🌆Food system interventions: Opportunities & challenges
Discover the opportunities and challenges for our ecosystem in the realm of food
Last updated
Discover the opportunities and challenges for our ecosystem in the realm of food
Last updated
As we commented in the Why & how: food tech in Fab Labs, makerspaces and Fab Cities section, there are various reasons why Fab Labs, makerspaces, and Fab Cities can and should support the development of food technology and integrate themselves in food ecosystems. Here, we pinpoint several parts of the food system where we believe these spaces can intervene to support the transition to resilient, regenerative, and reciprocal food systems.
Digital fabrication labs can help design and prototype new food products quickly and efficiently. This allows food manufacturers to experiment with different flavors, textures, shapes and packaging to create healthier, sustainable and more appealing foods for consumers.
Digital fabrication labs can design and print structures and devices to support urban agriculture. This includes smart irrigation systems, containers for growing vegetables, and sensors to monitor plant growth.
A great example is from our partner, The Institute for New Production, at the Mechanical Engineering of the Helmut Schmidt University in Hamburg with the FarmBot© project, an open source robotic tool that can plant seeds in specific locations, track them and water them by itself. In addition, FarmBot can remove weeds with two types of tools: a static press tool and a rotary tool.
Another example is Fab Lab Barcelona's ROMI project, a project funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 program that provides robotics for microfarms. This project resulted in a robot for mechanical weeding, an aerial robot for crop monitoring, a 3D scanner for indoor and outdoor phenotyping, and a platform for farmers and researchers to collect and read results.
Personalized food printing allows consumers to choose the ingredients they want in their food and to customize the shape, texture and taste of their food. This can be especially useful for people with special dietary needs, such as food allergies or intolerances.
In this section we can mention Cook.3D, by Gaia Di Martino, who is part of the team of The New Production Institute. Gaia's project is about a 3D printing machine that combines the advantages of increased automation of a control system and the cleanliness of a new concept for the print head. A cleaner and more hygienic 3D food printer that can be used by anyone, regardless of experience level.
Digital manufacturing labs can be used to design and produce more sustainable food packaging and containers, which can help reduce food waste. In addition, these labs can be used to create innovative solutions for packaging recycling and food waste management. Naifactory, which participated in the Food Tech 3.0 program through their project ClosKa, is one example of initiatives transforming food waste into valuable design interventions.
Another example is the RECUP association that acts as an intermediary for the donation of surplus fruit and vegetables for the Italian Red Cross.
Digital manufacturing labs can be used to develop sensors and devices to monitor and ensure food quality and safety throughout the supply chain, from production to consumption.
In the combination of these last two points we can mention as an example BOTTO, a pilot of the EU H2020 REFLOW project. BOTTO was designed and developed by OpenDot Lab. It is a product-service that facilitates the communication flow between wholesalers. BOTTO is an IoT technology device similar to a remote control designed to give wholesalers and local producers a quick and easy way to communicate what and how much of their surplus can be converted into a donation, simply by pressing a button. BOTTO sends the message to the ReflowOS digital platform monitored by a Telegram Bot, which reports new donations and enables and facilitates the redistribution of selected goods in less than 30 minutes.
A digital fabrication lab can be used to educate and raise awareness about the importance of healthy and sustainable food. For example, workshops and courses can be held on how to: produce food at home using digital fabrication technologies, reduce food waste, and take advantage of cultural heritage to use food more efficiently.
A good example of this segment can be found in the pilot of the European CENTRINO project in Paris, which detected two experimental sites that are charting a path for the future of the sustainable food scene in Paris in terms of economic, social and cultural impact. The first is the FabCity Hub Paris which has Qaliopi certification that allows them to conceive and carry out training programs. The second is le Jardin des Traverses, a project led by Vergers Urbains, that plans to turn an old railway track into a walkable urban garden to experiment new paths for food production, food transformation and distribution, education and social inclusion.
In short, digital fabrication labs can play an important role in improving the food system, from designing and prototyping new food products to reducing waste and improving food quality and safety.
While there are ample opportunities available for Fab Labs, makerspaces, and Fab Cities to get involved in local and global food systems, the ecosystem also faces challenges. By collectively sharing our experiences and further research, we hope that our ecosystem can address these challenges together and begin to find solutions that will support our spaces, innovators, and citizens.
In informal surveys of our existing ecosystem, relatively few Fab Labs and makerspaces appear to have dedicated efforts or initiatives that are working with food system interventions. We aim to empower more Fab Labs and makerspaces, as well as Fab Cities, to begin engaging with issues around food. By promoting resources like this GitBook, the international #food Discord channel or local Food Tech 3.0 Discord Channel, and visibilising innovators and social food hubs alike, we hope to encourage our ecosystem to embrace the challenge.
While this may be a relatively easy step for Fab Labs and makerspaces, we recognize that there is a "technology gap" for many communities, in which they do not have the time or existing skills to engage with food tech or have more pressing needs. We believe that different forms of food tech can make fresh, healthy food more accessible to communities and we hope to help communities identify and build capacity in the tools that might help them meet their everyday needs.
As we discuss in the Our Food Tech Vision: Food Tech 3.0 and Identifying sections, food technology-- or at least the breadth of what it can be-- is not easily identified and understood by many communities outside of the sector. As our ecosystem begins to work with food and food tech, it's imperative that we also educate ourselves on what it is and are able to educate and empower communities of existing and potential users. While Our Food Tech Vision: Food Tech 3.0 covers several of the intricacies of what Food Tech 3.0 envisions food tech to look like, we'd like to emphasize the need to recognize and support ancestral forms of food technology as well as "low" technology in a space dominated by complex high tech. This includes preservation and conservation -- like smoking, salting, drying, and fermenting--, farming, cooking, and food waste techniques. Original peoples have been practicing these approaches for millennia, in many cases, and to transition to a healthy and regenerative food system, it's essential that we respectfully follow their lead and support their work.
In makerspaces, we often use materials like bioplastics, recycled plastics, silicon, and more. We found that our Food Tech 3.0 community typically begin prototyping their work with these same materials. However, not all materials are food safe, and more research, especially in the areas of biomaterials and recycled plastics, needs to be done to understand if they can be considered food-safe. Which materials-- and which spaces-- are safe for making and preparing food-related work also largely depends on local regulations, which aren't always easy for community members to navigate. We advocate for our community to share their findings related to food-safe materials and spaces, for example in the #food Discord channel, so we can help one another continue our food journeys.
Open source making is a way to increase food citizenship, by enabling citizens to participate in iterations of the design of the very products they engage with and promoting transparency. Additionally, as our Food Tech 3.0 innovators note, keeping information open source means that an innovator has a much larger community that can contribute to designs and support you in accessing know-how, facilitating fast-paced innovation and problem-solving. Look Ma' No Hands creator Secil Afsar aptly sums up why we should all be using open source : "Great ideas come from people."
At the same time, there are still considerable barriers to implementing open source models. Principally, our community cites struggling with creating a profitable business model. As innovator Mariano Pedernera from Vilagreens describes, there are few tools out there to help initiatives develop a business model based off of open source technology. Without the tools, innovators are stuck. Pedernera hopes that more companies that have successfully worked openly will document and share their business model so that other innovators can learn from them. He adds that the marketplace is still so traditional and its immensely challenging and risky for entrepreneurs to break from that, especially when looking for investors.
