The Whole Story
Research When thinking about the farm to fork food cycle, the spirit of the design we pulled out was local and community-focused food cycles that treat food as a right (and people as food citizens). We originally threw around ideas related to food waste redirection programmes and supermarket donation schemes, but decided that while important this was not in the spirit of farm to fork necessarily.
After the opening speech, we decided to consider the trifecta of COVID, BLM and climate change. From COVID, we discussed locality and resilience and decided it was important that our solution was community-driven. From BLM, we discussed inequality due to race, which we felt often closely reflects the classist nature of UK food systems, and decided to focus on a disadvantaged group. From climate change, we thought the most important aspects were locality and education, because based on experience we thought people do not often make the connection between elements of climate change, food security and their daily lives. From this, we dug into the research.
To begin our research, we conducted a broad fact-finding mission to understand the pillars of food security, and causes to food insecurity in the UK. Upon this research, we were shocked at the prevalence of food security among children throughout the country. We decided that we would use this challenge, farm to fork food cycles, to develop a solution to give children a fighting chance.
Our thinking behind targeting disadvantaged students was simple, we knew that agricultural and gardening programmes in more well off schools was common, and wanted to single out those who did not have these resources. According to UNICEF, the FAO, NGOs like WRAP and academic research eating well and healthfully is the cornerstone of development mentally and physically, and any lag here would stay with children throughout their life. This means that the inequality children face while they are young is inequality they will carry with them. This inequality includes both direct effects such as healthy problems and indirect effects such as a lack of productivity. It is shameful, we felt, that one of the most advanced economies in the world chose not to care for its children and their basic right to knowledge and access to food.
Insight We know that the government must do more to increase the absolute amount of food children have, but we have chosen to target knowledge around food utilisation and access because we do not want our pitch for community and school involvement to suggest the government does not have a responsibility to provide funds and resources to get children food. The paternal responsibility of the state is to provide food, and should our agricultural plot scheme see natural disaster or soil infertility the onus, we feel, should still be on the government to make ends meet. Thus, we thought that targeting other angles of food security was the most pragmatic use of our weekend, and would be a useful tool going forward.
Once we decided our programme would target school children in disadvantaged areas, we considered what programmes currently exist, including community supported agriculture plots (which reside mostly along the south coast and in Greater London), current food policy at a national level, farms that hosted school trips for the day, horticulture BTEC courses and other similar programmes. We took the most appealing aspects from each of these to develop our idea. These appealing aspects included a hands-on educational component, moving away from a transactional system strictly reliant on traditional currency once the programme began and an overall community feel. Something we felt it was important to showcase in our solution was the interplay between the wider community and the schoolchildren, and more specifically the positive, supportive environment this synergy can create. Food is intensely cultural, and can be a source of great pride. As the FAO puts it, “If [nutritious foods] are cheaper, poor people might be more willing to buy them, but they would need to want to, like them and know how to cook them, all of which are cultural issues”. We were struck by this insight, and decided it should help guide our ideation.
Ideation
After gaining insight into the proportion of disadvantaged children living with food insecurity, we realised that the scale of our solution had to be locally driven targeting children in low-income communities. We thought a grassroots initiative where the community takes ownership and is involved in the decision-making would create a sustainable solution that would remain resilient, even under challenging times. We discovered that lack of knowledge was an underlying cause of food insecurity that needed to be addressed through some form of education making schools an ideal place to start. We wanted to implement a programme that would play a role in allowing children to take a hands-on approach to producing food in their local community whilst also providing an educational framework within their primary and secondary school curricula in a non-intrusive manner.
During our research process, we came across community supported agriculture (CSA) whereby a partnership between farmers and consumers enables the responsibilities and the rewards of farming to be shared throughout the community. CSAs seem to provide a sense of community engagement that we wanted to also somehow incorporate into our idea. We developed the idea of a student-based agriculture scheme (SBA), a parallel solution to CSAs, that would provide students with the opportunity to gain an understanding of the food system whilst also building a connection with the wider community. SBAs would involve setting up farming plots on or near schools in disadvantaged areas. By taking into consideration that teachers and staff at these schools have limited time and resources, expertise from local farmers, university students, and other community members would be necessary to ensure SBAs could be implemented.
Equipping children with practical and theoretical knowledge on the basic foundation of the food system goes beyond the classroom. Students would be able to bring home important lessons that bring new ideas to the family household on sustainable agriculture and nutritious diets. Furthermore, this educational knowledge could open up opportunities for potential career paths in the agricultural and food industry enabling this future generation to play a strong role in the decision-making in sustainable food production. Therefore, we decided that educating children through SBAs would provide a long-lasting solution to food insecurity amongst disadvantaged communities.
