A staggering amount of food is lost between harvest and market, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Jack Shaw explores the innovations boosting food security, revenue, and sustainability.
Across the globe, a significant proportion of food harvested doesn’t reach markets, shops, or supermarkets – lost instead during handling, processing, or distribution chains. This is a major contributing challenge to global food security, but there is hope on the horizon.
As technology moves apace, a wave of post-harvest innovation is creating a more resilient and efficient food production system.
Why post-harvest food loss matters
When harvested food is ruined, it reduces the overall supply, driving up prices and decreasing farmers’ incomes, particularly in developing countries. Over time, food becomes less accessible and affordable for vulnerable populations. Resources used to produce it, such as water, land, and energy, are wasted, and the loss of perishable foods can also negatively impact nutrition.
Across Europe and North America, an estimated 9.19% of harvested food is lost during handling, storage, processing, transport, and distribution. For the food and agriculture sector, this loss is a major contributor to Scope 3 emissions. This includes emissions from producing goods that are not consumed, transporting those items, and the methane released from landfill decomposition.
To understand how to mitigate this, it’s important to trace the journey of a food item from the field to the plate, examining innovations at each stage.
New preservation and storage technologies
The first key challenge is to prevent harvested food from immediately spoiling. Innovations here address storage and advanced technologies that help prevent spoilage.
Hermetically sealed bags and silos
Hermetic storage is a highly effective technology that combats the two primary enemies of stored dry goods – pests and moisture. It is an airtight storage solution in which the grain consumes any remaining oxygen itself. That deprives anything else – including insects and aerobic microorganisms like mould – of oxygen. This process effectively fumigates the product using its own biology, and it also prevents the entry of air-carried moisture.
Because this process requires no chemicals, it is a major sustainability improvement resulting in safer food, lower input costs, and a product that can meet stringent organic standards. It can also reduce storage losses to less than 1%, directly protecting both revenue and food security. This technology is highly scalable, ranging from low-cost hermetic bags for smallholders to fully automated hermetic silos for large commercial operations.
Controlled-atmosphere storage
This is a high-tech evolution of cold storage, specifically designed for high-value, perishable produce, including fruits and vegetables. It manages the temperature, gas composition, and humidity of air in the storage to create a suspended animation state for produce, dramatically slowing the natural ageing and ripening processes.
Controlled-atmosphere storage significantly extends shelf life and maintains the flavour, firmness, and nutritional value, allowing this produce to command a premium price. This food production technology enables the transport of delicate products such as berries, bananas, and avocados across oceans, opening up otherwise inaccessible global markets.
Edible coatings
A promising technology involves using natural materials, such as starch, chitosan from shellfish, whey, soy, or waxes, to create an invisible, ultra-thin second skin around fresh produce. This effectively gives each item its own controlled atmosphere, slowing the fruit’s metabolism and ripening. It also prevents produce from dehydrating, shrivelling, or losing weight, and it inhibits microbial growth, especially when coatings are infused with natural antimicrobials such as cinnamon or thyme.
This extended shelf life directly translates to reduced food loss and less lost revenue. It also reduces the need for single-use plastic packaging, helping companies meet their scope 3 goals and plastic reduction targets. Edible coatings also appeal to environmentally conscious consumers. Because flavour, firmness, and colour are fully preserved, premium prices can be maintained.
Advances in smart food processing
Having initially stored and preserved harvested food, the next question is how to transform it to last even longer or add value. Smart processing technologies can transform perishable raw materials into stable, value-added products that are also easier to transport and store.
Freeze drying
Freeze drying is not a new concept in food production, but it is evolving into something much smarter. Until now, this technology has been energy-intensive with a large environmental footprint. New innovations are using microwave or infrared energy to cut drying times. This helps reduce costs and move produce along the chain faster. When paired with green energy sources or heat recovery systems, the process becomes more sustainable and profitable.
Freeze drying also allows for the creation of high-value, long-lasting products such as instant coffee, astronaut food, military rations, and fruit snacks, effectively preventing waste and adding economic value.
Post-harvest innovation in supply chain logistics
With the food now harvested, stored, preserved, and processed if required, the final question is how to get it safely to the shop shelf. The journey from farm to fork is a critical point of failure in the supply chain. Physical damage during transit is a primary cause of food loss, especially for delicate produce.
Automated end-of-line solutions, such as advanced strapping machines, are revolutionising load securing. These systems prevent the crushing and bruising common with manual handling by applying consistent, precise tension. This ensures load stability during transport, significantly reducing spoilage and waste. Automated machines can typically handle up to 70 pallets an hour, boosting efficiency and minimising the time produce spends out of cold chains.
Other logistical innovations include cold chain monitoring and GPS route optimisation, ensuring produce travels the shortest distance to retailers and arrives in a more optimal condition.
The future is data driven
Beyond these innovations on the farm-to-fork journey, post-harvest innovation in general is heading firmly toward data-driven breakthroughs. IoT sensors and blockchain are creating transparent and responsive supply chains. Data analytics can predict spoilage hot spots, optimise inventory management, and improve traceability.
Research into using digital twins in the cold chain is perhaps one of the most significant innovations in progress that are still at the prototype stage. This combines existing IoT data with predictive AI to create a virtual replica of a shipment, enabling dynamic quality control and preventing spoilage before it occurs.
Harnessing AI to boost food security is an ongoing process. From predicting optimal harvest times and automating logistics route planning to AI-powered automated produce grading, some of these applications are already well adopted. However, significant barriers remain to wider implementation, including up-front costs, connectivity issues, and privacy concerns. If those concerns can be addressed, data-driven solutions will likely accelerate rapidly.
Innovation for a food-secure tomorrow
Post-harvest innovation is building a smarter, more resilient food production system. From hermetic storage to AI-powered logistics, these technologies ensure more of the harvest reaches the retail sector. This enhances food security for vulnerable populations, boosts farmer profitability, and shrinks the industry’s environmental footprint.
The journey from farm to fork is being transformed into an efficient, data-driven, sustainable pathway, demonstrating a clear commitment to a food-secure future where both people and the planet can thrive.
