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Sustainable Food Production

Improving sustainability of global food systems by making them more resilient to climate change through a quantum optimization solution to produce more nutritious food locally in less land.

OWNER

STATUS

Phase 2 – Full Proposal

QUANTUM APPROACH

Combinatorial Optimization
(Quantum Inspired)

SDGs

CONTRIBUTORS

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)

Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN)

National Institute for Theoretical and Computational Sciences (NITheCS) 

 

ORIGIN OF CONTRIBUTORS

IMPACT/ CONTEXT

Conflict and insecurity, economic shocks, and extreme weather events are the main drivers of acute food insecurity. To achieve Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2, the Food and Agriculture Organization affirms that a better understanding of food systems requires a local-to-global perspective.

Current projections indicate a necessary increase of food production per hectare by almost 60 percent by 2050 to meet the needs of the projected global population of 10 billion – assuming a static agricultural land. In this context, increasing productivity of agricultural land is not sufficient to address the core human need for food. Even now, countries with low and middle incomes, diets are known to be lacking in micro-nutrients including iron, zinc, folate, vitamin A, Calcium, and vitamin B12. As populations continue to grow, innovative solutions are much needed to devise sustainable agricultural practice that provide for more nutritious diets, while respecting planetary boundaries.

HOW QUANTUM COULD HELP

GAIN has launched multiple initiatives to strengthen and support the implementation of country food system pathways that can accelerate improvements in the consumption of safe and nutritious food for all, especially the most vulnerable, produced in a sustainable way. A nutritional value score considers nutrient density, as well as dietary factors related to non-communicable diseases. Ultimately, the global food system needs to be mapped with additional factors, such as societal, environmental, and economic factors.

This class of optimization problems known as mixed-integer linear programming. Classical algorithms to find approximate solutions (heuristics) to this class of problems exist. However, this class of problems is in general computationally hard, making large-scale optimization (e.g., many crops, many farmers, many processing options, many consumer segments, many objectives, etc.) challenging with classical computers and algorithms, as they would require exceedingly long computational time to reach a good approximate solution. Quantum algorithms hold promise to significantly enhance the quality of the solution to these optimization problems and represent therefore an ideal use case. 

2024 | Open Quantum Institute

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OQI Partners are institutions that benefit from peer recognition for their scientific contributions or impact expertise.

Requirements:

  1. Either have served as OQI’s spearheading partners during its incubation phase or have consistently engaged resources to OQI’s work as OQI members for at least a year
  2. Commit to co-shape the OQI’s unique value propositions for the three years of the pilot throughout the 4A’s​
  3. Are vetted by the OQI Advisory Committee
  4. Abide to OQI’s values and openness principles

OQI Members are institutions that benefit from peer recognition for their scientific contributions or their impact expertise.

Requirements:

  1. Have disclosed their governance structure
  2. Commit to actively contribute on at least one of the 4A’s assiduously for at least one year​
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Downloadable PDF version of Charter

 

Description:

The Open Quantum Institute (OQI) is a multilateral governance initiative that promotes global and inclusive access to quantum computing and the development of applications for the benefit of humanity. As a novel science diplomacy instrument, it brings together research, diplomacy, private sector and philanthropy stakeholders. OQI is hosted by CERN during its pilot phase (2024-2026).

 

Mission:

• Accelerating applications for humanity: Realising the full potential of quantum computing to have the widest possible societal impact by accelerating the development of use cases geared towards achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and succeeding framework , thanks to the combined forces of researchers, developers and entrepreneurs from academia and private sector as well as the United Nations, and large NGOs
• Access for all: Providing global, inclusive and equitable access to a pool of public and private quantum computers and simulators available via the cloud
• Advancing capacity building: Developing educational tools to enable everyone around the world to contribute to the development of quantum computing and make the most of the technology
• Activating multilateral governance for the SDGs: Providing a neutral forum to help shape multilateral governance of quantum computing for the SDGs

 

Values:

• Inclusivity, global scope
  • Enable people from all countries, regardless of whether they have any quantum computing capability of their own, to benefit from and to participate in the development of (i) quantum computing applications that address global challenges, in particular those that are closely related to their own specific challenges, and (ii) the multilateral governance of quantum computing for the SDGs
• Openness
  • Share experiences, knowledge, and methods for the benefit of all, following Open Science best practice
  • Make openly available the results – outcomes of joint activities related to the OQI mission conducted by the OQI community – to society via open repositories and/or through the use of open licences
• Focus on impact
  • Ensure that applications are developed for their quantum computing potential to tackle real-world problems that will benefit humanity
  • Consider and balance their ethical, legal, and societal implications
• Independence
  • Enable everyone to participate free from individual, national, corporate or any other agendas
  • Develop applications with a technology neutral approach.
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  • Foster a community of diverse expertise, backgrounds and geographies, enabled by international cooperation and diplomacy

 

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