Colombia Archives - Food Planet Prize

In a world plagued by the dual challenges of food waste and hunger, a trailblazing startup named EatCloud is making waves by offering an innovative solution that claims to address both issues simultaneously.

Unlike other waste apps, in the EatCloud vision, surplus food is not seen as waste or charity, but as a strategic asset within food companies’ sustainability agendas. EatCloud claims that its triple impact reduces waste, fights hunger, and benefits the environment. Its tech platform redistributes surplus food to vulnerable communities, preventing it from ending up in landfills and generating positive environmental, social, and economic impact.

EatCloud says its strength lies in the valuable data its AI generates for clients to make climate-smart business decisions that conform to ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) standards.

Central to EatCloud’s strategy is the use of artificial intelligence. By automating the surplus food management process, the platform claims to streamline logistics and provide financial incentives for participating companies.

In just five years, EatCloud has grown from a pilot project to operating in Colombia, Mexico, and Ecuador, onboarding in Guatemala, Costa Rica, Peru, Morocco, and Zambia, and accelerating in the USA, Spain, and Italy—proving its ability to provide value and its adaptability across markets.

_{The Foundation “Colombia Social Vida”, based in Medellín, redistributes the food it obtains through EatCloud to children in different areas of the city. For many children, the food they receive through the Foundation is their only source of nourishment. Food Banks and Foundations form the ecosystem that redistributes surplus food among their beneficiaries through the EatCloud platform.}

The initiative states it has prevented the waste of over 47,000 tons of food to date, equivalent to more than 113 million meals, partnering with 1,123 nonprofit organizations in the process. According to EatCloud, this has prevented the emission of over 1100 tons of CO₂ and saved over 28 billion liters of water, while generating over USD 40 million in savings across the food ecosystem. Creating tailored data insights for users across the food industry, EatCloud claims its versatility encourages adoption, maximizes impact across the supply chain, and shows how data-driven solutions can reshape our relationship with food.

The initiative also has strategic partnerships with organizations such as WWF, the Global Foodbanking Network, Deloitte, and SAP, which support EatCloud’s endeavors.

Learn more about EatCloud.

Written by Gilly Smith
Photos provided by EatCloud

Traditional skills meet frontier tech as a Global Cooperative, powered by Croppie, puts data, technology, and decision-making back into the hands of farmers.

In an era of growing climate challenges and food insecurity, digital platforms are proving to be a useful means of advising farmers on solutions about weather, waste, finances, and farming models as scientists and activists call for a reform of the global food system.

Now smallholders, one of the global communities often most vulnerable to climate change, could become the game-changers as technology captures their ancestral farming skills.

Producing roughly a third of the world’s food, these farmers—who are among the most experienced stewards of the land—have been largely excluded from the sourcing of data for the digital platforms which provide them with timely agronomic advice, financial services, and digital training.

*_{A Producers Direct agent supports a female farmer from northern Peru as she learns to use Croppie.}*

Croppie, a new digital platform from Producers Direct, which has a mission to build farmer-led solutions that enable smallholder farmers in Latin America and East Africa to thrive, claims to harness this farmer-powered data in a digital ecosystem. Mixing their age-old wisdom with cutting-edge tech such as AI, satellite imagery, and predictive analytics, farmers worldwide can use it to turn their farms into sustainable, climate-resilient businesses.

By providing real-time, personalized advice to farmers, Croppie aims to address some of the most pressing environmental challenges in modern agriculture. It helps farmers make informed decisions that respect their land, traditions, and ecosystems, by delivering advanced climate-smart advice through lo-fi channels like WhatsApp and SMS. The goal is empowerment—facilitating better decision-making at the individual level while promoting collective action and knowledge exchange globally.

What sets Croppie apart is its fundamental principle that the platform is made by farmers for farmers, rebuilding and rebranding their collaborative experience as a hub of innovation, service delivery, and peer-to-peer learning. It integrates various data sources, aggregating information from certification records, cooperative records, farmer data, and third party data, establishing a versatile platform that adapts to farmers’ needs.

In what the initiative sees as a significant departure from traditional top-down technology models, Croppie empowers farmers by placing them at the center of innovation, participating in the design of tools, and developing tailored solutions that directly address their needs. By being co-creators of the data they generate, smallholders can transform into leaders within a decentralized food system.

Central to Croppie’s mission is minimizing agriculture’s impact on the environment. Using sophisticated analysis of satellite imagery, weather data, and on-farm specifics, Croppie helps farmers to refine or rethink their practices and avoid harming fragile ecosystems.

Its climate-smart guidance helps to reduce excessive use of water and fertilizers, for example, maintaining soil health and significantly cutting down agriculture’s environmental footprint. It helps to boost productivity through strategic planning, which reduces the need for land expansion, curbing emissions and safeguarding essential carbon sinks and biodiversity hotspots.

Producers Direct’s approach highlights a new paradigm in agriculture, the power of smallholder farmers to become pivotal agents of change in the global food system.

As smallholders find greater control over both their methodologies and data, the ripple effects could transform their communities significantly, setting new standards for resilience and sustainability.

Learn more about Croppie.

Written by Gilly Smith
Photos provided by the Croppie

A revolutionary refrigeration method, which uses a novel bio-nanotechnology able to freeze at higher temperatures, could slash the energy use and carbon footprint of the cooling industry by half.

That’s the claim of NanoFreeze, which created its bio-nanotechnology as a university project in the bio-design field in 2018. Its first product application was a portable cooler to bring refrigerated items to remote areas, and went on to be the overall winner of the BioDesign Challenge 2019 in New York against universities such as Harvard and MIT.

Now the company aims to put the challenges of food waste at the heart of the cooling industry of the future. It states that its technology is a brand new way to refrigerate naturally, and can preserve the cold chain twice as long as regular frozen water.

^{A double-door refrigerator equipped with the innovative NanoFreeze Panels.}

Its coolant products like Ice Packs, Cool Coats, and Reusable Ice already adapt their cold chain technology to the needs of almost anything that requires refrigeration during transportation. An ice-like solid maintains food at a chilled 2ºC to 8ºC for up to 200 hours, and also acts as an insulator for a wide variety of cold chain products including Ice Packs, Coolers, Cold Coats, and Energy Savings Panels.

Currently these products are designed to sustain the cold chain for extended periods. NanoFreeze claims that its technology enables the products to retain cold without any energy input, helping to prevent food spoilage from cold chain disruption. NanoFreeze says that their coolers are fully recyclable and feature a biodegradable coolant, promoting sustainable cold transport.

The company says that it is collaborating with Colombian farmers exporting vegetables, herbs, and fruits, who report savings of over USD 320,000 in food waste within a year of employing Cold Coats during export. According to NanoFreeze, this has enabled agro-export clients to reduce food waste from an average of 30% down to a mere 5% or even zero.

NanoFreeze states that its panels could halve the energy consumption of refrigerators, small cold rooms, and shipping containers, marking a new era of sustainable innovation in cold transport.

Country: Colombia

Country: Colombia

Country: Colombia

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