According to the United States Department of Agriculture, food insecurity is "a household-level economic and social condition of limited or uncertain access to adequate food." Over 500 MILLION people globally suffered from hunger or food insecurity in 2022, and this number is set to keep rising if nothing is done.
Food insecurity is caused by many factors: poverty, lack of access to nutritional food, and discrimination. Food insecurity impacts both humans and the earth that we live on in negative ways. For people, it causes hunger and health issues due to lack of nutrition. For the planet, it causes water pollution, greenhouse gas emmisions, and the waste of resources. This is a huge issue with difficult to combat causes, so what can WE do?
With IBM's Watson Assistant, we created a user-friendly chatbot that local farmers, co-ops, or other community members can use to locate food banks near them. This way, food waste is reduced because people can find places to donate their food that will go unused. You can try our Star now, in the bottom right corner!
In the future, Star will be able to translate different languages, have text-to speech and speech-to-text features, as well as access larger databases to connect farmers around the world to their local communities.
Speaking of agriculture... there is another issue we hope to address in the future: Biodiversity. Biodiversity impacts everyone, because it is directly tied to our food supply. A way that we can help protect biodiversity is by supporting local farmers!
We want to provide you with as many resources as possible to help solve this global issue, so here are some resources you can use for some further knowledge!