ELSI: Cross-Domain Effects Part 3 (Part 2)

Cross-Domain Analysis

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.

Case Study: 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)

---

Takeaway

Food and agriculture illustrate cross-domain effects at their most vivid. Industrial monoculture optimizes for yield (one object indicator) while degrading ecosystems, health, economy, and culture. Polyculture and systemic food design show that optimizing across domains simultaneously produces better outcomes overall. This is the core argument of SiD.