The world’s food insecurity has always been a controversial issue all over the world. There are many reasons causing food insecurity ranging from water shortage to soil degeneration. Robots play an important role in improving food security and increasing crop production. In this post, we are to provide you with practical information regarding food security and agriculture robots.
What Is Food Security?
Food security is the state of having reliable access to safe and nutritious food that meets all your dietary demands. Over the decades, many factors like climate change, high food prices, growing population, and environmental stressors have affected food security in many ways. The world’s food insecurity is nothing new. Needless to say, climate change is considered to threaten food production in the future, and many crop yields are expected to decrease due to climate change.
Using modern technology and robotics is a good way to optimize food trade, boost crop productivity, promote sustainable agriculture, and increase crop yield.
The Importance of Global Food Security
Food insecurity has negative effects on the agricultural market and economies. High-quality and nutritious food plays an important role in our lives. Secure and wide access to food can provide many positive impacts, including:
- Contributing to job creation
- Reducing costs
- Improving health
- Increasing trading opportunities
What Causes Food Insecurity?
Lack of consistent access to food is called food insecurity. Many people experience food insecurity in their lives. Many factors can increase the risk of food insecurity. For instance, unexpected accidents like car accidents and lay-offs at work can force a family to choose between purchasing food and paying bills. Here are the most common reasons for food insecurity:
- Racial discrimination
- Chronic health conditions
- Poverty and unemployment
- Lack of access to farming lands
- Violence and war
- Fast-paced population growth
- Unfair trade rules
- Natural disasters
- Climate change
- Food wastage
Food insecurity affects people according to their circumstances. For example, it can cause serious health issues when people have to choose between spending money on food and medicine.
Best ways we can ensure food security
As food insecurity leads to negative health outcomes, we need to take serious steps to end it. Food insecurity is a global challenge affecting over 820 million people all over the world. But like any other problem, there are some solutions to the problem of food insecurity. Here are the most common solutions to help you overcome food insecurity.
Decrease food waste
Food waste is a result of inappropriate preparation, bumpy roads, and inadequate facilities. If storage facilities are improved, food waste will be reduced, and you don’t need to worry about food insecurity anymore.
Increase food affordability
Approximately half of the population can’t afford nutritious food. According to the studies, we can fade away this affordability gap by reducing the cost of healthy food, increasing the wages for work, and investing in healthy food production.
Fight climate change
Climate change has adverse effects on human life and severely affects food production. If we take serious steps toward defeating climate change, we can improve food production and ensure there is enough food for the next generations.
Provide school meals
Hungry students find it difficult to concentrate, retain information, and engage in school activities which decreases their future productivity. Providing students with a healthy meal is a practical solution to help students do their best in the classroom.
Robotics in Agriculture
Artificial intelligence and robotics provide farmers with more precision. Robots in farms can help optimize yield quality, increase crop production, and decrease damage during production. In other words, AI in agriculture plays a significant role in meeting the growing food demand of the future. Technological improvements have led to the development of many robots. Agricultural robots use machine vision technology to avoid possible risks, identify crops, and determine if the crops are ready to harvest. Machine visions make it possible for robots to carry out different activities like weed picking, growth monitoring, packaging, and harvesting.
Benefits of Using Robots in Farms
Farming is becoming more and more automated, and farmers sustain more interest in using robots in their farms. Robots make farming easier than ever before and provide many advantages. The most common benefits of using robots in farms go as follows:
- Reducing labor cost
- Increasing crop production
- Improving crop quality
- Reducing environmental impacts
How can AI help food insecurity?
Robots are essential when tasks require the utmost speed and precision. Using robots contributes to productivity and improves working conditions for farmers and workers. Robots are commonly used in fruit harvesting, insect grafting, and cultivation. Some of the most common applications of robots go as follows:
- Weed control
- Harvesting
- Picking crops
- Packing and sorting
- Phenotyping
As the global population is on the rise, food demand continues to increase. Therefore, farmers sustain more interest in using robots for repetitive and easy tasks.
Last Word
Agriculture is becoming a high-tech business. Having practical information considering agricultural robots and food security can help you improve productivity and increase crop production. In this article, we have discussed the important role of robots in agriculture. We hope this blog can help you with agricultural challenges.
Frequently Asked Questions
Food insecurity mostly affects those below the poverty line.
Food insecurity has many adverse effects on people’s lives, like increasing food prices, unemployment, and a rise in health-related issues.
Pest control, soil management, genetically modified crops, and water management will have dramatic effects on agricultural productivity in the coming years.
Technology contributes to increasing crop productivity as well as reducing food wastage.
The growing population, increasing demand for food, food waste, and food price are the most common challenges affecting food security.
Robots provide many advantages. By lowering production costs and improving crop productivity, robots can improve food security.
