Markovic, M. orcid.org/0000-0002-5477-287X, Li, A. orcid.org/0009-0004-1103-8300, Ayall, T.A. orcid.org/0000-0001-9413-6459 et al. (8 more authors) (Cover date: November-2 2024) Embedding AI-Enabled Data Infrastructures for Sustainability in Agri-Food: Soft-Fruit and Brewery Use Case Perspectives. Sensors, 24 (22). 7327. ISSN 1424-8220
Abstract
The agri-food sector is undergoing a comprehensive transformation as it transitions towards net zero. To achieve this, fundamental changes and innovations are required, including changes in how food is produced and delivered to customers, new technologies, data and physical infrastructures, and algorithmic advancements. In this paper, we explore the opportunities and challenges of deploying AI-based data infrastructures for sustainability in the agri-food sector by focusing on two case studies: soft-fruit production and brewery operations. We investigate the potential benefits of incorporating Internet of Things (IoT) sensors and AI technologies for improving the use of resources, reducing carbon footprints, and enhancing decision-making. We identify user engagement with new technologies as a key challenge, together with issues in data quality arising from environmental volatility, difficulties in generalising models, including those designed for carbon calculators, and socio-technical barriers to adoption. We highlight and advocate for user engagement, more granular availability of sensor, production, and emissions data, and more transparent carbon footprint calculations. Our proposed future directions include semantic data integration to enhance interoperability, the generation of synthetic data to overcome the lack of real-world farm data, and multi-objective optimisation systems to model the competing interests between yield and sustainability goals. In general, we argue that AI is not a silver bullet for net zero challenges in the agri-food industry, but at the same time, AI solutions, when appropriately designed and deployed, can be a useful tool when operating in synergy with other approaches.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2024 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
Keywords: | artificial intelligence; Internet of Things; net zero; agri-food |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Food Science and Nutrition (Leeds) > FSN Nutrition and Public Health (Leeds) The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Food Science and Nutrition (Leeds) > FSN Colloids and Food Processing (Leeds) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council) EP/V041371/2 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 26 Nov 2024 15:55 |
Last Modified: | 26 Nov 2024 15:55 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | MDPI |
Identification Number: | 10.3390/s24227327 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:219985 |