Prototype Within a two minute video, there is a lot we wish we could’ve unpacked more. Below are several such aspects…
Agricultural plots - We are aware that not every school is privy to an abundance of open green space that is in a position to be redesigned, adn wanted to make ample space for the challenge this presents. While ideally SBAs would be relatively generous plots of land on or adjacent to school property, any type of space can do. Potentials we have thrown around with mentors include greenhouse development (could be especially useful in harsher climates), micro-plots for schools with small amounts of green space (could use several plots around the campus if available) or even an array of garden boxes secured to windows and fencing or pots in classrooms or offices throughout the school as a last resort. Alternatively, if there is green space or allotment within a reasonable distance it is feasible to develop this for SBA purposes (this in particular could unlock multi-school synergy in urban areas such as South London, where multiple schools in a small radius can travel to a plot that is also managed by a couple other schools). This is something that is highly contextual, and the perfect fit will vary from school to school. There is no perfect plot layout, only layouts that will be most advantageous for children based on the circumstances.
Finance - We considered multiple different avenues of finance, and discussed it with all four of the mentors we sought advice from throughout the weekend. We decided that the most clear financial hardship was the initial set up, which we feel should come from the government in the form of a grant, considering the financial and resource strain many schools are already under. From there, the financial structure of SBAs is more fungible. A lot of the determinants we imagined took a couple years to play out. For example, the potential to sell fresh fruit, vegetables, herbs and flowers is a potential source of revenue for the program but is subject to production capacity and the absence of climate or weather events. If this were to be successful, the production of simple products such as jams priced competitively with chain brands could provide a suitable extension of this revenue. This stream of revenue could lead to partnership with local shops or bakeries and truly represents an array of options. For plots that do not have the benefit of this success due to weather, space or other constraints the majority of excess funding would need to be secured from business or philanthropic partnerships or donations. We discussed the opportunity of micro-loans but are wary of the effects this could have if the school was unable to make a profit off the plot immediately.
Community involvement - we firmly believe that the community/school connection is at the heart of our solution. Throughout our project we learned from community based cultures such as those of Scandinavia and East Asia, and believe that the social fabric of the community is vital for both the productivity of this scheme and the mental, emotional and physical health of all citizens, especially the children we are targeting. Inspired by this, we hope to further develop a solution in which community members not directly tied to the school can play an active part in the SBA scheme. Potential forms of involvement include weeding and tidying on the weekends and over break; sharing their expertise in gardening a specific plant or pairing flowers together for the best possible growth; using culinary skills to teach older children how to prepare nutritious meals; and, using academic knowledge to inform pupils about the material covered in the curriculum such as weather and climate dynamics, soil fertility, ecology and local ecosystems. Once the plots are productive, we imagined a circular economy that truly encompassed farm to fork life cycles by selling produce and products to community members, but we strayed from using transactional elements to found this programme because we wanted our community emphasis to shine over capitalist interests. Produce selling could use traditional currency, or a local alternative currency. The school programme could host lunches or send students home with bits of veg to experiment with or give their neighbour as a treat. Really, the ways to harness community involvement are varied, which we believe is one of the most hopeful aspects of this project.
Curriculum - discussions with teachers coming from these schools gave us insight into the burden of work teachers were already having to cope with suggesting that our solution would have to require some form of external expertise in a non-intrusive manner. Additionally, this form of education would have to fit around the current school curricula without disrupting the current balance. We decided that the bottoms-up design would have to be implemented in a complementary manner to avoid the complications that surround having to shake around the current education curriculum. Rather than dedicating an entirely new course towards learning about food systems, we decided it would be better to incorporate this learning material into either a pre-existing module or during a designated “activity-time”. The curriculum would include both a hands-on practical approach alongside knowledge on components of the environment including soil cycles, climatic conditions, and crop production. Providing this type of education would also highlight the importance of producing food in the most sustainable and efficient, self-sufficient manner. This knowledge can also be translated in the school agricultural plots used to grow food.
External Expertise - We had several ideas about how external expertise would be implemented, due to our caution around giving teachers yet another time and resource strain, as per the above comments. With this in mind we looked to identify roles in the community that are stakeholders to such community efforts and display leadership potential to children. With this in mind, we thought to include universities, both departments and students, industry professionals such as farmers and interested community members such as amateur gardeners. All of these actors respond to different incentives, so these will need to be thoroughly considered and stress tested. An example that jumped to our minds was university students fulfilling internship time, academic credit, or simply volunteering for their CV. This would be particularly salient in communities near universities that could harness this outlet on a weekly basis, but upon further development could also include a group of students taking several weeks to travel and visit schools to provide expertise and leadership. A connection like this is important for two reasons. The first is the real, concrete knowledge people in these positions have to offer that will be crucial to the development of successful plots and circular farm-to-fork cycles. The second is the emotional and aspirational connection this creates between people in these roles and school children. It is important to expose children to a wide variety of academic and occupational paths as well as providing healthy role models that may not otherwise exist. School-aged children are in an important developmental phase, meaning it is important to carefully consider how to best support them in a multi-faceted way such as providing role models that may otherwise be absent.
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