In times of trade wars and climate change, the global food system is increasingly coming under pressure. Daniel Khachab, CEO of Choco, shares how AI can contribute to advancing food security.
Interviewed by Klara Marie Schroeder
At Choco, we provide technology for food distributors across Europe, the Middle East, and the US by connecting them with their customers - supermarkets, restaurants, and beyond. But our vision goes further: we aim to bring the entire food supply chain onto one platform. By doing so, we can identify inefficiencies that contribute to food waste.
As a technology company, we are responsible for continuously assessing new technologies and determining their value for our users, customers, and strategy. We were fortunate to explore AI early on and quickly realized it could solve the same pain points more effectively than a traditional SaaS approach.
Once we saw that AI could improve our product - making it smarter, more efficient, and widely accessible - it was not just about assessing the technology anymore; it became about implementing it.AI is unlike previous advancements, such as cloud computing. It is 100 to 1000 times more impactful. That is why being early was so crucial: to understand, learn, and adapt as fast as possible.
One of the biggest challenges in the food supply chain is the massive labor shortage, particularly downstream. The food industry attracts passionate and hardworking people, but it is a tough sector, operating mostly at night and running on tight margins. As a result, it struggles to attract and retain talent.
The need for automation is extremely high. It starts with the most obvious roles, like truck driving, which faces severe shortages worldwide. But it extends to office administration, purchasing, warehouse operations, and logistics. AI can help fill these gaps by automating many of these tasks.
We are reaching a point where AI is not just a "vitamin" that makes food businesses more efficient - it is becoming a "painkiller." Without automation, we won't have enough human labor to keep food systems running at scale. AI can play a critical role in ensuring the world stays fed.
Labor shortages are primarily a problem in developed countries; addressing them is one of our biggest challenges. However, looking at the food system holistically, the biggest issue is waste. Some experts estimate that up to 50% of food production is lost. That means we produce nearly twice as much food as we actually consume, and someone has to bear that cost - often, it is the farmers in developing countries where much of the world's food is grown.
For example, if a farmer grows 100 mangos, but only 50 are ultimately consumed, that loss is priced into what they earn per mango. If we could connect the entire supply chain, from a consumer in New York, Paris, or Berlin to a farmer in Brazil, Thailand, or Colombia, we could reduce overproduction, optimize resource use, and minimize waste.
This means farmers would not overspend on fertilizers, pesticides, packaging, or transportation for food that never gets consumed. A more connected and efficient system would not only reduce food waste but also increase margins for producers, especially in developing countries, creating a more sustainable global food chain.
First, AI can help reduce waste. Given that the food system contributes about a quarter of global CO2 emissions, cutting waste alone could significantly reduce the carbon footprint without impacting food availability. AI could even help re-route surplus food to the nearly 700 million people globally who lack sufficient nutrition.
Second, AI can also improve sustainable farming practices in developing countries, where farmers often lack access to resources. Take "first-mile cooling" as an example: the shelf life of strawberries increases by nearly 500% if refrigerated within 30 minutes of harvest instead of six hours. However, many farmers lack refrigeration facilities due to cost, and buyers down the chain often have no visibility into this issue. By integrating supply chains and rewarding farmers for better handling practices, AI could help smallholder farmers increase their margins and make their businesses more sustainable.
Third, AI can create transparency. Food supply chains are incredibly complex, involving multiple countries, distributors, importers, and retailers. With AI, we could build systems that provide real-time visibility into food availability at the national level. By analyzing purchase and sales data across distributors, AI could predict shortages, assess the reliability of suppliers, and help governments ensure stable food supplies.
Transparency is key to managing food security, especially in an unpredictable geopolitical environment. Today, most governments lack real-time insights into their national food supply, making it difficult to respond proactively to supply chain disruptions.
One way to address this challenge is through AI-driven systems at every distributor in a country. These systems would track and analyze all purchases, inventory, and sales, even if transactions occur through various channels like voice, text, or email. AI could process these unstructured data formats, giving real-time visibility into food sources, supply reliability, and storage locations.
Such a system would enable predictive modeling to assess food security risks. For example, AI could flag potential disruptions early if a country has four weeks' worth of food in storage but relies on unreliable suppliers.
Beyond security, local food production is becoming increasingly important for both geopolitical and environmental reasons. Encouraging domestic production not only reduces supply chain vulnerabilities but also promotes biodiversity. Meeting consumer demand for a wide variety of locally grown foods would incentivize farmers to cultivate a broader range of crops, enhancing ecosystem resilience.
In summary, greater transparency, AI-driven insights, and an emphasis on local production can collectively strengthen food security, improve supply chain resilience, and support sustainability. These innovations can potentially be game-changers in how nations manage and safeguard their food systems.
We collectively need to create a conducive environment for AI development. At the moment, most foundational AI models are coming from China and the US. It is the responsibility of governments to ensure AI sovereignty by diversifying these sources. We can achieve this by focusing on four key ingredients: independent chip production, local data centers, access to top-tier talent, and a stable and sustainable energy supply. Governments must create an environment that supports these four elements, ensuring that nations can become independent in AI development.
Regarding businesses, especially scaling companies, trust in AI will increase with access to secure, sovereign AI resources. These resources must come from trusted sources and operate under clear, innovation-friendly regulatory frameworks. Governments should not need to incentivize businesses to actively adopt AI; market forces will drive that adoption. Instead, governments should focus on creating an environment that makes it easy and attractive for businesses to use AI effectively.
Daniel Khachab is the co-founder and CEO of Choco. Choco is on a mission to digitize global food supply chains, driving them toward sustainability, security, and profitability. Today, its AI platform facilitates half of all food traded in major cities like New York, Paris,London, and Berlin. Since its founding in 2018, Choco has raised $330 million, reaching unicorn status within 2.5 years. Previously, Daniel was the youngest Managing Director at Rocket Internet, where he oversaw growth across Latin America, Southeast Asia, Australia, and the Middle East.
