Understanding Urban Food Systems
Researching the complexity within the urban food system and why we need to rethink it.
“Cities are also confronted with a mix of growing challenges from population growth that outpaces infrastructure development, growing slums and informal settlements, changing demographic characteristics, social inequality, economic fluctuations, pollution, local changes in climate and water systems, ageing infrastructure in need of replacement, and other stressors. These factors interact dynamically, often in complex ways with each other and with climate change, to affect urban systems” (Bettencourt et al. 2007, Grimm et al. 2008).
I’ve been an avid gardener for several years now, utilizing every inch of outdoor space to grow a garden (while waiting for my community garden plot to open up): from an outdoor fruit and vegetable garden with a living compost to building a greenhouse that adjusted light, air current, heat, and water using sensors, data collection, and rule-based automation, and could go without maintenance for over two weeks. This curiosity has led me further into making my own food, experimenting with creating different types of cheeses and yogurts, and in essence, exploring a way to become more self-sustaining.
Why should we rethink our food system?
While my motivations to grow food are primarily based on the joy of self-sufficiency, feeling connected to nature, and having an artistic outlet, it is important to grasp ideologically that we need to rethink our food system to provide accessibility to healthy foods in a growing world while reducing our impact environmentally.
Everyone understands that food plays a vital part in all of our lives and is crucial to the proper function and vitality of cities. Nevertheless, it’s surprisingly absent from how most cities currently analyze their levels of sustainability and resiliency. Consumption is driving some of the biggest levels of emissions and future predictions should set off any alarm to reconsider the importance of our food system in future resiliency and sustainability planning:
- The World Bank predicts that there will be a global population of 9 billion by 2050, which will require at least 50 percent more food than is needed today.
- FAO anticipates global demand for animal products to increase by 70% in 2050.
- NYC’s food system accounts for ~40% of total emissions.
- NYC wastes ~14 billion pounds of food annually equating to ~10% of total emissions, and $14B in losses or ~2% of GDP annually.
- This equates globally to: 763 billion boxes of pasta, 574 billion eggs, 3 billion Atlantic salmon, 3.7 trillion apples, 75 million cows, 1 billions bags of potatoes, and 11000 Olympic-sized swimming pools of olive oil wasted each year.
- Water — ”Globally, the agricultural sector consumes about 70% of the planet’s accessible freshwater — more than twice that of industry (23%), and dwarfing municipal use (8%)”.
- Fertilizers — High-level: Chemical runoff from residential and farm products affects rivers, streams and even the ocean. Nerd-level:Chapter 3: Fertilizers as water pollutants.
- Climate change — ”Climate change poses unprecedented challenges to U.S. agriculture because of the sensitivity of agricultural productivity and costs to changing climate conditions”. Just recently, Hurricane Matthew wiped out close to 80% of crops in certain areas of Haiti.
This paper will analyze our urban food system (with an emphasis on NYC), analyze its impact, and explore potential solutions for a more sustainable and resilient future.
NYC’s Food System and Impact
The complexity of NYC’s food system can be defined by where our food comes from, how is it processed, how it is delivered, what the consumer behaviors are, how we dispose of food, and what policies exist that relate to each step of the supply chain.
Considering these complexities, there are several areas that present risks and opportunities towards a more sustainable food system:
PRODUCTION
Current production of produce that is consumed in the U.S. is, by and large, cultivated outdoors in several concentrated areas: produce from California, Florida, Mexico, Canada, and South America, and grains from the Midwest and Great Plains.
With the recent droughts in California, and the Ogallala Aquifer dependence for agriculture in the Great Plains, water supply is a major risk (shameless research plug). Moreover, heavy fertilizer usage is causing massive dead zones in our oceans polluting the ecosystem and reducing our supply of consumable seafood. Lastly, climatic externalities, such as droughts and floods, and soil degradation result in farmers disposing roughly 1/4 of their entire crops due to aesthetic circumstances, rot and disease.
DISTRIBUTION
A staple of global trade, produce traverses from the tropics to temperate areas, to/from southern hemisphere temperate areas to/from northern hemisphere temperate areas, and within regions themselves.
