Feeding The City Of The Future
Whether we’re munching on insect protein, growing greens on rooftops, or getting pizzas cooked and delivered by robots, food will continue to shape how we live in cities.
Access to food has been central to urban form and city-life for millennia. How we grow, process, distribute, and eat food has determined cities’ location, size, shape — and ability to grow — from the dawn of civilisation. Changing climate, environmental pressures, and increasing urban populations around the world, mean that the relationship to food may again become a paramount part of city resilience.
We explored food futures in ‘The City in 2040: Feeding the Future City’ — one in a series of Cardiff University events, run jointly by the School of Geography and Planning and the Welsh School of Architecture, examining how urban places might have changed by 2040.
“The relationship to food may again become a paramount part of city resilience.”
Speakers and participants delved deep into the past as well as ranging into the future, and from the rich discussion I have drawn five elements of a potential urban food future.
Climate-Friendly Eating
As the climate crisis bites — bringing higher temperatures, new pests, devastating droughts, farming will have to adapt. Planting for resilience and restoration; with new crops in new places (including in cities themselves). To meet climate targets, the food industry will need to cut carbon from all stages of the chain — from fertilisers to fridges to food waste. Retailers, restaurants, and businesses are already innovating for these changes.
Danish supermarket Netto is piloting a scheme to communicate climate-friendly choices to consumers, and we can expect to see more carbon and sustainability labels appear on foods alongside the nutritional information. The Restore California Renewable Restaurants initiative allows participating restaurants to add 1% to the bill, the money going to farmers to put more carbon back in the ground. And a company I work with — igloo regeneration went vegetarian last year, changing its policy to better align with climate goals, so staff could no longer claim expenses for meals with meat.
“More people will have to eat less meat.”
To tackle climate emissions, more people will have to eat less meat. China already consumes nearly a third of the world’s meat and half of all pork, and the adoption of meat-heavy diets by the burgeoning urban middle class — in China and elsewhere — poses a serious challenge. The Chinese Government has said that it wants to cut meat consumption by 50%. Across the world diets will need to change.
Ivana Gazibara, adviser on sustainable futures, highlighted that “A shift to plant-based eating is something we’re really going to have to look at to tackle climate change” and pointed to positive signals — the fact that $3.1 billion went into alternative proteins last year and the Co-op supermarket in the UK cutting the prices of its plant-based alternative foods to match the prices of its meat and poultry offerings.
Healthy Personalised Diets
The links between food and health are all too visible in city streets around the world, with growing numbers of overweight urbanites. In the US, 40% of people are obese, while the United Arab Emirates has one of the world’s highest — and rising — rates of diabetes. City administrations are responding to the obesity pandemic with the limited powers they have, imposing soda taxes and restrictions on fast food outlets and using the planning system to encourage access to healthy food.
“The links between food and health are all too visible in city streets around the world.”
There is also more understanding of the additional health benefits from eating the right diet, with advances in knowledge about both DNA and the gut biome. Findings so far suggest that nutrigenetic diets — diets matched to your genetic profile — lead to better outcomes. Poor gut health is associated with a vast range of conditions, from obesity and degenerative brain diseases to depression, inflammatory bowel disease and chronic inflammation. No wonder people around the world are doing the ‘blue poop’ challenge, dyeing food blue to measure gut transit time, which is an indication of the health of gut bacteria.
Ivana Gazibara points to an “Increase in products and services that enable us to take a much more personalized approach to managing specific health conditions or achieving specific health and wellness goals through food.”
Reconnecting Farm To Fork
As individual citizens, changes in how we work and shop will bring new relationships with food. Paul Milbourne, Professor of Human Geography at Cardiff University, suggests that “Flexible working — for a portion of the population — might encourage new relationships with food in the home, more local shopping and more care and more time in preparation.”
