What is it?
Future farming is about finding alternative, tech-enabled methods to make farming more sustainable, and the planet healthier.
The damaging effects of the Green Revolution on our climate are clear. Currently, agriculture accounts for 26% of greenhouse gas emissions, 70% of freshwater usage and 78% of ocean and freshwater eutrophication. With our world population set to rise to 9.7 billion by 2050, we need to find ways to drastically reduce emissions, preserve biodiversity, and feed more people than ever before.
“I think we are living in a socially disconnected and health starved community. Food can bring us together. It has always been the life-giving, unifying force and food tastes better when shared. It’s the common denominator by which we can work together, side by side to regenerate ourselves and our community”.
Mia Vaughnes, Co-founder of Good Neighbor Gardens
So what?
There’s a seismic shift happening in agriculture, and it’s going to impact all of us. As a new generation of smart, modern farmers work to transform food production across the globe, making it more local, and more sustainable, people’s experiences, expectations and demands are going to change.
You might be thinking Future Farming is a bit ‘out there’ even for an Out There Good Futures trend. We think this is not only important but also inspiring. The shifts in culture and expectation that these innovations and technologies drive will have repercussions & opportunities across many industries. There’s a wealth of innovative approaches we can learn and mirror.
REPURPOSING SPACE
From rooftop farms like Nature Urbaine in Paris and Brooklyn Grange Farm in New York to underground projects like Cycloponics and Growing Underground, creative farmers are transforming unused urban spaces into thriving agricultural hubs.
Above an exhibition hall in the 15th arrondissement, Nature Urbaine’s soil-free, aeroponic farm is busy supplying local residents, hotels and its own bar and restaurant with fresh fruit and vegetables, while reducing water usage, food waste, transport and pollution. Meanwhile, 33 metres below the streets of Clapham, Growing Underground is sustainably growing fresh microgreens and salad leaves, using hydroponic systems and LED technology.
So what?
- How could you reimagine the spaces that your staff or beneficiaries use on a daily basis? Take inspiration from the WWF wildlife garden, National Trust’s kitchen garden growing loofahs or the guerrilla gardening movement.
- What spaces or assets are you sitting on that could be repurposed or reconsidered? If we can grow salad under the streets of London, what’s the potential of the real estate you own and operate to deliver value and generate income in different ways? From pop-up retail to art installation to community training spaces, when you combine space and technology the opportunities are endless.
“Urban farming, hyper-local food production, can plainly provide a measure of relief in an economic crisis. But it is also environmental: boosting the amount of vegetation in our cities will help combat some of the effects of global heating”
Pascal Hardy, engineer and sustainable development consultant
GROWING IN HOSTILE ENVIRONMENTS
Veggie, the space garden on the International Space Station, has already grown lettuce, cabbage, mustard, kale and zinnia flowers, and now researchers are sending grapevines to see if they can develop resilience in an inhospitable environment. If they can adapt to survive the high levels of radiation and microgravity in space, they could become hardy enough to withstand the changing climate on Earth.
In 2013, a similar experiment on the Thaliana plant saw the development of an entirely new adaptation. In response to drought, cooling temperatures and disease, the plant skewed its roots in a pattern that allowed it to reach the water and nutrients that its earthly counterparts couldn’t.
“The World Resources Institute estimates that to feed 10 billion people sustainably by 2050 will require closing a 56% food gap between crop calories produced in 2010 and those needed in 2050. Part of the answer must be to farm in non-traditional spaces.”
Growing Underground co-founder Richard Ballard
So what?
By experimenting and testing now, the scientists on the ISS are preparing for the future. How and where can you start to experiment now with minimal risk? Whilst heading to the ISS might be a little extreme, how can you create and support pockets of innovation and experimentation in your organisation that aren’t dragged down or stalled by day to day governance structures?
SMART FARMING
Three major tech developments have given rise to the current digital revolution in farming, according to Rachel Lovell:
- Sensor technology - cheap and easy to implement, it has been widely used in animal farming to gauge the health and fertility of livestock.
- Communications technology – enables the collection and storage of vast amounts of data. Aerospace engineering firm Planet uses mini satellites to capture 3 million detailed images of the Earth’s surface, giving farmers daily insights into their agricultural processes.
- AI and machine learning – enables us to analyse and learn from this data. The connected cow increases efficiency by monitoring the health of individual cows, while the Plantalyzer increases accuracy by predicting the next day’s yield. Farmers get to plan ahead, reduce costs, avoid food waste, and support transparency between growers and sellers.
So what?
As we explored in our first Paradigm Shift report on 5G, the increasing availability of data is going to massively change the way we all connect, engage and operate. Smart farming is essentially about the ability to leverage this data to make better decisions both in the moment and planning long term.
DIRECT-TO-CONSUMER
The global regenerative farming movement is all about “soil health, biodiversity and ecological restoration”, avoiding conventional agricultural practices like pesticides, synthetic fertilisers, or feeding animals genetically modified food. Operating outside of traditional retail, many regenerative farmers, like Jake Takiff of Colorado, embrace a direct-to-consumer model: “On delivery days, Jake drives to Colorado’s metropolitan areas and even to California… to deliver bulk orders. He almost always sells out.”
In Europe, Gonzalo Úrculo has founded Crowdfarming: a “solution for farming created by farmers” aiming to “remove intermediaries and simplify the sale of food”. Users can either adopt a harvest through individual farmers (much like the adopt a tiger scheme) or buy a box from an online farmers market. In cutting out the intermediaries, farmers get a fair price for their produce, avoid food waste and reduce their environmental impact.
Good Neighbor Gardens in San Diego is feeding people based on the idea of ‘sharecropping’: sharing from abundance not scarcity, and by choice not obligation. It works by ‘Gracious Neighbors’ pledging to convert their yards into small-scale urban gardens and sharing the surplus food they grow with their community, through a subscription harvest box.
So what?
‘Adopt a XXX’ and ‘Sponsor a XXX’ products have existed in fundraising for decades. What’s interesting in this model is the adoption or pre-purchasing of a portion of an entire harvest, similar in a way to local co-operatives purchasing energy to keep the price down and circumventing the intermediary that has historically been the big energy providers.
And by removing the intermediary and connecting directly with consumers the farmers can offer a more ‘authentic’ experience and help purchasers feel they are doing their bit to fight ‘big farming’.
Act Now:
1. Consider - Your existing assets:
What assets are you sitting on that could be repurposed? What space do you have that could lend itself to an entirely different function or use? How can you step back to see the opportunity and how might this benefit both income and impact?
2. Experiment - A space for innovation:
Are BAU processes giving you analysis paralysis? Are you killing off ideas too early based on poor data or insight? Is innovation drowning due to lack of support, space and resource? How can you create an innovation culture that supports you to experiment now to future proof your income and your mission? How can you create space for innovation - both physical and virtual?
3. Explore - The power of technology:
As technology plays an increasingly central role in the way we deliver services, how can you harness its power to automate and transform models of service delivery? How can you harness the power of data to forecast better and predict needs? Get the inside scoop on how 5G is supercharging AI and IoT by joining the Inspiration Safari on 25th June.
4. Challenge - The stereotype of 'big charity':
With the Effective Altruism movement on the rise making a case against many big charities, how can you challenge the stereotypes and connect donors more directly with impact through the power of choice? How and where can you be more transparent, even when it’s uncomfortable? What’s the opportunity this creates to offer a manifesto for change?