Whether transported by container ships, cargo rail, or trucks, the fluctuating temperatures, lack of air circulation, time, and movement can lead, despite preservation techniques, to bruising, rotting, and disease to produce and animal products making a portion unsaleable.
ACCESSABILITY
What sources of food are available historically determine what a local population eats. Unfortunately, with physical (the lack of grocery stores in selected areas) and financial inaccessibility to healthy foods (fruits and vegetables are often more costly than many less-healthy subsidized foods), under-served populations face the consequences of purchasing more cost-friendly products that tend to veer towards the processed and less nutritious end of the alimentation scale. An unbalanced diet can, naturally, lead to long-term health effects and further economic struggle, and increase overall healthcare expenditures. The result is the creation of a vacuum that is increasingly difficult to escape.
CONSUMPTION
NYC’s food consumption (production, processing, transportation, storage, and waste) accounts for ~40% of total emissions in NYC. And that is by conservative estimates. There are many factors to blame, as pointed below, but the general barrier between how food is grown and how it is consumed is at the root of it: unfamiliarity leads to a lack of appreciation and unconscious choices. Moreover, stereotypical large portions and completion compulsion are driving higher consumption in the U.S.. Lastly, the average consumption of processed goods in the U.S. is much higher than most of the world, resulting in a higher rate of obesity.
The consumption of meat, dairy, and seafood products constitute 25.5% of total emissions in NYC, the second largest contributor after buildings emissions with 41%. Other food groups account for 14%, transportation accounts for 17%, and waste emissions 2.5% (disposal and landfill CH4).
Specifically, space heating of buildings is the largest source of emissions (17.3%), followed by private vehicles (15.2%), and beef (9.5%).
Cow products account for 16.2% of emissions in NYC; this is a staggering amount that can be attributed to many factors in raising cattle: relatively long growth timeline, feeding, methane release from cattle, and bodily waste. Therefore, it takes a significant amount of energy to raise cattle leading to high emissions per output ratio.
Over the last 50 years, consumption of meats has increased over 100% with chicken having the largest growth. Milk and eggs have been decreasing but cheese growing 4x, fruit consumption has been even and vegetables up 30%. Consequently, the U.S. Daily Calories intake has increased ~30% mainly driven by sugar & fat, and is now one of the largest diets in the world.
WASTE
Economically, the current opportunity cost of waste in our food system, accounts for ~$14B/year in losses in NYC or roughly 2% of GDP. This constitutes the waste in production, distribution, retail, and by consumers. Given current disposal processes and policies, waste levels are affected by unpredictable weather (flooding, drought, disease, fire, storm damage) during production, preservation during distribution, disposal policies in retail, food storage, and consumer behavior.
Waste in our food system can be found in every step of the supply chain including production (agriculture/animal production, post-harvest/slaughter, and processing), distribution (transportation and retail), and consumption. As seen in the infographic above, the levels of waste in our food system are quite staggering. In North America, consumer-driven waste tends to be the largest contributor to lost or wasted food while in the developing world, due to technological, infrastructural and climactic factors, production-driven waste tend to be the largest contributor (I also assume that, due to less abundance, developing countries tend to waste less on the consumer end). This equates globally to: 763 billion boxes of pasta, 574 billion eggs, 3 billion Atlantic salmon, 3.7 trillion apples, 75 million cows, 1 billions bags of potatoes, and 11000 Olympic-sized swimming pools of olive oil wasted each year.
In NYC, there are several initiatives underway to rethink its waste system. According to the recently-released 80x50 sustainability plan, “Approximately 78 percent of the total emissions attributed to the waste sector are the result of methane generated by New York City’s landfilled waste. Another 22 percent of total waste-related emissions are from the treatment of wastewater”.
Moreover, “the largest category of New York City’s waste stream is organic matter, which includes food, garden waste and plant debris, paper, wood, and textiles, making up 45% of the total”. In 2014, residential and commercial waste traveled to landfills as far as 660 miles away in South Carolina, Kentucky, Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and upstate New York. Each year in NYC, over 14 billion pounds of food are wasted in its entire food supply chain: 3.5B lbs of animal products, including 2B lbs of dairy, and almost 7B lbs of fruits and vegetables.
