Sensors for food production – a wasting opportunity

Citation

Loughlin, C. (2005), "Sensors for food production – a wasting opportunity", Sensor Review, Vol. 25 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/sr.2005.08725caa.001

Sensors for food production – a wasting opportunity

Sensors for food production – a wasting opportunity

A recent survey in the UK found that on average 30 per cent of the food that is produced is thrown away. Some is discarded after too much is cooked, while others go rotten and need to be thrown away. However, the lion's share of the 30 per cent is thrown away at the farms where it is grown, simply because it does not comply with the cosmetic standards that we (via our supermarkets) impose.

A farmer near where I live recently had to sell up, because he could no longer afford the refrigeration costs that kept warehouses full of potatoes chilled for over a year while they waited to be sold. The very act of chilling ensured a very brief shelf life if they ever did reach the supermarkets.

At sea the already massively over fished stocks are discarded if their size or species do not fit government imposed quotas. And they are discarded, not to swim another day, but to die from extended swim bladders or rough handling.

So what?

Clearly such waste should be a concern for us all. Not just because we will be paying for it out of our own pockets, but also because it is surely reprehensible when large areas of the planet are deprived of basic commodities.

What can sensors and automation do to help this situation? Well – the good news is that at the moment sensors hardly feature at all and so the scope for their application is huge. Temperature and moisture sensing are well established but what other application areas might there be?

Visual inspection is clearly a major opportunity given our obsession with cosmetic appearance. At the moment most is done manually, and we can all imagine what a life-enhancing job potato inspection must be.

By applying automation to our produce we can gain control of the sorting process, so that blemished food can be cheaply diverted for use in products where further processing ensures the “defects” will never be seen.

It is the act of “taking control” that is key to success in this and many other areas. What we can measure and control we can also improve. This gives us the ability to make better decisions and to reduce wasted energy and materials.

It is not just in our factories that we can take control. The inspection of soil and growing plants allows fertilisers and weed killers to be applied only where they are needed.

In this issue we include a wide variety of sensing systems that we have not covered before, as well as report on the progress in established technologies. The main feature of food production that distinguishes it from other manufacturing areas is the variability of the products.

No two cabbages, biscuits, steaks, meat pies or pizzas are the same and the differences cannot be stated with micron precision. It is the challenge of measuring and controlling this qualitative variability that makes for such an interesting development area.

Clive Loughlin