38 MORE million people went hungry last year.  The number of hungry in the world has risen to 815 million, affecting some 11% of the world population, especially in areas of conflict.  The world is moving in the OPPOSITE direction of SDG Goal 2: End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture. (sourced by FAO).

Future Agro Challenge attended the discussions at FAO UN this year in Rome.  FAC’s dedication to bringing agripreneurs to the front lines is the key motive to being part of this discussion. FAC’s intervention highlighted the importance of immediately bringing innovation and technology into the forefront of policy discussions around food and agriculture.

As new technologies, such as Blockchain, Robotics & AI, and Big Data, intervene into the agriculture industry the whole agrifood space will revolutionize itself in the forthcoming years.  Nobody really knows what the future holds or how soon Mars will be our new homeland.  However, there are some current and severe issues that need to be tackled with the utmost urgency.

Hunger could be addressed with the potential to reach zero hunger perhaps even prior to 2030.  Yet, the challenges remain that the current policies do not well define and measure the necessary data in which all stakeholders could use to reach the same goal.  At FAC, we hear about innovative solutions to local, regional, and global challenges everyday from over 60 countries.  But the barriers still remain that the current policies are not readily in place to support some of the new and disruptive upcoming solutions making the SDG Goal 2 almost impossible.

While hunger continues to increase mainly due to conflict and climate change, we must also address an upcoming population that may soon be jobless.  There is no doubt that 80% of the global farms are made up of small holder farmers, 40% of the global working force is in the agriculture sector.  With the right policies in place, technology could be integrated to create a positive shift in the types of daily tasks required by the farmer and agriculture workers.  We need to integrate agrifood innovation and technology in our global policy discussions today.

Unfortunately, some policies may take up to three years to be implemented.  If we do not implement the necessary changes in our discussions and goals today, how much longer will we continue to be going into the opposite direction of SDG Goal 2?