What is FFS?
Floating food systems is the name of the project within which we are writing our profile paper for secondary school completion.
The main question we want to answer in our project is: “Is it possible to design a sustainable and climate-adaptive food production system that is scalable and adaptable to local conditions and needs anywhere in the world, together with stakeholders?”
Why this topic?
Food is at the root of everything: without safe, varied, accessible and affordable food, people's health is under pressure, people cannot work and earn a living and shop shelves remain empty. One of today's big challenges is how we feed a growing global population. Especially in Africa and Asia, where the world population is growing and the demand for food is shifting, this is a major issue.
Sustainability as a prerequisite
The way we produce our food is not sustainable. Research shows that the agricultural sector is responsible for 14.5% of all greenhouse gas emissions. Anthropogenic (human-caused) emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, cause climate change through an enhanced greenhouse effect. As a result, the average temperature is rising, extreme precipitation and drought are alternating, the soil is salinizing, fresh water is becoming scarce and sea levels are rising. This has an impact on food production and particularly affects those areas that are already vulnerable and where food insecurity is already an issue. In order not to affect the health of current and future generations, producing food must thus be done sustainably. This raised the question of how to produce safe, nutritious, varied food in a sustainable way.
Climate adaptive as a prerequisite
We want our design to take into account the influences of climate change. One obvious consequence is the rise in sea levels, but also extreme precipitation and the need to be able to store water for periods of drought. Rather than seeing water as a threat to food production, we feel it is an opportunity to redesign our food production and make use of varying water levels. By making production floating, the design can be applied in all areas with large rivers, deltas or a coastline.
Context specific
as a prerequisite
What we eat is not the same everywhere on earth. It is strongly determined by climatic, geographical, economic and cultural factors. Conditions in the Netherlands are different from those in, say, Thailand, the United Arab Emirates, Kenya or Argentina. If we want to contribute to food security, we need to make sure that our design is not only applicable in the Western European context, but that the concept can also be used in other regions of the world in a way that is appropriate for that specific context.
Short chains as a prerequisite
Since food insecurity seems to be primarily a distribution issue, we think that food production should be close to where consumers live. In this way, it should be easily accessible to consumers. Besides, short chains offer the opportunity to arrive at other revenue models in which all chain parties earn a fair income and local communities benefit. In addition, the COVID-19 crisis and the war in Ukraine have shown that food production systems with long chains are vulnerable. Although we think that long chains are important, we think that there is also room for short, robust chains.
Cross-sectoral cooperation as a prerequisite
Circular agriculture is a form of sustainable agriculture in which the cycle of substances is closed: all nutrients that are distracted from an area as a result of agriculture are also returned to the area. In circular agriculture, the connection between livestock farming on the one hand and horticulture and/or arable farming is necessary: animals eat residual flows that come from agriculture and horticulture, among other things, and produce manure. The manure can be used as fertilizer in agriculture and horticulture. Closing cycles is important because some of the nutrients that have leaked out require the use of non-renewable sources. To prevent this, cross-sectoral cooperation is necessary.
Dignified livestock farming as a prerequisite
If animals play a role in the way we produce our food, then we need to keep them in a dignified way. After all, animals have an intrinsic value by being.
Depolarising the discussion on food production
The discussion about how we produce our food is highly polarized. Making agriculture more sustainable is a complex issue that can be approached from many different angles. In our project, we investigate what happens when you put these different perspectives at one table with the question to come up with a design together.