ELSI: Cross-Domain Effects Part 3

Ethics and the application of Harmony In applying Harmony parameters to evaluate a system, you may encounter situations in which it is useful to have a debate in the team about ethics. Having a language to talk about ethics, we’ve found, is helpful in navigating these discussions. In order to support this, we’ve added a section on ethics and some main frameworks of thought in the tools section (4.12). This may also appeal to those of you reading this with a general interest in philosophy and the progression of ethical frames of mind over the centuries. example: a systemic look at our food system In this example we look at the global food system in a rough review of the global problem, through a systemic SiD lens. The problem with food What is the issue? Our world population grows. With a growing world population comes a growing need for sustenance. Compounded with this is an increase in food consumption per capita, which makes for an exponential demand pattern. This increase of food consumption per capita is largely due to an increasing affluence of the world’s population. The more comfortable we are, the more we consume and waste (a system dynamic to keep in mind). This increase in food demand leads to increased land use for agriculture, and also usurps other scarce natural resources. Water is scarce, and its use is increasing in agriculture. We’re also running out of mined phosphate and potassium for artificial fertilizers, and without these fertilizers, production capacity is significantly diminished. Our industrial agriculture practices also leads to massive ecological damage, biodiversity loss, and pollution. These, in turn, reduces agricultural resilience, making food harder to grow. While members of the wealthier parts of our society can eat well, fresh food has been replaced by cheaper processed foods for many marginalized populations around the world. This impacts our global health and wellbeing, and creates so-called food-deserts, where fresh food isn’t available at all anymore. This is a hidden harmony risk waiting to explode. What a hairball of a problem; where do we even start? One way to start analyzing such a compound problem is by using causal loop maps. You use these to trace systemic relations back to their source, and see which factors affect the whole system. In the last few years, we’ve done this exercise and analyzed a variety of perspectives, and collected research around the globe from organizations doing the same. A highly simplified causal loop map, merely for the purpose of exemplifying such a map, is printed above. This shows some simplified major influences on the food system. Let’s have a look at some of the major dynamics in this system. Enough food, but distribution is uneven It is possible to produce plenty food for the current world population, but the food is not distributed equally. This leads to some people having an abundance of food, and others starving. The primary problem as it stands is therefore one of distribution, rather than production. This makes this challenge centrally locked into the ‘harmony’ system area, requiring, for example, policy changes. Policy change, however, has never been a safe bet for global solutions, not in the short or in the long term. This is especially true since we’ve not managed simpler challenges such as to globally eradicate poverty, establish gender rights, and so on. It would be more resilient to also try another approach. Limit to production potential An easy thought would be to just increase agricultural production to meet the increased demand. Unfortunately, we can’t continue to grow production the way it is organized now. We are limited by, at minimum, three planetary boundaries on an object level: a depletion of concentrated phosphate and potassium used in artificial fertilizer), depletion of agricultural land, and the decreasing biodiversity through agriculture. Water is also becoming a major issue in many countries in the world, and agriculture uses more than 80% of it globally. All of this limits our capacity for scaling up current production. Sustainable production needs to reduce water use, reduce land use, eliminate fossil fertilizer use, and increase biodiversity rather than harm it. The reality of monocultures One of the prime causal sources of the global food problem is a strategy we have steered our agricultural production industry into: monoculture production. In principle, growing food is a productive use of natural resources. This doesn’t have to be harmful. However, to boost our production we resorted to monocultures, which means growing a single crop over a large area. During the industrial revolution we sought ways to boost our food production, and monocultures were the answer we chose, globally. Once we entered that pathway, it was hard to go back, and the scale of farming has been increasing ever since. In SiD language, monoculture agriculture is a perfect example of an extreme case of increasing efficiency and centrality, by means of reducing diversity. This has as a consequence that the system is unbalanced to become extremely non-resilient and non-autonomous. Monocultures also separate themselves from their natural context, which is essential to their (one-directional) success, however ultimately makes the agricultural system behave more like a machine than a natural cycle. As a result, monocultures show all kinds of associated systemic issues. As the agricultural system is increasingly under pressure, these issues are coming to light. For example, because monocultures have the same crop planted over large areas, the same nutrients are taken up from the soil, and are not naturally replenished. In a