FOOD SECURITY & POLICY
Subsidies and food lobbying has been ingrained in national policies stemming back further than the Dust Bowl. While there have been many justified reasons with successful results for creating such policies, the abuse of the system has led to obesity and affordability issues with accessing healthier foods. To adapt to future uncertainties there are several considerations that need to be contemplated:
- Regulations — Conditions of produce for retail, best by dates, and disposal policies help, in theory, establish a standard on the quality for consumers. The reality uncovers a lot of misjudgment in what is fit for sale and an enormous amount of waste in our current system.
- Lobbying and Subsidies —Often showcased with corn syrup, subsidies have been a pathway to drive products into virtually every facet of our food system. While products, such as corn, have benefited from subsidies for corn syrup, ethanol gas, animal feeder, etc, there have been severe consequences in how our population eats, and in particular, those who cannot afford the luxury of choosing what to eat: subsidies in one food group can impact prices in other, often healthier, food groups.
- Food security — Given a growing world population and the current production methods used, this presents another major risk for cities as production is dependent on a steady supply of water, nutrient-rich soil, and a speculative finite supply of fertilizer that will only become scarcer due to a changing climate, more depleted natural resources, and increased ecosystem instability and risk. Hurricane Sandy is a prime example of such a risk.
EXPLORING SOLUTIONS
“Food loss and waste is an all-inclusive problem, eliminating it requires an all-inclusive solution that looks across the global food system to identify where the biggest losses occur and provide incentives for solving the problems at the root” — Mamadou Biteye, The Rockefeller Foundation.
Fixing this problem requires looking at the entire system from production to disposal, and reconnecting us with how we grow our food. To make food production more sustainable, more secure, and less wasteful, emerging solutions such as vertical farming and cellular agriculture provide a lot of promise. Vertical farming allows significantly higher yields of store-quality produce year-around using a fraction of water and fertilizer use, and can be competitively priced; paired with on-demand online food vendors, this would almost eliminate the existing food deserts in certain communities, leading to healthier communities and less waste. Cellular agriculture, the creation of animal products using animal cells, is a more long-term solution to providing on-demand meat and dairy products without the sustainability and ethical issues of current processes. Lastly, developing citywide policies on waste such as zero-waste models and composting systems would build a mandate to reducing environmental impacts from food (and other) consumption, and make cities more resilient.
While urbanism is undergoing a renewal in the United States, and growing populations in developing countries are gravitating towards new burgeoning cities, it’s easy to forget just how important it is sociologically to remain connected to where our food comes from: it enables us to be more educated and appreciative, less wasteful, and healthier about how we eat.
TECHNOLOGICAL SOLUTIONS
Urban food systems are going to significantly alter with the advent of technological solutions that make it possible to grow a city’s supply of food within (or in proximity of) its city limits. The driving force behind this is advancements in manufacturing and distribution that are making it possible to grow food, develop cultured animal products, and create an on-demand production and automated delivery system 24hrs a day / 365 days a year. In short, our food will become increasingly local due to advancements in AI, robotics, LEDs, 3D printing, ICT, and tissue engineering.
CULTURED MEAT / CELLULAR AGRICULTURE — “the application of methods of tissue engineering to food production to make meat and dairy products that are molecularly identical to those made via conventional methods”.
Market Landscape — Spearheaded and supported by organizations such as New Harvest, there has been promising growth in the space mainly centered in the Bay Area and NYC. Key sub-sectors and players include:
- Meat: Memphis Meats or Beyond Meat (plant-based meat)
- Dairy: Perfect Day
- Eggs: Clara Foods
- Leather: Modern Meadow
- Gelatin: Geltor
- Keratin: Ceratotech
Sustainable source of animal products — According to research by Perfect Day, their dairy products require 65% less energy, 84% less greenhouse gas emissions, 91% less land usage, and 98% less water to produce vs. traditional methods. Moreover, having localized production will reduce inefficiencies and waste in the current supply chain.
A revolution in our food system — Fundamentally changing how we consume meat products will have a huge impact on sustainability and will deliver real-time supply at a local level, so it’s no surprise that the sector has attracted big investments recently. Already, advances in the production process have reduced the cost of cultured beef to just $80 per kilogram, or roughly $11 per burger.
