The Future of Food and the Role of Measurement Technology

Producing More With Less: Controlled-Environment Agriculture

Modern greenhouses and vertical farms move agriculture into a strictly controlled environment, where growth conditions are designed rather than hoped for. Temperature, humidity and CO2 are monitored continuously to achieve maximum yield per square meter with minimum water, energy and nutrients.

The same approach makes production more resilient: a crop that doesn't depend on the outside climate can be located near consumption, cut transport distance and sustain constant quality all year round.

Sustainability: You Only Optimize What You Measure

A simple rule applies in the food industry: you get what you measure. Reducing an oven's energy consumption, a dryer's waste or a line's water use requires first knowing those variables accurately — and then controlling them continuously.

Reliable measurement is, in that sense, sustainability infrastructure: without traceable data there is no defensible optimization, neither for the operation nor for the footprint-reduction targets the industry is taking on.

New Ways of Producing Food

Plant-based proteins already compete on the shelves, and behind them two deeper trends are advancing. Microbial fermentation — the same principle as brewing — uses microorganisms to convert simple raw materials, and even agricultural waste streams, into ingredients and food. And cellular agriculture aims further: producing dairy proteins without cows or eggs without chickens, by growing the cells that make them.

For instrumentation these processes are not exotic: they are bioreactors, and they demand the same kind of control as a fermentation room — temperature, CO2, humidity and stable, documented conditions. The starting point is familiar: we analyze it in the CO2 in fermentation and brewing note.

What This Means for Measurement

All these trends converge on the same demand: more variables measured, more accurately, at more points of the process, with records that can be defended — before a quality auditor today, and before a sustainability standard tomorrow.

That journey can already be seen today in CO2, which runs through the entire chain from the greenhouse to biogas: we map it in the CO2 across the food chain note.

This content is based on Vaisala's material on the future of the food industry and the role of measurement technology. AKRIBIS is an authorized Vaisala partner for distribution and technical support in the region — explore the full Vaisala instrumentation line.