Sustainability Aspects of ICT in Agriculture and Food Systems

Sammanfattning: This master thesis project aims to explore ICT solutions in agriculture and food systems, and to analyze their sustainability aspects. As a result, a comprehensive picture of existing and coming ICT solutions along the food chain is presented based on extensive literature review. Their enabled impacts are qualitatively analyzed for selected aspects of food security and environmental sustainability. Moreover, a few of ICT enabled solutions’ GHG emissions reduction potentials in agricultural and land use sector in the year 2030 are estimated quantitatively, ranging from 9 Mt to 31 Mt, depending on assumptions (6 to 50 Mt after sensitivity analysis). These results, which cannot be seen as a representation of the overall ICT potential to enable emission reductions in agriculture and the food chain, are discussed in light of earlier suggested overall ICT potentials in this area. Moreover, limitations and uncertainties of the study are further clarified. Overall, the qualitative analysis identifies a high number of solutions for ICT in the agriculture and food systems with an assumed potential to promote sustainable development. However, due to the lack of published quality data for these solutions, the predicted sustainability potential cannot be accurately estimated.