Disruption from cultured meat is still 5–10 years away — Further advances in tissue engineering and production will make such products competitively priced. I also predict that the consumer and manufacturer acceptance to adopting such products will be slow at the beginning with eggs, dairy, gelatin, and other by-products will first be successful in this space, followed by ground meats and seafood, and finally the fabrication of custom cuts of meat and seafood. The question remains: will we consider this a new food group?
INDOOR AGRICULTURE / VERTICAL FARMING — “ The face of agriculture is dramatically changing in and around cities worldwide. From Anchorage, Alaska to Tokyo, Japan, multi-story indoor farms provide fresh produce, fish and other products to local residents. Some facilities are greenhouses using natural sunlight, others use grow lights and environmental controls (humidity, temperature, gases…)”.
Market Landscape — The catalyst moment for indoor farming has been the availability of low-cost LEDs and sensors at commercial scale.
“In 2015, indoor agriculture startups — encompassing physical indoor farms and any hardware or software products serving them — raised $77 million, and during the first half of this year that figure was just $21 million. That’s from a total $4.6 billion in agtech investment in 2015 and $1.8 billion in the first half of 2016”. NYC is arguably considered the center of this emerging sector although there are multiple players scattered across the globe. Key sub-sectors and players include:
- Commercial Farms: AeroFarms, BrightFarms, Gotham Greens, Farm.One
- Commercial Systems: Freight Farms, Bright Agrotech
- Software: Agrilyst (who published an excellent industry report), Prospera, MIT Open Ag Initiative
- Genetics: Sostena
- Aquaponics Farms: Edenworks
- Growing LEDs: Illumitex, TaoTronics
- Consumer Systems: Grove, Farmshelf, Parrot
It is about to revolutionize our food system — Predictive analytics and continuously cheaper LEDs and sensors, are starting to make indoor farms competitive priced with traditional farmers/growers. These technologies allow indoor farming operators to produce higher yields per SF, use minimal fertilizers and pesticides, optimize efficiency in water use, grow locally and year-around, and provide store-quality produce on-demand. Consequently, our food system would be more secure, less wasteful, and more connected to our daily lives. Other thoughts on the state of the sector:
- Battle for the biggest vertical farms marked by AeroFarms, an incoming challenger, and a forward-thinking unexpected giant.
- A niche area, certainly, but BrightFarms recently received a $30M Series C round.
- In Japan, a country known for its experimental sensibilities when it comes to food, there is a movement to scale these solutions rapidly and internationally.
- More and more event and entrepreneurial resources exist for the sector such as Indoor Ag-Con, Square Roots, Food Future, and Urbantech NYC (shameless plug II).
- The marijuana industry, which has had its share of time perfecting how to produce plants indoors, is scaling rapidly in its new legal state and could serve as a great knowledge partner for the general agtech sector.
What lies ahead? — Energy costs, infrastructure and real estate expenses, and the sector’s experimental state are making indoor farming not yet price competitive with the exception of greens, micro-greens, and herbs. As technology development progresses and operations scale, other produce should become more price competitive especially if current farm subsidies are modified. In the short-term, greens and herbs will be competitive with traditional methods, followed by berries, vegetables, and spices, and fruit trees and nuts in the longer-term. Moreover, I predict that as retail becomes more digital and less brick-and-mortar, and products become more on-demand, commercial real estate will become more affordable, allowing for potential rezoning for vertical farms to thrive in NYC where it is currently quite cost prohibitive.
Distribution Solutions
The psyche behind buying the last piece of produce at a farmers market is often that there must be something wrong with it if it’s the only one left there (ironically, the opposite tends to happen with processed foods — “it must be a best seller!”). How do we provide better ways to access meats and produce at the highest level of quality while keeping fair prices?
“The future food system will have a much greater transparency and traceability from farm-to-fork, enabled by food tech”. Growing areas in the distribution space have been mobile restaurants, delivery services & systems, and online-food distribution:
- Mobile Food Industry: Smorgasburg, MOVE systems
- Meal Delivery Services: Maple, Blue Apron
- Online Food Distribution & CSAs: Instacart, Fresh Direct, Amazon Fresh, Local Roots CSA
- Delivery systems: Flirtey, Homer
How it will revolutionize our food system —Providing an on demand, accessible, stress free, better supply chain will reduce waste in our food system and allow better access to a full spectrum of food traditionally not available.
