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Digital innovations for monitoring sustainability in food systems

Nature Food volume 5, pages 656–660 (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

Monitoring systems that incentivize, track and verify compliance with social and environmental standards are widespread in food systems. In particular, digital monitoring approaches using remote sensing, machine learning, big data, smartphones, platforms and blockchain are proliferating. The increasing use and availability of these technologies put us at a critical juncture to leverage these innovations for enhanced transparency, fairness and open access, rather than descending into a dystopian landscape of digital surveillance and division perpetuated by a powerful few. Here we discuss opportunities and risks, and highlight research gaps linked to the ongoing digitalization of monitoring approaches.

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Acknowledgements

AI (Grammarly and ChatGPT) was used to correct typos and shorten sentences.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Eva-Marie Meemken & Robert Finger

  2. NASA Harvest, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

    Inbal Becker-Reshef

  3. Facultad de Ciencias Agrarias, Universidad de Talca, Talca, Chile

    Laurens Klerkx

  4. Wageningen University, Wageningen, Netherlands

    Laurens Klerkx & Sanneke Kloppenburg

  5. University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Jan Dirk Wegner

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  1. Eva-Marie Meemken
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Correspondence to Eva-Marie Meemken.

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Nature Food thanks Victor Galaz, Emily Duncan and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Meemken, EM., Becker-Reshef, I., Klerkx, L. et al. Digital innovations for monitoring sustainability in food systems. Nat Food 5, 656–660 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-024-01018-6

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