A nonprofit organization is aiming to help modernize the global agriculture industry by launching an open-source technology project to serve as a platform and tool suite to help feed the world and reduce agricultural waste.

The Linux Foundation this month announced the launch of the AgStack Foundation to improve global agriculture efficiency through creating, maintaining, and enhancing free, reusable and specialized digital infrastructure for data and applications.

Leaders from the agriculture and technology industries spanning across multiple sectors founded and contributed to the project’s launch.

“The global Agriculture ecosystem desperately needs a digital makeover. There is too much loss of productivity and innovation due to the absence of re-usable tools and data. I am excited to lead this community of leaders, contributors and members—from across sectors and countries—to help build this common and re-useable resource that, AgStack, that will help every stakeholder in global agriculture with free and open digital tools and data,” said Sumer Johal, Executive Director of Agstack.

Statistics from the Linux Foundation show that while nine percent of the global population are hungry or malnourished, a whopping 33 percent of all food produced is wasted. That’s right: the amount of wasted produce can feed the starving population more than three times. These are societal drivers that are compounded with inefficient and slow legacy technology systems that do not keep up with the ever-growing and intricate agricultural supply chain.

AgStack’s goal is for innovation on new applications, efficiencies and scale through collaboration and open-source software. AgStack also comprises an open repository with free and easy access to public data and toolboxes for creating and publishing models. It will leverage public data and open-source projects.