Notes

foods, and nutrigenetics, is limited (table 5.3). Capacity, or perhaps propensity, for reformulation is mostly concentrated in the HICs of Korea and Singapore, and to some extent in Indonesia and Thailand (Green 2018). At the same time, aging China and Japan have shown interest in functional foods. The transition to better nutrition and alternative sources of nutrition would require improving consumer awareness and access to alternative foods. For instance, in the long term, food manufacturers are likely to focus on reformulation to meet demand for healthier alternatives.24 However, becoming a leader in such novel approaches to nutrition and food would require focused investment in cross-disciplinary research and innovation, training and attracting chemists, life scientists, food scientists, marketers, nutrition experts, and agribusiness companies to this field. Yet this is an area with scant information, suggesting cross-disciplinary collaboration is limited or still under the radar.

NOTES

 1. Slow adoption can be explained by fragmented rural markets, poor infrastructure, high regulatory burdens, and other factors that raise costs, while revenues are constrained by customers’ limited ability and willingness to pay. Much of the start-up activity is in high-income countries across the world, indicating both the risk of unequal access to new solutions and the opportunities for scaling up in developing countries (WEF 2018).  2. These transformative innovations include e-services and sustainable agriculture practices for producers; vertical farming; interest in automation, artificial intelligence, precision agriculture to offset disruptions in labor supply, and drones to address disruptions in logistics; innovations for food packaging, traceability and accountability, e-commerce, and food waste solutions; and nutrition solutions (for example, products that enhance the immune system, and plant-based and alternative proteins).  3. E-services have the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 100 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent and freshwater withdrawals by 100 billion cubic meters (WEF 2018).  4. Crop insurance could provide farmers with lower risk and improved access to credit. In high-income countries, 1.99 percent of agricultural GDp is spent on agricultural insurance, but that share falls to 0.29 percent in upper-middle-income countries, 0.16 percent in lower-middle-income countries, and 0.01 percent in low-income countries (Cornell university, InSEAD, and WIpO 2017).  5. A meta-analysis of e-extension services suggests that providing agricultural information to farmers or extension agents in India, Kenya, nigeria, and uganda increased yields by 4 percent on average (Fabregas, Kremer, and Schilbach 2019).  6. A distributed ledger is a type of database, or system of records, that is shared, replicated, and synchronized among the members of a network. A blockchain is a type of distributed ledger that is composed of unchangeable, digitally recorded data in packages called blocks, where each block is then “chained” to the next block, using a cryptographic signature (FAO 2019a).  7. High scientific capacity is also required for lab-grown meat and 3D (three-dimensional) printing applications in manufacturing of food and machinery.  8. Traits include abiotic stress tolerance, cooking quality, virus or bacterial resistance, fiber content, modified oil composition, nutrition quality, pollination control, and yield (based on 2016 data from FAO 2019c).  9. Microbiomes have the potential to generate up to $100 billion in additional farmer income, increase production by up to 250 million tons, and reduce GHG emissions by up to 30 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (WEF 2018). 10. About 266 million households in developing countries (more than 65 percent from Asia) are engaged in urban farming, and a quarter earn an income from it (Hamilton et al. 2014).

With a forecast of nearly 90 percent urbanization by 2050, urban farming could contribute to nutrition (un 2014).