Food , Agriculture and Biomimicry

“We have to change how we produce and consume food, not just for environmental reasons, but because this is an existential issue for humans.” — Janet Ranganathan

The race to the bottom is happening in the food industry, and our agriculture system is at breaking point. We are destroying the topsoil, the lifeblood of our crops and eating more red meat than was ever thought possible.

We are part of nature, but apart from it. This has led us to overconsume on the land. Can nature-inspired solutions solve this? No. Not on their own, they cannot.

We need to look at new forms of agriculture that can regenerate the soil. Think of how many insects and fungus coexist. They need each other and thrive for the benefit of the bigger system. We can also study these social insects for the creation of more transparent and resilient supply chains. We shouldn’t optimise the system but look at distributed networks for solutions in the future.

This approach can also be applied to where in the system we need to innovate? Is it the product? The making? Or even the business model itself?

Where does the technology allow us to create low-technology solutions? Remember we waste approximately 30% of the food that we produce.

These are not just questions to ponder, but points we are investigating for our Future Food System project.

This sums it up beautifully, ‘how meals are produced and delivered will be as key to solving climate change as the shift away from fossil fuels’, by The Ellen McArthur Foundation.

Originally published at https://www.bio-uk.org.