diverse ecosystem, this would happen naturally. Therefore, this requires artificial fertilizers to replenish them. Because these large single cropped areas are a walhalla for pests that like those plants, these pests flourish and multiply in monoculture areas. To counter this, the industry makes heavy use of pesticides. These then also kill other (beneficial) creatures, which reduces biodiversity, and causes environmental damage. This damage in turn reduces the resilience of the ecosystem, reducing the capacity for natural pest control, and reducing soil fertility. Consequentially, this negatively affects production and yield. Some of these relations are expressed in the causal loop diagram above, showing that biodiversity loss and monoculture agriculture have a negative feedback loop that reinforce each other. Monocultures also have a large impact on transport networks. They produce a single crop in large quantities in a single place. Because local demand cannot absorb such concentrated production, produce has to be shipped to far away places, sometimes in cooled, energy intensive containers. This requires an extensive distribution network. For this we pay a price in, among others, additional land use, energy, air pollution, and time (reducing the quality of the food). The network also needs to be maintained and supported by large industries, which reduces local ownership and control (autonomy). To conclude, on a network level, the highly centralized and non-diverse food production system is driving a systemic lack of resilience and autonomy. The system dynamics that follow as a result cause a negative causal loop that is reinforced by the system. What to do? This is a systemic problem that requires a systemic intervention. It cannot be solved by merely adjusting one of the drivers, such as waste, affluence, or simple efficiency. To feed the world, we need to do several things at the same time: to increase output while negating negative effects. We also want to avoid all these negative, reinforcing systemic effects. The interventions should work within our system boundaries, which in this case are close to being met in the form of various resource limitations, including available land. One way to reduce negative effects and increase efficiency is to use agricultural systems that are diverse, decentralized, and aimed at sustainably producing crops efficiently. Instead of using monocultures, we could use polycultures. Polycultures grow food in diverse natural systems, by making use of ecosystem services and symbiotic effects between species. Some examples of polycultures are permaculture, and agroforestry. Another contribution to solving some of the systemic issues is to design locally closed loops of energy and material cycles between production, distribution, consumption, and the re-use of waste. This reduces resource use significantly, and lowers environmental damage, which result in a boost to autonomy. Polycultures also naturally use seasonal variability, and local climate niches to provide for a diversity of food throughout the year. This aspect also engages consumer awareness, expectation, and appreciation. This is another relevant topic that we won’t go into here, but is worthwhile investigating as a systemic driver. Polyculture systems such as permaculture are tried and tested on small scales, but they are not used to provide large scale food production on an industrial level. There’s still much to learn on how to achieve this. Currently, Polycultures demand all manual labor, which is inhibitive to the efficiency needed. There are promising developments in robot automation which hopefully negate that argument, such as the Pixelfarming project in the Netherlands. With Pixelfarming, a farming robot can plant and maintain polycultures. Example: Polydome As a result of the insight that polycultures provide a major improvement opportunity, Except invested in the development of a professional polyculture agriculture system. It is focused on greenhouse production, and it’s called Polydome. A team of scientists, designers, and developers built up a database of knowledge from existing polyculture efforts, and from this Except developed a concept for efficient polyculture production in greenhouses. The aim is to grow efficiently using no pesticides or artificial fertilizers. As a polyculture, it produces a wide variety of food, and recycles wastes from the community back into the system. It’s designed as a biodiverse and highly productive agriculture system that helps with a part of this global food challenge. As great as it may sound, it is still in its infancy. It provides hope, but there is a long way to go before polycultures become a competitor to current industrialized food systems. In addition to polyculture’s early development state, we need more solutions to tackle the problem. Some crops cannot be grown in polycultures, such as cereals. For these, organic production, with crop rotations and other means of production without artificial fertilizer is required. Decentralizing production of these crops is also important, and to design these in closed resource loops as well. The result of these measures is a lower output of production, but at least a sustainable one. As a direction of development, this has a potential to be a significant answer, but mature solutions are not there at the moment. There’s many questions and challenges left for this direction. Change in diets So far, we’ve only discussed agricultural systems in general. However, the nature of different agricultural systems differ drastically. In our diet, we see a vastly different impact depending on what we eat. By now, most people know that animal products are generally more impactful than vegetables (see diagram on the next page). The general rule of thumb is, the larger the animal, the higher the impact. This difference is significant, with a kilo of beef having nearly ten times the negative impact in land use and CO

