Cloud-enabled Integration of IoT Applications within the Farm to Fork to Reduce the Food Waste

The climate change, the loss of productive land area and the exponential population growth are demanding new and more efficient ways to produce, transform and consume food resources that respect the planet's sustainability. The achievement of these challenges require the use of emerging ICT technologies, such as Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Cloud Computing, to promote the real-time information exchange along the farm to fork value chain, i.e. from the primary production to the food consumption, as well as to develop smart applications that take advantage of integrated information, e.g., aiming the process monitoring, prediction, optimization and traceability. This paper presents the development of a digital cloud-based ecosystem, built upon the open-source FIWARE platform, to enable the integration of smart applications and assets along the farm to fork chain, aiming to reduce the food waste. Furthermore, the feasibility of the proposed system is analysed through the integration of several IoT sensing nodes and a smart monitoring application, showing its benefits in terms of modularity, interoperability, scalability and robustness.