SOURCE: Adele Peters, Fast Company
When a shipment of strawberries arrives at a distribution center in the Netherlands, workers place some sample berries on a small machine that shines a beam of infrared light through the fruit, measuring the water and sugar inside. Then the tech uses AI to predict exactly how long the fruit is likely to last.
The startup that makes the device, called OneThird—named after the fact that around one-third of the world’s food is wasted every year—spun out of a U.K.-based company that uses similar technology in healthcare, and wanted to find new applications for it. “I dove in and looked at the challenges in the food-supply chain, which is kind of broken,” says Marco Snikkers, founder and CEO of OneThird. “We said, well, if we’re going to use this technology for something, how can we use this to prevent food waste? We started to talk to people in the industry and found out that 40% of food waste is fresh produce. One of the biggest causes of waste is that nobody knows shelf life.”
Right now, he says, quality inspections at most farms and distribution centers are manual: Someone looks at the fruit and vegetables and makes some notes by hand or types them in an Excel sheet. After produce passes a basic inspection, it’s sent to customers without considering how long the delivery will take and what that means for the life of the fruit.
OneThird’s tech is designed to gather better data and share it through the supply chain. When the light shines into the fruit, “the data we’re getting from the sensors is basically a fingerprint of the molecules inside the produce,” says Snikkers. The molecular structure changes over time as the fruit ages, so the company’s algorithm can estimate when it will no longer be edible. An app, designed by Hitachi Digital Services, makes the data easy to access throughout the supply chain.
At a distribution center, quality inspectors can use the tech to approve shipments more quickly. Then the data can be used to decide which produce will last long enough to travel hundreds of miles, or which should be used more quickly. A shipment of tomatoes with a short remaining shelf life, for example, might be better suited for a company making tomato sauce than for a supermarket.
At a grocery store, the data can be used to put more accurate expiration dates on packages. The store also can better plan when to add a discount to make sure a product sells before it goes bad—or donate it to a food bank while it’s still usable. The company also built an in-store machine that consumers can use to scan an avocado, for example, to check for ripeness; no need to be squeezing the fruit and risk bruising it.
The tech currently works with strawberries, blueberries, tomatoes, and avocados, and the company is gathering data so that its AI will soon also be able to work with grapes, bananas, mangoes, and raspberries. Each type of fruit changes in different ways as it ages, so each needs a new dataset. While the company is starting with more expensive fruits that are especially likely to have short shelf lives, the tech could be used with any type of fruit or vegetable, Snikkers says.
It’s one of a multitude of ways to help cut produce waste. Apeel, another startup that has similar sensing technology for fruit (and a similar grocery store scanner for avocados), also makes an invisible, edible coating that protects fruit so it lasts longer. Changes in packaging also help—like the addition of a sticker, designed by an aerospace engineer, that sucks up moisture so food doesn’t decay as quickly. Hazel, another innovative AgTech startup, makes small sachets that inhibit ethylene, a molecule that makes fruit age faster.
The problem the companies are trying to solve is massive: It’s not just about keeping fruit and vegetables out of landfills, but also about avoiding all the water, land, fertilizer, and other resources needed to grow them and move them through the supply chain. At the same time that the demand for food is growing, climate change is making it harder to grow crops—as farmers deal with weather whiplash between droughts and floods and extreme heat. So it’s even more important to find ways to actually eat that food.