Digital innovations, such as supply chain tracking, will enable direct connections between the consumer to the grower. The blockchain-enabled Thank My Farmer allows you to scan a QR code on the pack to access the people and the journey behind your coffee and support farmers by making a donation. Sust’ainable Molokai Mobile Market in Hawaii, connects consumers to local producers, encouraging connections and sharing of stories, promoting the eating of local and traditional foods. Group-buying digital platforms are also on the rise. Pinduoduo has grown rapidly to become the biggest online marketplace for agricultural products in China. The platform benefits both farmers and shoppers. Budget-conscious customers get low prices by pooling their purchases into large orders which the farmers can cost-effectively ship to local distribution points. The platform had 788mn Active Buyers in 2020 and has worked with more than 16 million growers.
“Pinduoduo has grown rapidly to become the biggest online marketplace for agricultural products in China.”
As well as new digital platforms connecting consumers, we’re seeing some re-emergence of community-level engagement in growing in cities. Pakt has rooftop farms in the heart of Antwerp. In my own city of Bristol, we have Community Supported Agriculture schemes like The Community Farm and Sims Hill Shared Harvest.While Ohio City Farm at the edge of Cleveland is working with refugees to provide to provide fresh, local and healthy food to the city’s underserved residents, boosting the local food economy and educating people about food.
Cities Planning for Food
From the beginning of urbanisation, and for many centuries throughout our history, city governments have fretted about how to feed their populace. Having, in the 20th Century, handed that responsibility over to the market, they may again need to worry about resilience and intervening to guarantee access to food.
Covid and Brexit have certainly exposed frailties in the urban food system. Paul Milbourne tells how “Covid has very much disrupted the food system, as well as life in our cities, exposing the fragility of food supply chains”.
“Covid and Brexit have certainly exposed frailties in the urban food system.”
Climate change and other environmental pressures will further challenge urban food security and encourage shorter supply chains and more local growing. We are seeing a technology-enabled increase in indoor cultivation in cities, with vertical farms growing crops without soil or natural light. Globally, the vertical farming market is growing by 25% year-on-year and is projected to reach $13bn by 2026.
Urban administrations are planning for food. More than 200 cities across the world have signed the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact “to develop sustainable food systems that are inclusive, resilient, safe and diverse, that provide healthy and affordable food to all people in a human rights-based framework, that minimize waste and conserve biodiversity while adapting to and mitigating impacts of climate change”.
New Technology With Old Wisdom.
Will the future of food be high-tech or a return to the natural? Historically, technology — whether canning, railways or refrigeration — has determined how we feed cities, often resulting in a de-naturing of food and divorcing the relationship between growing and eating. That disassociation may be amplified in the future through the trend for instant delivery, of an over-packaged product, from an anonymous edge-of town warehouse, to people sitting alone on their sofas.
Harnessed well, technology could also help bring citizens closer to their food, whether that’s through living in ‘farmscrapers’, growing with aeroponics, or using digital platforms to connect with developing world farmers.
“Our food philosophy should be regenerative not extractive.”
Technology clearly has a central role to play in feeding the world within planetary boundaries. But in the end, says food author Carolyn Steel “We have more of a philosophy deficit than a technology deficit. We’ve got some incredible technology, but we’re not asking the right questions about what to do with it.” We should use technology to help bring the natural back to agriculture, reconnect urban consumers with where their food comes from, make eating and shopping more social and local.
Our food philosophy should be regenerative not extractive, connecting not separating, seeing food as precious, not cheap. “There’s no such thing as cheap food” says Carolyn Steel. “We created the concept by externalising all the costs, feeding cheap grain to cattle, ruining our soil and our climate…We need to recognise the true value of food as the most precious thing in our lives. If we don’t eat we die.”
Better Urban Food Futures?
So, here’s five potential drivers of urban food futures: climate-friendly eating, healthy personalised diets, reconnecting farm to fork, cities planning for food, and new technology with old wisdom.
City leaders need to get this right. Whether it’s for the long term-health of all their citizens or for MI5’s reminder that “We are only four meals away from anarchy.” Whatever the choices, food will profoundly shape how we live in cities
