According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations zero hunger is the second sustainable development goal identified to transform this world. Sustainable agriculture has been identified by the UN as a primary enabler to achieve this goal. Sustainable agriculture requires that a symbiotic relationship exists between the agricultural system and the established ecosystems such that there is no net depletion of future resources.
The Food and Agriculture Organisation of The United Nations calculates that enough food is presently produced to feed 10 billion people. Wasted food (over a billion tonnes), accounts for 1/3 of all food produced for human consumption. The world produces more than 1 1/2 times enough food to feed everyone on the planet.
Having implemented a subsistence garden with the capacity to augment 200 meals per day in Southern Africa, Ridgeway Technology Solutions are investing research into developing a sustainable subsistence model for local food supply. The idea being that many sustainable subsistence gardens implemented within a community can have the same food supply chain viability without the requirement for a sometimes convoluted, costly and environmentally damaging food supply chain thus providing remote and impoverished communities with the means to ensure that no person goes hungry.
Key areas of research involve investigating ways of increasing the longevity, viability and nutritional value of crops, sustainable soil management through building sustainable soils into the gardens utilising in situ-methods involving eco-sustainable solutions that provide year round soil coverage and an efficient carbon renewal cycle. This is also focusses on increasing the water retention of the soil. Healthy soil nutrient retention and recycling is known to address the chronic malaise of desertification which is adversely contributing to climate change. Further research is aimed at investing efficient and sustainable water storage, harvesting and recycling methodologies. Primary research focussed on photosynthetic efficiency using currently reviewed models on chromophore vibration mechanisms to mediate the photosynthetic process are being addressed.
Sustainable knowledge transfer is a critical requirement to ensure the long term viability of the solution and presently machine learning has been identified as a means to utilise smart phone applications to manage crop management, yield and nutritional requirements during growth as well as a quality assurance tool for providing nourishing food to the community food supply network. Ridgeway Technology Solutions will be developing and implementing machine learning into the sustainable subsistence food supply mechanism.
Ridgeway Technology Solutions has forged partnerships in Southern Africa that provides access to a functioning subsistence farm. Test facilities are available to Ridgeway Technology Solutions in which subsistence quantity food growing in a sustainable aquaculture based ecosystem can be done and innovative solutions tested.