AgShift: Revolutionizing the Food Quality Assessment

“One-third of the food wasted each year could feed all of the world’s hungry people- and a few more. At the end of the day, it is simple: Wasting less food is much easier and achievable than growing more food.”

Today, human existence depends upon several things—food being the prime one. The dependency on food will continue as long as human beings exist on the earth. To suffice the need for food, there was a huge demand for mass food production which resulted in irregularity in the food supply chain industry and gave rise to food waste. Annually, in North America, 58 million tons, or 33% of total food waste, occurs across the supply chain in the post-harvest, processing, and distribution phases. Eventually, the food wastage was addressed at a global level, but the involvement of technology was still missing to solve this issue rapidly. The arrival of industry 4.0 ensured that this piece of the missing puzzle was found at the right time.

Despite the fast pace development, the food industry is yet far behind to catch up. In recent years, the industry has stepped up the quality assessment process by utilizing AI in the food industry. With the use of new techs such as AI and ML, the food science areas have improved its methodologies. Likewise, the use of AI has led to more cost-effective and less time-consuming techniques as compared to the traditional ones. A leader who was astute to utilize deep learning in the food industry is the Founder and CEO of AgShift, Miku Jha.

Born and brought up in India, Miku is personally connected to agriculture. She grew up planting mango trees on a 4th generation family farm—in a Smallholder farming community. Her connection with agriculture and her expertise in technology combing formed the idea of the agtech platform—AgShift. Noticing the potential in the idea she left her stable job at IBM and ventured into entrepreneurship with AgShift.

Unique Autonomous Quality Assessment

AgShift is an AI-based food technology company that focuses on improving the food inspection system with its advanced autonomous tech. The company utilizes an AI automation platform for food quality assessment aiding it better, faster, and quality assessment. This improves the overall efficiency while reducing the error and food wastage as compared to the traditional or manual process of assessment.

The company has the world’s first “Quality-management-system-in-a-box” solution for industrial automation of quality assessment. This solution progressively constructs the quality acceptance criteria as per the business metric. By utilizing this solution, the organization can not only enhance the quality but also increase the sample size, and yield better products. Besides, AgShift also comprises a unique data repository—A technology that is comparable to clinical AI such as healthcare or medical imaging. Amusingly, regardless of the tech advancements, AgShift is the only organization that offers clean, curated, annotated data sets across several high values and high margin commodities.

AgShift has introduced “Hydra”, a patented IoT device that automates quality assessment of several commodities under fresh produce and edible nuts namely, Strawberries, Raspberries, Almonds, baby carrots, and many more. The Hydra tech is important for the food industry as it has the capability to reduce recalls and food waste.

Breakthrough in AgTech

Miku is a passionate entrepreneur and an excellent product executive with a proven track record. In her bright career, she has been associated with several startups and helped them grow into successful enterprises. As a product executive, she has launched several large-scale enterprise products in mobile and IoT for companies like VMware and IBM. Being a tech genius, she could recognize the wide gap between the food industry and technology. This gap was filled with her brainchild company Agshift.

It helped her in understanding the complexities of the food supply chain industry. The journey of food from farm to fork has been a humbling experience for Miku. In her journey, she has analyzed the ways in which technology can bring operational efficiencies to businesses. The company is developed to save all the aspects of food wastage in the mind. One of the few AI applications of Agshift in food can help the customers deliver meaningful ROI to the business. Utilizing the company’s end-to-end automation, the customers benefit from day one. Another astounding factor about the company is that it can provide value to every stakeholder in the food supply chain.

Accurate and Pre-Emptive Quality Assessment

AgShift was established with a vision to reduce food waste globally. Miku’s understanding of the capabilities of tech knew how to leverage it and help reduce food waste through food quality assessment. In the U.S alone the inconsistent food quality assessment costs $15.6 billion. AgShift improves the quality assessment of food with objective, accurate, and pre-emptive quality assessment, resulting in a significant reduction in food waste across the supply chain.

Furthermore, AgShift’s solution can accurately analyze the shelf-life of perishables such as fresh berries, baby carrots, and other commodities. Miku adds, “For example, we have hypothesized that baby carrots and broccoli stalks that currently are thrown away could be dehydrated to preserve the nutritional content and reduce waste.” Not only quality assessment, but AgShift can assist in the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. The estimated yearly impact of the AgShift solution is 58 million tons, i.e. -2% decrease in greenhouse gas emissions produced by incompetence in the food supply chain.

Reduction of Hunger

Famine has been one of the biggest global challenges. Preventing food waste can help in eliminating global hunger and food can be distributed more efficiently. Miku quotes the EPA hierarchy—the place to start is at production. The insights a grower/producer will gain from the use of an IoT-enabled hardware/software system for QM may contribute to better decisions about planting/harvesting schedules. Likewise, a study by Ocicka & Razniewsk, states that the higher up the supply chain waste is eliminated, the less costly it is overall.

Promoting Women in Technology

Through AgShift, Miku is determined to solve the global challenges related to Agriculture by leveraging the new technologies. Apart from focusing on the expansion and growth of AgShift, she also shares a zeal about women in technology. Throughout her career, she has helped several young women entrepreneurs to succeed through multiple corporate initiatives. Miku will continue to be a mentor for the young women entrepreneurs in technology and be the flagbearer of revolutionizing the food assessment system.