Food systems are responsible for a third of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. We investigate what Large Language Models (LLMs) can contribute to reducing the environmental impacts of food production. We define a typology of design and prediction tasks based on the sustainable food literature and collaboration with domain experts, and evaluate six LLMs on four tasks in our typology. For example, for a sustainable protein design task, food science experts estimated that collaboration with an LLM can reduce time spent by 45% on average, compared to 22% for collaboration with another expert human food scientist. However, for a sustainable menu design task, LLMs produce suboptimal solutions when instructed to consider both human satisfaction and climate impacts. We propose a general framework for integrating LLMs with combinatorial optimization to improve reasoning capabilities. Our approach decreases emissions of food choices by 79% in a hypothetical restaurant while maintaining participants' satisfaction with their set of choices. Our results demonstrate LLMs' potential, supported by optimization techniques, to accelerate sustainable food development and adoption.

A.I. technology will allow farmers to target crop pests REGINA, SK, Aug. 20, 2020 /CNW/ - Today, Protein Industries Canada announced the development of new technology that specifically targets pests when spraying fields, increasing efficiencies and providing economic benefits for farmers. The technology uses artificial intelligence to detect weeds and other crop pests while passing over a field. This is estimated to reduce pesticide use by up to 95 per cent while maintaining crop yield, saving farmers approximately $52 per acre per growing season. Additionally, the technology can be retrofitted to upgrade new or existing sprayers, making it suitable for all Canadian farmers. The $26.2 million project is being led by Precision.ai

The $26.2 million project is being led by Precision.ai The partners are together investing $13.4 million into the project, with Protein Industries Canada investing the remaining $12.8 million. Approximately 120 new Canadian jobs are expected to be created through the project within the next five years. "This new project supported by the Protein Supercluster is a great example of how the superclusters are bringing innovation to farming practices, using advanced technology like artificial intelligence (AI) and creating new well-paying jobs. Through a collaborative effort between three SMEs and a university research centre, this project has the potential to dramatically reduce chemical pesticide use without sacrificing crop yield or quality," said the Honourable Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry.