Sustainable Digital Society

Food supply chains are perceived as having high carbon emissions, due to the associated use offertilisers, deforestation, land and water use and food waste. However, the UK has a legally­ binding target of net zero GHG emissions for 2050 (Scotland, 2045) and new farming policy to support "public goods" like climate change mitigation is already a focus for farmers due to exit from the EU's CommonAgricultural Policy. The project will engage with a range of stakeholders across the supply chain from farm to fork, introducing them to a number of transformative digital technologies, to greatly enhance efficiency and reduce environmental impact. Digital solutions will also be used to provide more circular economy and net­ zero opportunities within the supply chain. We will apply action research and design thinking approaches to co-­design ­ with farmers and other stakeholders in the supply chain – an intelligent information infrastructure to enhance transparency and pro­-environmental decision­ making across the supply chain. This will blend distributed ledger technologies with carbon footprinting and sequestration software backed by IoT sensors, sector software APIs, and AI / Machine Learning tools. Design decisions will also necessarily consider the environmental impacts of the components of the information infrastructure. The outcome will be a system that people and organisations can trust, being assured of data privacy, integrity, security and authenticity.