production than a kilo of chicken. This may suggest that cutting all animal husbandry from our food system would be the best solution, but that’s not the case. Wanting everyone to become a vegetarian is probably a practical impossibility within the time frame we require these solutions, but it’s also systemically not the optimal choice. Animals have a useful place in our agricultural system, although less so than currently the case. For example, certain grasslands cannot be used for any meaningful edible crop production. But, they can be used by grazers such as cows or goats, and in that way, still be productive for milk and (some) meat. Also, certain lands can be used for animal food production, but not for human food production, also increasing the potential for some beneficial animal husbandry. In addition, goats and chickens are great organic waste processors. Things that are not food for us anymore, can be food for them. To close resource loops in society these types of organic wastes can be processed by chickens and goats into products for human consumption, such as milk and meat, but also into fertilizer that close agricultural loops. By slowly changing the global diet away from its current heavy meat consumption, for example to 30% of its current use, we can reduce impacts and increase food efficiency by more than 50%, helping to bring us into the future. A shift in diet, together with switching to polycultures, together are major systemic solutions to move to a healthy global food system. Addressing Food waste Looking at the causal loop diagram, we see a couple of other options. One way is to combat food waste, and to try to counter the relationship between affluence, increased waste, and consumption. Global food waste amounts to so much, that all 815 million hungry people in the world could be fed 4 times over with it, according to the FAO. Combating food waste is currently mostly done through ‘end-of-pipe’ solutions such as making restaurants and consumers be more aware of the problem, and to adjust their behavior (increasing awareness). While this is useful to a degree, it is a systemically weak approach. Moreover, more systemic issues of food waste lie upstream in food distribution, processing, and packaging. For example, food is wasted in distribution because imperfections cause food to be disqualified for retail sale. Each food system has its own waste characteristics. For example, in low-income countries, food waste mostly occurs in the early stages, during production and transport, before it reaches the consumer. In sub-saharan Africa this can amount to as much as 83%, and consumers there only waste 5%, says the World Resources Institute. In North America, however, only 32% is lost in pre-consumer stages, and 61% is wasted by consumers. Each system requires its own specific approach. There’s other factors involved in waste reduction as well. Agricultural trade agreements can cause large market shifts. These occasionally cause food to be dumped to maintain prices in large quantities, or overproduced because of perverse subsidies (and subsequently wasted). Usually, trade agreements only look at economic effects, but the effect they have on waste and long term investment of production facilities can be tremendous. Furthermore, farmers are pressured on a price level by powerful retailers that enforce low prices. This causes a reduction in the ability of farmers to innovate, invest, and be flexible in their methods and offer. On a network level it’s therefore often the middle-men that control the systemic problems of the food challenge, and not so much the consumers at the end or the producers at the start of the chain. This means systemic leverage can be found there, and a systemic solution that affect these relationships will have far reaching effects. Consumer awareness Lastly, there’s a large causal issue that drives up food waste and lowers awareness, which has to do with the distantiation of consumers from the source of their food. Growing up in industrialized societies makes us believe milk and bread come from a factory. This lack of awareness creates unnatural purchasing habits, and an unhealthy understanding about both nutrition and relevant consumer power. In the diagram at the start of this chapter some of these dynamics have been outlined. Increasing awareness as a solution through pure information sharing is beneficial. That said, it is a weaker method, as a result of a lack of leverage on the system. A more helpful tool in this process is to reintroduce food production in our daily life. This connects both ends of the system, creating a more direct feedback loop, which takes leverage away from the middlemen. A possible practical solution to help in this challenge is urban agriculture. Producing food inside of cities is not a solution to significantly contribute to the world food supply, due to its low efficiency and high cost. But, it has another role to play. Systemically, urban agriculture reconnects us with nature, and the sources of our food more effectively than an awareness program would. Urban agriculture can use wasted and degraded spaces, and introduce niche species that can thrive on other waste streams, such as mushroom production on coffee grinds. Urban agriculture has the ability to perform secondary services as well, such as water retention, waste processing, and filtration, in addition to increasing urban biodiversity. This makes urban