Korea’s food system needs to be a whole lot smarter. Here in Seoul and across the country, we have every incentive to speed the process along. With Korea being a mountainous country with only 22 percent arable land and less rainfall than most other neighboring rice-growing countries, it’s vital that we keep this industry healthy and growing.

We must consider the inefficiency and environmental impact of the vast distances food products are shipped. Fully half of these products spoil or are otherwise lost somewhere between field and fork. Thus, we need to take action now.

But, in an increasingly complex supply chain, where feed ingredients come from many different source products, where processing beef or pork involves a dozen or more locales from abattoirs to distribution centers, these attributes are no longer enough.

Fortunately we’re on the cusp of a technological transformation that is paving the way for smarter technologies to not only safeguard the foods we eat, but impact our daily lives in other profound ways, whether it be in helping us better manage traffic congestion, conserve water, or monitor our health. It’s becoming easy and relatively inexpensive to imbed sensors in all sorts of systems, and network them together. In the future, things like, cars, airports, roadways, pipelines and medical equipment will become “intelligent,” or equipped with transistors that gather and disseminate information.

IDTechEx — a company that provides custom consultancy, research and global events on the subjects of printed electronics, organic electronics, radio-frequency identification (RFID) and smart packaging — believes that by 2015, 900 billion food items could utilize RFID, and 824 million livestock will have more sophisticated, more expensive tags on or in them. In fact, a Norwegian food supplier is already using RFID technology to track and trace poultry and meat products from the farm, through the supply chain, to supermarket shelves. A German grocery chain is using software to capture and manage information on inventory levels and expiration dates on meat sold in one of its stores. The software automatically identifies which packages are nearing best-before dates and sends alerts as meat shelves empty. In Manitoba, Canada, more than $400,000 was committed to create a system that will enable foods produced or processed in this province to be traced in a way that will provide information on their origin and path through the food chain.

The benefits of a smarter food system are clear: end-to-end visibility across the entire supply chain, more thoughtful management of scarce resource, and healthier meals on our dinner tables. But, a system is only as strong as its weakest component. Trying to manage these problems in isolation is no longer an option. For that reason, it is imperative that we address this issue from a nationwide perspective. Korea must take the lead in building a food system for the 21st century.

At a time when governments are entering into deficits to spur economic recovery, what we do with tax dollars matters more than ever. An investment in improving the food we eat will pay dividends in Seoul and Korea for years to come.