farmers are embracing social media and the Agchat Twitter phenomenon

More on sustainable food

The Economist has a special report.

SustainAbility's report 'Appetite for Change' aims to identify where change is needed in the food system and the role the corporate sector must play in making it happen.