🍋Our Food Tech Vision: Food Tech 3.0

First, what even is food technology?

When we say “food technology,” we mean products (sensors, robots, platforms) as well as the processes associated with them (i.e. connection and implementation in communities of practice) that join the realms of food and technology at any part of the value chain. This could look like a sensor measuring humidity and light in an urban garden, an open-source fermentation kit, a platform connecting innovators, a digitally fabricated eating utensil, and more.

However, when we asked local actors and FoodSHIFT2030 members what they understood by the term “food technology,” many answered abstractly referencing big ag companies like Monsanto or ventures that cultivate meat in labs, or answered vehemently negatively, citing omnipresent data monitoring. According to Loic from Green in Blue, the term is “science fiction” and as the team behind Domingo Club concisely summarised it: “Food tech is a complex word… a lot of people imagine something… crazy.”

A co-created vision of food technology

We needed to make clear what “food technology” would look like for Food Tech 3.0.

Using Fab Lab’s approach to technology and social innovation, combined with our past experience, the framework of FoodSHIFT2030 and collaborative sessions with local actors engaged in food system issues, we established a vision for what Food Tech 3.0’s food technology should look like. This vision was heavily influenced by feedback from the local ecosystem, particularly our Advisory Board, about what was missing for them in the current panorama of food technology. It was also influenced by the knowledge that we do not want food technology to replicate the same issues currently rampant in the food system. It's essential to note that one of the main components of our vision of food technology is one that unites ancestral wisdom and practices with contemporary knowledge. Lastly, “low tech” solutions are given as much emphasis as “high tech” solutions.

Consequently, Food Tech 3.0’s food technology follows a set of 5 pillars.

We believe in food technology as products, services or systems that:

• Are community-based & citizen-powered: initiatives respond to an actual need within a community and prioritise empowering their communities and creating food citizenship, taking stakeholders from passive consumers to agents of action

  • This includes initiatives like Domingo Club, an initiative and community dedicated to the fermentation of tempeh. Domingo Club has participated in the Food Tech 3.0 Accelerator Program and were also winners of the Project Excellence Award from the Distributed Design Platform.

• Are holistically regenerative: providing positive environmental, social and economic outcomes;

  • One of the holistically regenerative initiatives that Food Tech 3.0 had the pleasure to work with was Ma! Condimentos Vivos de Asia. Ma!, which closed operations in March 2023, Ma! is a fermentation dojo that combined ancestral Asian preservation traditions and A. oryzae fungi (Koji ) to create new flavours paired with best quality Iberian ingredients. Ma! prioritised working with local ingredients and vendors while educating her community on ancestral flavors and techniques.

• Employs open design practices: either (or all) the product, business model, or governance is open access and/or open source, enabling replication & hacking

  • The Smart Citizen Kit from Fab Lab Barcelona is a completely open source environmental monitoring tool and platform. Throughout its lifetime, the Kit has had many uses, including being leveraged in GROW Observatory to empower urban agriculture communities to monitor soil and planting conditions.

• Further equity: Supporting intersectional equity and accessibility at the nexus of gender, cultural, racial, and economic lines

  • From Farms to Incubators focuses on connecting, elevating, and inspiring women in the agrifoodtech sector. The community provides resources, events, education and mentorship for women working in the field, enabling them to expand and access career opportunities. They also offer a "Women in Agrifoodtech Directory," a searchable directory that lists women in the US and internationally.

• Operate in an ecosystem: systemic innovations and systemic partnerships, and especially the opportunity to partner with other types of tech initiatives (i.e. city/rural, high tech/low tech, for profit/non-profit, etc. partnerships)

  • AbonoKM0 collects food waste from neighborhoods, schools, and companies and, through vermicomposting, turns it back into rich compost for the communities. Their work is decentralized, local, participatory, educative, and biotechnological. AbonoKM0 is one of Food Tech 3.0's Advisory Board members, helping ground our work in the local context. You can learn more about AbonoKM0 and how they approach collaboration in the section,Facilitating Collaboration: A Conversation with AbonoKM0.

To discover more examples of food technology, you can explore the Meet the Food Tech 3.0 Innovators section, where you'll find the Innovator Portraits of the 10 initiatives that participated in the Food Tech 3.0 Acceleration Program, or the Scaling section to see what the Food Tech 3.0 FELs are working on. You might also visit the Scaling Out (not up) orFood system interventions: Opportunities & challenges sections to see intervention points for food technology.