With the slogan "Food Safety: From Farm To Table", World Health Day in April 2015 focused on food safety to draw global attention to the importance of food safety and its quality as a major challenge of this century.
For more than 150 years, the world has been firmly committed to feeding the global population sustainably. The global population will grow from 7 billion today to more than 9 billion in 2050. The change of consumer values and climate change are taking place. Food processing and agricultural systems must be improved. One of the biggest challenges facing oilseed processing is to reduce waste while maintaining food supply and contribute to reducing greenhouse gases.
Technology, digitalization and application -- innovation in all its forms supports meeting the challenges of the global food system: whether it's achieving zero hunger, meeting consumer preferences, creating safer workplaces, providing transparency to our food systems, replacing fossil fuels, or improving agricultural technologies.
Innovation is not a matter of a company, university or technology platform. This is why the different technical improvements proposed in this article will help the development of the oilseed processing sector.
The safety of edible oil and edible protein is a major challenge of this century, which must be solved to protect human health and ensure the self-sufficiency of protein and oil, which plays an important role in trade and national economy. The challenge is how to extract oil from oilseeds while maintaining the quality of protein in a more effective way and using sustainable processing methods to eliminate unwanted compounds.
An important challenge in the production of fats and oils is the use (or no use) of solvents to solve economic, health and environmental issues. The well-known hexane leaching process can be replaced by greener solvents or the use of specific surfactants, and articles related to these alternatives can be found in the relevant literature.
Scientific oil extraction methods can help us understand and optimize the entire process of oilseed processing, which is an important advancement, reducing the use of energy or solvents while ensuring the quality of protein and oil.
The society is looking for more information on how to maintain the naturalness of food. Refineries need to find new ways to remove unwanted compounds by "inventing" soft refining such as enzymes, biological solvents or mechanical processes.
At the same time, a system needs to be developed to recover by-products, wastewater and waste from the processing process and convert them into chemical molecules used to make new materials and products.
By creating a model in which the degraded organic carbon can be reused in the production of materials, we can solve the new chemical products recovered from the agricultural sector for industrial and pharmaceutical applications in the market, and add value to the oilseed processing industry, which is a challenge for our industry.
Finally, we must not forget the impact of agriculture (like all industries) on the environment. Studies have shown that agriculture accounts for 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and has a greater risk of rapid climate change. Agriculture can meet the growing demand for food. Farmers are flexible entrepreneurs who do more with less money.
Partnerships with farmers through investment in innovation and training will provide farmers with the tools needed to increase productivity and meet future food needs: better technology, better seeds, larger scale and mechanization, without the need to significantly increase land use, combining it with the technological innovation of oilseed processing, which can meet the challenges of future food demand.
