Digital agrifood ecosystems: Digital platforms for inclusive, efficient, sustainable food systems to achieve food security

The competitive economic forces gained through sustainable industrialisation, innovation, and infrastructure, offer many opportunities for employment and income generation (United Nations (UN), 2021). Emerging disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence, the internet of things (IoT), big data and blockchain play a significant role in transforming society to meet dynamic and competitive economic needs. They change the way we interact. When appropriately designed, society becomes more inclusive, trustworthy, interconnected, and sustainable (Casino et al., 2019; Bienhaus & Haddud, 2018). Copyright © 2024. Edward Elgar Publishing Limited. All rights reserved. Digitisation enabled us to apply information and communications technology (ICT) technologies to different agricultural activities to increase efficiency and productivity. Digitalisation in agriculture focuses on using emerging technologies throughout the entire value chain to efficiently coordinate the end-to-end process (Tsan et al., 2019; Ginige, 2020). It uses digital technologies, innovations and data to transform business models and practices across the agriculture value chain. Addressing the bottlenecks in productivity, post-harvest handling, market access, finance, and supply-chain management is essential to ensure food security. We can create digital agrifood ecosystems by connecting digitalised agrifood value chains so they can work together and share resources. Digital agrifood ecosystems can empower all stakeholders to share and access data to motivate them to engage in agricultural trade. Sharing real-time data is essential for information flows, optimising material flows and money exchange. This will increase transparency and empower the government to reform financial aid, such as incentives and subsidies. However, to build trust, the privacy and security of the data shared by all stakeholders should be protected. Such systems can influence farm and state income (Gohin, 2006), risk reduction, including wealth and insurance (Sckokai & Moro, 2006), and investment behaviour (Conforti, 2005). In addition, an effective food distribution (Sharif & Irani, 2016) mechanism could be established to minimise food loss and wastage.