For many, choosing to eat healthy doesn't take much more than visiting the nearest grocery store's produce section---in a time-honored tradition of sniffing, squeezing and examining. But what happens if, or perhaps when, these produce bins run dry? Urban food resilience is a real and imminent threat as a growing population demands fresh food.
According to the United Nations, two-thirds of the world's population will live in cities by 2050---thereby creating a potential scarcity and urban food resilience. In order to combat this issue, both in Atlanta and beyond, the IoT.ATL AgTech Challenge launched Wednesday.
This important program will search for the most inventive AgTech solutions to tackle the issue via the Internet of Things, with a focus on collaboration and innovation. The six selected startups will each have access to a "Living Lab," a 20-foot shipping container along the Atlanta BeltLine to pilot their AgTech over the course of 12 months, as part of Atlanta's Demonstration Project program.
"The IoT.ATL AgTech Challenge seeks to support and accelerate best-in-class urban agricultural technologies that successfully position food as a platform for health, economic development and cultural expressions, creating co-benefits for all---particularly low-income residents and families," Cynthia Curry, director of IoT for the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, said.
The founding partners of the initiative include the Metro Atlanta Chamber, the City of Atlanta, Georgia Power, Invest Atlanta, the Atlanta BeltLine and AGCO Corporation. The former two are developing partnerships with community-based organizations to ensure the fresh produce grown in the IoT.ATL AgTech Challenge pilot is received by those needing it the most.
Besides access to the six Living Labs, selected startups receive mentorship and guidance from the Atlanta civic, corporate and technology community during the pilot, as well as from the IoT.ATL Living Labs partners. This AgTech Challenge is the first IoT.ATL Living Labs initiative, which was developed earlier this year to spotlight Atlanta's strengths in IoT and further technology community collaboration and economic development.
Curry said Atlanta has the 10th largest economy in the country and a population set to double by 2040---an important fact that the city must consider for a resilient food system. She said these sobering statistics are part of the reason the City of Atlanta, through Invest Atlanta, created the Demonstration Project---to "advance the development of innovative technologies with the objective of fueling the best science and innovation between the City of Atlanta and local businesses and entrepreneurs."
She continued to state that the IoT.ATL AgTech Challenge will advantageously use "Invest Atlanta's Demonstration Project to provide solutions for equity and inclusion via IoT technology and highlight the amazing innovation happening in AgTech. By identifying scalable AgTech solutions that can help provide urban food resilience, if scaled, Atlanta is helping create solutions that can be leveraged locally and across the globe. Atlanta has a robust agriculture and AgTech ecosystem already, and the IoT.ATL AgTech Challenge will help us remain on the cutting edge, while providing value to the community."
Population, as well as environmental changes and general stressors, will undoubtedly impact our food supply. Creating innovative IoT solutions to affect food resilience, like the ones that will come out of the IoT.ATL AgTech Challenge, is a way to help identify sustainable AgTech answers for the future.
"The world of agriculture is adopting a data-driven agronomy, leveraging imaging, sensors, big data, AI and much more to become more predictive, less reactive, more efficient, more flexible and more sustainable," Curry said.
IoT.ATL AgTech Challenge applications are open starting Wednesday until early November and are available to anyone in and outside of Atlanta. Interested candidates can get more information, including access to the online application, at https://www.iot-atlanta.com/.
