Big data to reduce food loss and waste for sustainable growth

Food loss and waste is a global problem to maintain sustainable growth. In every single year, about 30% of the food produced worldwide is lost or wasted. Meanwhile, food systems rely on natural resources, which are extremely vulnerable to rapidly changing climatic conditions, food loss and waste generate about 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Food production is heavily dependent on natural resources, about 70% of freshwater on earth is used for food production. Reducing food lost or wasted means more food for all, less greenhouse gas emissions, less pressure on environment, and increased productivity and economic growth. To reduce food loss or waste, the whole supply chain, from farm, packaging, transportation up to retail plays critical role. Alibaba’s new retail store chain, Freshippo also known as hema in Chinese, is community-based, on-stop new retail experience center. It is driven by data and technology. And Hema village, which produces agricultural products to serve the needs of all Freshippo/ Hema stores, is the new digital agriculture initiative. Hema village with big data is the new bench mark in contract farming, which brings profitable market model in agriculture. With AI technology support, Hema introduced digitalized management program, coving farming, processing, transportation, production and retail, the whole supply chain. With the effort by data and technology, the food loss during production and transportation has been reduced from 30% to 10%, which is much lower than industrial average. China is one of the top agricultural producing and consuming counties with more than 1.4 billion population. More than 90% of the food trading is by traditional offline market at this moment. With the development of new technology, China is transforming from big agricultural country to big digitalized agricultural country. The food production growth will also evolve, it will rely on natural resources less and less. Data and technology resource will play more and more important role in food production growth. Digitalized management in agriculture will be introduced to more and more farms, with less food loss and waste during the process. Hema village is the new go-to-market bench mark for agriculture produce in China And it is expected that Hema will keep the momentum in technology innovation, business model innovation and commercial format innovation, which support in reducing food loss and waste for sustainable growth.