Let’s build a hyper-local food network
Everybody seems to agree there is an increasing need for urban agriculture, but nobody is really able to fill that gap. So what about a drastically different approach: reinventing urban agriculture bottom-up?
Food shortages are increasing
Recent shortages of fresh produce clearly show how weather extremes and other external influences threaten food supplies of our cities. The message is clear: we need to make cities more resilient and one of the most pragmatic ways would be to produce more of our fresh produce in cities, rather than importing everything from Spain (or California). But this task has proven to be extremely difficult, primarily because of economic challenges. At the moment, urban ag is predominantly attracting adventurous futurists throwing a lot of money and technology at the problem. But is this the only way to approach the problem? Certainly not!
Who’s the owner of the problem?
Apart from resilience, there is a huge demand for local food, so the question is: who is going to serve it? As it seems this won’t be the big corporations, as their profit-driven business models will probably not allow for inner-city production in the next 5–10 years. It is just too expensive for their margins. Of course, cities or states could subsidise local production, as it’s already the case in some places. But that is not going to solve a more pressing issue: We are facing a lack of farmers.
People want to grow food, not become farmers
Nobody wants to become a farmer these days. Even worse, there has been a drastic increase in suicides committed by farmers in the US. The article also states numbers for other countries around the globe and they look just as bad. Who could blame young people wanting to become anything but a farmer?
But on the other hand, our own research clearly indicated that almost all adults above 25 have a high intrinsic motivation to produce their own food. Or at least they want to get closer to food production and better understand where their food is coming from.
Let’s grow farmers first
What if we could leverage that motivation and redefine what a farmer is? What if we could make farming cool again? As Henry Gordon-Smith pointed out in his talk in Venlo, three simple steps might be enough to grow farmers.
1. Community building
Communities like AgTech X in New York, The New Farm in The Hague or other AgTech or food-related co-working hubs can spark a lot of conversations about the future of urban ag. Combine that with meetups or other events and there is quite a lot of buzz happening already.
2. Education
Growing food is not an easy task. In fact, it can be really complicated. But through guidance and education we can really make a difference. That means collaborating with schools and universities, but also providing individuals with simple yet comprehensive learning materials, effectively creating a new learning experience (more on that later).
There are already great examples for educational programs out there, like the Upstart University, 12 steps to become a farmer or the Vertical Farming Academy (AVF). These mostly transition from education to entrepreneurship and target people who already know they want to become a professional farmer.
3. Entrepreneurship
Ultimately, we want people to become urban farmers. And that means we need to foster entrepreneurial spirit, encourage people to professionally grow food in the middle of the cities. We need best practices, meaning: successful businesses people can replicate and a market they can serve. Only if people know they will be able to make a living out of their passion they will chose this path for life.
Consumers becoming producers
As said before, our aim is to leverage the intrinsic motivation that is already there. People want to grow food themselves! Most of them start doing just that, but then something happens. We found a common pattern among hobby gardeners and farmers that explains the problem. We call it the enthusiasm graph and it goes like this:
And by the way, we didn’t invent that. It is based on the drawing of a hobby gardener we’ve interviewed explaining his frustration while growing tomatoes. Stuff happened along the way, a lot of things he couldn’t understand in in the end the tomatoes tasted like shit. Phew, bummer!
We might have lost that person forever, no more gardening, please. But why is that even happening, growing food can’t be that complicated, right?
New challenges
In fact, it is. At least if there’s no-one to teach you. We used to learn these basic skills from mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers. We learned these skills through our communities. But today, we can’t rely on such structures beause they are no longer there. People live far away from their families, more and more of them in huge cities. We need to find new ways of teaching young people how to grow food.
A unique learning experience
We need to reinvent the experience of learning to grow food, make it as rewarding and fulfilling as possible. Think about what Strava and Runtastic did for running and cycling. We need to do the same for gardening!
Use technology to facilitate learning
We’re coming from a very technical standpoint and used to think in data points captured by sensors and using them to control actuators, at least that was our starting point for farmee.OS. But what if there was only one sensor and one actuator? And both of them being the human being him- or herself?
We can guide beginning farmers using digital services like apps, websites and other communication channels. Add some external sensor data, e.g. weather data, on top of that and boom, gardening made simple!
Individual guidance
No two gardeners are the same. They utilise different spaces, want to grow different plants, live in different time- and climate zones, etc. Why should they all read the same book? Why should they read a book at all?
Imagine a digital tool that perfectly caters to your individual needs, starting with your prior knowledge and conditions and guiding you along the way as you go. What do I have to do today? What pest is that? What should I do next?
Gamification principles
Let’s make agriculture fun again! Let’s make it a little more competitive and entertaining to enrich the real world growing experience. A lot of people struggle because they have unrealistic expectations and quickly fail to meet them. We can learn from games on how to keep up the motivation by quickly conveying a sense of achievement and instant gratification.
We could implement that by creating fast-paced and easy to understand lessons, or levels, if you like. Start with something really easy, like micro greens, then move on to level two. Things start to get more demanding and that’s it, you’re hooked. And you don’t even notice you’re actually learning.
By the way, this is exactly what we’re currently working on. We’re running different prototypes to test value propositions in these three sectors: knowledge, community and gamification. By combining these three we can completely redefine the gardening experience, as explained above. And if this works, we moved people along the first three steps of the line below, which is the absolute prerequisite for anybody to become a (semi-)professional farmer.
The next step: Becoming a farmer
Let’s assume we succeeded and taught a lot of people how to grow food. Let’s assume we managed to keep them motivated for a very long time, built a community and educated these people. Then what’s missing is the final step: fostering entrepreneurship. From here on out these are just thoughts that pop up in my head on how to help people transition into the life of a professional farmer. And let’s face it, above all that means: making money! But there are also other topics that suddenly become interesting once you are supplying other people rather than themselves:
Creating a marketplace
Upcoming farmers need to sell their produce. As I’ve outlined before, they cannot supply the existing value chain, as margins are far too low for them to operate on a profit and (urban farms) are way too small. So we need to cut out all the middlemen we can and directly map produce to demand. Different models might be possible, from aggregating produce and then selling to retail to mapping it directly to customers. I could also envision a fleet of cargo bikes collecting the produce and bringing it to selling hubs in central locations.
Food safety & traceability
If people are supposed to sell their produce, we have to guarantee it’s safe to consume. Again, this could be implemented by aggregating hubs, but also by offering training and certification for people making the switch to a professional operation. I’m not an expert on policies, so if anyone knows a lot about this: please contact me, I’d love to learn more!
We will also have to give people the necessary tools to document their process to help them comply with rules and regulations. You still see a lot of pen and paper solutions in professional farms. I’m sure we could do better than that!
Introducing technology
Of course we still love high-tech farms. In the hand of a well-educated grower these farms are very powerful tools. Teach them hydroponics to grow food in new places, give them the right LEDs to move their farms indoors, automate them to make the operation more profitable. Technology is not a means in itself, but combined with proper education plus a sustainable business model it can really make a difference.
Creating a hyper-local food network
Coming back to the title of this post, our goal is to create a food network consisting of actual people. It is combining education and empowerment with a powerful set of tools turning ordinary consumers into educated producers. Then add some sort of social network on top of that and farming can be fun again, can be social and fulfilling and a viable business feeding not only the consumers, but also the farmers.