What are the gaps —However, thin profit margins and accessibility issues are currently limiting the growth of the sub-sector. There is an educational element that needs to be taught how these new services work and how they can be optimized. Moreover, providing the use of food stamps with online grocery stores is necessary to truly address the food desert issues currently facing our cities.
Policy Solutions
Transforming food policies from production to sale to disposal will be critical to produce less waste, enable a circular economy, create secondary distribution markets, and provide affordability and accessibility to all.
- Standards — Selling Ugly Fruits And Vegetables Could Be Key To Solving America’s Food Waste Problem. Gotham Greens is collaborating with Whole Foods in Brooklyn to sell ugly produce.
- Portion Control —”Portion control may be one of several effective strategies to promote moderate consumption without restricting individual choice”.
- Food Waste Policies — France moves toward a national policy against food waste and Germany is seeking to halve food waste by 2030.
- Subsidies — Farm bill: Why don’t taxpayers subsidize the foods that are better for us? “A 1 percent decrease in the 160 million acres of corn and soy translates to an 11 percent increase in the 14 million acres of fruits and vegetables”.
- Access — “Access to good, healthy food shouldn’t be reserved for a privileged few. It should be a basic right. And the changes being made at the community level need to be translated into changes at the state and federal level”.
- Recycling — “ While not mandatory, recycling in Zurich or Basel saves people money as they are only charged for residual waste, for which they typically buy bags from the municipality”.
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS & PREDICTIONS
Thoughts
- On-demand, accessible, affordable, sustainable food is the key to food security; it will reduce obesity, reduce healthcare costs, increase economic development, & improve education.
- Food security will be driven by creating self-sustaining local sources of healthy foods that are accessible.
- Waste reduction solutions need to be identifying at every step of the waste system: in the production, distribution, consumption, and disposal stages that strive towards a cradle-to-cradle model.
- “When consumers are distant from where food is produced, many lose any appreciation of food systems, become indifferent about agricultural landscapes, and are unaware of the multiple ecosystem services provided by rural areas.”
- Vertical farming and cellular agriculture are the future of food in cities.
- Effective food policies will enable technology and innovation to thrive by creating a compelling market and goals to aim towards, but
- While Governmental support in innovation is key to driving development in Europe (e.g. Financing the development of EV infrastructure to create incentives for EV sales), the U.S., with independence and capitalism at its core, is market driven (e.g. Creating compelling and market friendly EVs will drive sales which, in turn, will determine the EV infrastructure)
- To carry the conversation forward, other innovations such as genetically modified crops and waste disposal/recycling systems should be considered as part of a holistic food policy plan.
- In addition to food and energy, future consumption studies should consider factoring in water and other material consumption (packaging, building materials, electronics, clothing, etc.) into the analysis to give an even more accurate forecast of urban consumption and emissions.
Predictions
- Drones — Real-time delivery will revolutionize and optimize how goods are moved in a city decreasing street level congestion, leading to a more pedestrian-oriented built environment. It’s no secret that Amazon is beginning to experiment in that area.
- Automation — Advancements in robotics, 3D printing, and AI will begin to make its impact on the global food system by enabling automated on-demand local production that will significantly reduce commercial space needs (and therefore $/SF), allowing the manufacturing/production industries (including vertical farming and cellular agriculture) to move back into industrialized cities after decades of outsourcing.
- Digital Infrastructure — Advancements in sensors, battery technologies, and ICT will make production of produce ever more efficient, precise, and timely allowing for autonomous at-home gardens (that spare room will be your new living fridge).
- Climate Change / Resiliency — Disruptive conditions will create a less reliable food supply chain, driving up costs for certain commodities and creating an opportunity window for vertical farming to be a strong and needed contender in the food space.
- Materials — Companies such as Ecovative showcase that compostable materials are on the verge of becoming the norm, allowing the majority of our food packaging materials to avoid landfills and be composted instead.
- Augmented Reality — AR will visually predict, using data from previous harvests and current conditions, how plants will grow by superimposing future growth potential to its current state and indicate how to ameliorate and optimize.
