Nutrient Density - Part Three

Tim Hammerich

News Reporter

The average American spends over five hours per day on their smart phone, using apps for everything from health to socializing to work. Bionutrient Food Association founder Dan Kittredge hopes to develop yet another use for this technology, measuring nutrient density.

Kittredge… “The end game concept, being that in your smartphone, one of the cameras is a spectrometer and you can take a picture of the beef or the milk or the rice or the carrot and get a real-time reading, not a QR. Uh, realtime reading, actually assessing nutrient levels in real time.”

This technology already exists as a handheld device and if used more broadly, it could inform not only consumer purchasing decisions, but farmer decisions as well.

Kittredge… “Broadly, we're going to be able to engage much more intelligently and sensitively and proactively with nature. So one thing is we get the feedback. That are real time. And so with the metadata that we have about management and causal factors, we can be able to flash a light at the corn plant while it's growing and say, oh, it looks like we need a two grams of cobalt applied per acre as a foliar spray, the B12 levels aren't quite there. So that ability to in real time, modulator, fertility and management practices for growers will. Obviate the need for most agrochemicals I would suggest will maximize the functional build of soil carbon and ecosystem function. So I think, you know, the opportunity to realize the Virginia division of agriculture being a systemic solution to the climate dynamics becomes much more plausible.”

The possibility of real time decision making across the food supply chain could certainly shape the future of farming.