Food sustainability to help in GHG reduction

THERE is an urgent need to minimize food wastage and balance food security and food sustainability in Southeast Asia, according to experts and industry players.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimated that around a third of all food produced or 1.3 billion tons is lost or wasted every year, contributing 8 to 10 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

During the recent online event titled “A Growing Asean, A Hungry Population: Building Resilient and Sustainable Food Supply Chains” organized by SAP, food industry leaders pointed out that the Southeast Asia’s sustainable growth hangs in balance if future food security and food wastage are left unaddressed. Asean is the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

The event brought together business leaders across the region’s food ecosystem spanning agriculture, manufacturing, distribution and logistics.

They all agreed that there is a need to implement programs that will effectively address Southeast Asia’s food security challenges, with high consideration of the fast-growing population and increasing food demand, coupled with escalating adverse weather and supply chain events.

Experts cited the opportunities that lay ahead for Southeast Asia, which is among the world’s most productive agricultural regions, particularly investing in hightech agribusinesses, enhancing cross-industry collaborations, digitalization and building resiliency across food supply chains, and other activities along the value chain to bolster the region’s food future.

Challenges and solutions

Verena Siow, president and managing director of SAP Southeast Asia, said that empowering food producers with the right tools to meet the growing demand for food and combating food wastage are critical for challenges in the region.

“As a start, we need to better utilize the food we produce to minimize wastage. Food security and sustainability is more of a resource management challenge, where technology can be a change agent,” Siow said.

“Given the diverse food industries across the region, which spans from production to retail and restaurants, businesses need help in gaining better end-to-end oversight over their operations, forecast demand through big data to deliver food in a timely manner and improve supply chain efficiency — all of which could greatly contribute to the reduction of food scarcity in a sustainable way,” she added.

Leonardo Rabelo, chief financial officer of Dole Asia Holdings, outlined the company’s efforts to elevate agriculture practices, ensuring better harvests for farmers yet also driving sustainable practices to mitigate food waste across its large operational footprint.

“Minimalism is at the heart of our green habits in our journey toward zero food loss. Technology in agriculture or Agtech is vital in shaping our progressive and proactive waste reduction agenda,” said Rabelo.

Dole Asia Holdings is a worldwide leader and innovator in the production and marketing of high-quality packaged fruit and healthy snacks.

Similarly, Nguyen Duy Thuan, chief executive officer of Vietnam’s Loc Troi Group, shared the company’s pilot of the world’s first rice sustainability standard with rice farmers across the Mekong Delta, to develop a sustainable, highquality value chain and eventually market Sustainable Rice Platform (SRP)-certified rice both domestically and abroad.

“Today, Loc Troi works with more than 200,000 rice farmers and aims at 1 million farmers in 2024, on top of an annual rice milling capacity of 6 million tons. We leverage our foundations in agricultural knowledge in developing new crop varieties and resource-saving farming methods, along with applying technologies like drones and hospital mobile apps to provide consultancies for rice and fruit farmers,” Nguyen said.

He also noted that Loc Troi Group was a member of SATForRice, a program by the Netherlands government, which used artificial intelligence in spectrum analysis and soil interactions to forecast next year’s yield, pests and diseases risks. “Loc Troi is working with farmers to obtain crop planting area codes and traceability through QR codes to promote Vietnam’s agricultural products in international markets,” Nguyen added.

Loc Troi Group is a leading manufacturer and supplier of products and services in the field of agriculture with a sustainable value chain from research, production and sales of seed products, plant protection drugs, bio-organic products, rice and coffee.

Loc Troi recently underwent a digital transformation journey with SAP S/4HANA in 2020, which helped the group of companies standardize all processes to follow international best practices, improve planning capacity and automatically track all activities across its business, and maximize agriculture competitiveness and integrability.