Outline

The primary objective of this project is to fight against hunger through AI implementation. Achieving zero hunger is one of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, a target that requires the collaboration of all sectors. My personal interest lies in data-analytics, and I am keen to explore how it can contribute to solving this issue, specifically identifying the areas where AI can play a significant role.

I will start with the background of the dramatic increase in hunger and undernourishment over the years. I aim to stress the urgency of addressing hunger by explaining the frightening cycle of hunger that could impact future generations. I also plan to show the audience the areas most affected by hunger with a heatmap that highlights these regions. In addition, I want to blow the idea up about how food loss/ waste happen in the world with a significant number that is twice higher than feeding the hunger. Then, I focus on the region that suffer the most from hunger, specifically looking at where the waste occurs along the food supply chain. I will then provide a broader view of food loss and waste on a global scale to identify which stages need more attention. The infographs suggest that most food loss occurs between on-farm and distribution stages. I will tell a success story of AI implementation can boost food production. Next, we discuss the next stpes about how data analytics can optimize each stage of the food supply chain to help reduce food loss. With this, I call to use data-driven insights (AI) to decrease food losses, especially in the on-farm until distribution stages, and I will recommend the general public to cut down on our food waste during the consumption stage.

Here’s my story arc: StoryArc

Initial sketches

I start with a dramatic rise of undernourishment trends here:

The hunger affects significantly to the future generations, as the Cycle of hunger: HungerCycle

We need to stop this frightening cycle! Let’s take a look the hunger map:

Up to 783 million people – one in ten of the world’s population – suffer from chronic hunger. On the other hand, roughly a third of the world’s food is wasted. That’s about 1.3 billion tons a year that is sufficient to feed 2 billion people (> twice the number of undernourished people).

hungervsfoodwaste

Moreover, according on the prior hunger map, Africa suffers hunger the most and let’s see further about food losses and waste along the food supply chain in Africa. Here the graph:

Food losses and waste in Africa happen the most at on-farm until distribution stages. Whereas, globally, 13 percent of food produced is lost between harvest and retail, while an estimated 17 percent of total global food production is wasted in households, in the food service and in retail (UN, 2023)

We can understand that most food losses and waste happen between on-farm and distribution. AI can help to answer those challenges through:

AI-based advisory increased 30% crop production (the success story)
Streamlined inventory management (next action)
Proactive stock rotation (next action)
Product shelf-life monitoring (next action)

The data

I start with the increased hunger trends data from “Hunger & Undernourishment Data”. Next, I created hunger cycle diagram by following “Hunger Cycle” references. I hope the audience get the urgency to stop the hunger cycle and fight hunger together. Then, I show the hunger map, how the hungers distributes across countries, by using “Hunger & Undernourishment Data” dataset in a different typograph. To give a deeper understanding, I provide the number of global hunger from ‘A Global Hunger Crisis’ reference and contradict the data with the number of food wasted from ‘Wasted Leftovers’ reference.

Moving forward, I will drag the audience focus to the region that suffers hunger the most, which is Africa. Next, we also analyze the food losses/ waste on that region from ‘Africa’s Food Losses Across Value Chain’ reference. Furthermore, to emphasize on which food value chain should be maintained in general, I refer to ‘Food Losses & Waste’ data.

A good news come up. The crucial value chain stages can be solved by AI. There is a success story of ‘AI Implementation in Agriculture’. Furthermore, I provide another opportunities for AI to take actions on these parts that coming from Reducing ‘Food Losses & Waste Through Data-Driven Insights’ reference. I hope those opportunities and success story inspire Data Scientist and ML engineers to involve in fighting this hunger.

Name	URL	Description
Hunger & Undernourishment Data	https://ourworldindata.org/hunger-and-undernourishment	Global hunger data in prevalence units
Hunger Cycle	https://www.mercycorps.org/blog/facts-global-hunger#:~:text=Hunger%20is%20a%20perilous%20cycle,or%20to%20improve%20their%20lives.	A reference of hunger cycle
A Global Hunger Crisis	https://www.wfp.org/stories/wfp-glance#:~:text=Up%20to%20783%20million%20people,next%20meal%20is%20coming%20from.	The number of hungers instead of prevalence
Wasted Leftovers	https://www.theworldcounts.com/challenges/people-and-poverty/hunger-and-obesity/food-waste-statistics	The number of food waste refrence
Africa’s Food Losses Across Value Chain	https://unctad.org/system/files/official-document/dtlstict2017d5_en.pdf	Africa food losses distrubution across food value chain
Food Losses & Waste	https://www.un.org/en/observances/end-food-waste-day	Global data of food losses
AI implementation in Agriculture	https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S258972172030012X#s0125	The success story of AI implementation in agriculture (boost crops production)
Reducing Food Losses & Waste Through Data-Driven Insights	https://www.grocerydive.com/spons/leveraging-data-analytics-for-enhanced-food-traceability-and-waste-reductio/692938/#:~:text=Reducing%20Food%20Waste%20Through%20Data,shelf%20life%20and%20managing%20inventory.	How data science has a crucial role in food supply chain

Method and medium

I am going to use Tableau and Shorthand for this project deliverables.

tswd-portfolio

Outline

Initial sketches

The data

Method and medium