agriculture an example of how a holistic view makes something that is at first glance economically uninteresting, into something that can be a major systemic contributor to the global food solution. Capturing this value can be done, as is shown by various urban agriculture brands around the world. Alternate food systems The global food system is huge, and complex. Each country, region, and food system has its own challenges. In our work we’ve been studying a variety of alternate food systems. We designed vertical agriculture towers for Shanghai in 2006. These are skyscrapers that are used for food production for a significant part of their floor space, mixed with residential, offices, entertainment, institutions and services. We explored how food production in urban contexts can be profitable, while using it to drive up real estate value, to clean river water, improve urban air quality, and provide quality jobs for rural migrants. This project was one of many that caused scepticism in 2006, with many procaliming this could never be a reality or profitable. Now, we see the first vertical agriculture towers rise in Asia and the Middle East, Another interesting example of alternate food systems is for desert climates. Desert climates traditionally have few food producing opportunities. Therefore, in the middle east, most food is imported, to over 80% in some countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia. In much of this part of the world, hot desert climates prevent normal field agriculture. The agriculture that is performed there are a huge drain on available fresh water, which is already in short supply for normal consumption. This means that fresh food, including salads, tomatoes, and cucumbers, need to be flown in with airplanes on a daily basis. The footprint of this food provision system is off the scale. For this, special solutions are required. For this desert climate, for example, we developed a special closed greenhouse system that is designed to keep the heat out, the water in, and use only renewable water and energy sources. With this system, we save more than 99% of water use compared to field agriculture, and grow local, healthy and sustainable food, It uses only sunlight as a power source, and sea water to power the system. The added benefit of food production in the desert is that we can use land that is infertile otherwise. Desert food production adds to rather than taking away from agricultural land use on the planet. It also provided local, high quality labor. In addition, it proves to be a lucrative business, by capturing value from a major part of the supply chain. Growing fresh food in the desert in this way helps the system in a variety of ways. On a resilience network level, it reduces the complexity of the local food supply chain, helping to increase resilience of local communities, boosting food security. It also increases diversity of local industries. It supports autonomy by establishing local resource based production using renewable resources. Lastly, it supports harmony, by providing fair wages for valuable agricultural work, as well as training for individuals, by expanding their access and inclusion. Case review and exercise As the length of this section shows, looking t the global food system through a systems lens is enough to provide many lifetimes of research and innovation. We hope it shows a bit of the power and insight using SiD as a lens gives you on such a subject. In the light of reviewing the use of SiD for this case, we’ve hoped to demonstrate a variety of aspects. First, the use diverse system maps to explore and review the challenge, including a rough causal loop map, a SiD SNO Quickscan, and a custom context map exploring the dynamics of a specific aspect (consumer disconnect, in this case). We hope that the usefulness of using system maps as a form of analysis, focus, and communication for complex societal challenges is apparent. While the causal loop map on the first page of the case is simplified beyond acceptability in any formal research, it helps to introduce the main dynamics of the challenge, and as a recipe for the discussion to follow. The SiD SNO Quickscan diagram shows a practical way to review and summarize the general systemic negative and positive effects of a situation, on all three levels of abstraction. In the text, we have referred to various network parameters, and their effects on system indicators. Exercise This review is far from complete. The industrialized food system is more complex than we have shown here. As an exercise, or as a means of further research and training, consider the following: Develop an expanded causal loop map Identify aspects of the map where you see an opportunity or are inspired to investigate further Execute a SiD SNO Quickscan on this aspect Highlight a particular system or network challenge, and focus on this to formulate solutions Effects of the disconnected consumer in the food production and consumption system This diagram collates a series of systemic effects and relationships related specifically to the ‘disconnect’ of the individual consumer to the production of food. Polydome Shown on this page are some images of Polydome, a concept for a high-efficiency polyculture agriculture system, designed to optimally grow in a greenhouse. Polydome combines the efficiency of modern agriculture with zero pesticide and fertilizer use, and a resilient growing system. This project is developed by Except as a pathway for highly sustainable food production for both urban and rural areas (Except, 2011). A design for a sustainable desert agriculture on infertile land, using only salt water and sunlight as primary sources. (Except, 2019)