# Food System Digitalization as a Means to Promote Food and Nutrition Security in the Barents Region
## 6 Future Implications for the Barents Region  
The previous three sections (Section 3. Developing the infrastructure for food system digitalization, Section 4. Transforming the food system through digitalization, and Section 5. Sustainable food system and ICT) will be relevant for a systemic change in the food system at a regional level; they will play important roles in shaping the future. As shown in Figure 1, a digitalized food system will help to promote both food security and food sovereignty by involving the customers or consumers, food businesses, and the authorities in a digitalized food system. Food sovereignty empowers local and rural communities in value addition to their food crops. It is defined by the World Forum on Food Sovereignty (WFFS) as the ability and the right of people to define their own policies and strategies for the sustainable production, distribution and consumption of food that guarantee the right to food for the entire population (2019). Currently, in Finnish Lapland, there are initiatives such as the \"Arctic Bioeconomy, Smart specialisation\" that encourage industrial symbiosis with digital solutions. In Loue near Tervola in Finnish Lapland, there are processing facilities for meat, ice-cream, biogas and a cattle barn with robots for milking. These facilities are shared within the same premises with a vocational college with active collaboration with the Natural Resources Institute Finland (LUKE). There are also 'Facebook', and 'Whatsapp' groups that encourage virtual meetings between local farmers and consumers. Similar practices exist in other communities of the Barents region. In the near future, as the interest in where food comes from grows, and how it has produced becomes more relevant, it will encourage the development of artisan foods and food sovereignty in the Barents region. Food sovereignty puts emphasis on the promotion of small and medium-sized production where respect for the inhabitants' own cultures as well as the diversity of peasant, fishing and indigenous forms of agricultural production, marketing and management of rural areas play a fundamental role (2019). The unique food crops, herbs, natural products and other indigenous foods that are part of the food culture in the Barents region will also contribute to biodiversity when there is value addition with digital solutions. An integrated farming system that employs sensors to increase yield, fertility and help in the management of pests and diseases will be important for future collaboration in the region. As food products move across border in the Barents region, the role of digitalized packages in e-commerce and e-communication will be very important. Digitalized packages with labels with quick response (QR) codes can provide important information on the nutritional quality of the ingredients, ethical standards, and the possibilities to interact with customers. In addition, they can be useful in product tracking, item identification, time tracking, and general marketing. We developed a framework for knowledge base creation as shown in Figure 3 below. We developed a framework for knowledge base creation as shown in Figure 3. This an example of how customers as users will be able to tap into available and documented information of foods and food ingredients. It will collate all information gathered by experts to create the knowledge base within a food system digitalization that can be applied in the Barents region. As there are different languages in the region, there is a need to have a common understanding across the region. In addition, increasing amounts of accumulated information require the use of automated methods for extracting knowledge from raw and inconsistent data, represented in particular by heterogeneous textual sources. Generally, in this case, the task of automated processing should be to summarize the information: a gradual decrease for data to process while simultaneously increasing their information impressiveness.