Tools to Live By

FARTHER FARMS
Sep 4, 2018 · 3 min read

In March of 2015, Vipul Saran stood alone on a street corner in New Delhi. A large shipment of potatoes had recently spoiled en route to Dubai, endangering his export business and raising doubts about whether Indian farming collectives could reliably access international markets. Deep in thought, he barely noticed the motorists weaving in and out of traffic, a frenzied yet concordant symphony. He pondered a radical solution.

The origin of Farther Farms can be traced back to one central idea: food processing innovation can address the needs of a modern food system. Vipul’s experience informed a realization that transformational solutions add value to entire supply chains — in the case of food systems, from grower to processor to end-consumer. Emboldened to solve a foundational problem, he embarked on years of food science research. His work yielded a new processing technology for fruits and vegetables — one that extends shelf life without freezing, refrigeration, artificial preservatives, or thermal treatment — and birthed Farther Farms.

In 1967, John Culkin, a professor of communications, famously observed, “we shape our tools and thereafter they shape us.” He was discussing fellow scholar Marshall McLuhan’s work on the role of media, but the notion is also applicable to food systems. Food systems are ultimately shaped by the tools available to grow, process, and distribute food. Said a different way, “we are what we eat.” Our ecosystem is now characterized as much by technological benefits as by the accompanying technical limitations. Technological innovation has allowed us to feed a growing global population. It has also come to define what we eat, and how.

Industrial agriculture reflects the needs of processing and distribution systems, often at the expense of environmental sustainability. As a result, purely economic interests tend to dictate food availability and demand, in turn shaping the diets of entire societies. By way of example, the Red Delicious apple, widely recognized as inferior in flavor (care to argue?), remains popular due to its shipping durability.

In the case of food processing, an ultimate technological innovation is one that frees us from the constraints of spoilage, nutritional deterioration, unhealthy additive ingredients, and infrastructural requirements. With these improved processing tools, farmers, processors, and consumers alike could pursue initiatives for health, sustainability, and justice without economic consequence.

McLuhan argued, “the medium is the message.” In other words, as the thought goes, people tend to focus on content when the medium that heralds it ought to be studied. Similarly, at Farther Farms, we are focused on processing technology, the medium by which food products are created. Over the next year, our objective is to commercialize a novel processing methodology. This new set of tools could create never-before-seen end-products that overcome traditional limitations of nutrition, cost, waste, and accessibility.

Culkin continues, “content [i.e. message] always exists in some form and is, therefore, to some degree governed by the dynamics of that form. If you don’t know the medium, you don’t know the message.” Or, in the language of Farther Farms, “food products always exist in some form and are, therefore, to some degree governed by the dynamics of food processing. If you don’t know the process, you don’t know the product.” With this understanding, our approach begins with thoughtful invention, design, and implementation of food processing technologies.

This newsletter series will continue with a deeper, delineated exploration of the mission of Farther Farms, emphasizing particular topics related to food and ag tech.


Learn more about Farther Farms and our vision for a sustainable food system at fartherfarms.com.

FARTHER FARMS

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Farther Farms is a food technology company commercializing new processing methods for fruits and vegetables. FartherFarms.com

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