Introduction
The global food system is broken! It is unsustainable, it produces social inequalities and injustice, it delivers unhealthy products to the masses and it is highly sensitive to geopolitical situations, to the price of oil and to financial systems. Many agree that the solution is a decentralized glocal food system.
As an open participatory network, we are very well positioned to tackle the wicked food problems and to steward the emerging glocal food system. There are two areas where we can intervene:
Production: Sensors are used to make sense. Sensors are an integral part of intelligent systems. Sensors become valuable when they are integrated into systems for planning and decision making to stabilize food production and distribution. Our goal is to level the field of information and knowledge in the agricultural sector and to empower individuals and their communities to use the physical environment in a sustainable way.
Quality testing: Sensors extend our own sensing. A decentralized glocal food system must address quality in a very different way. We cannot trust institutions that have an incentive to lie. Affiliates of this network are thinking about lab-on-a-chip, portable and low cost technology for a democratic and distributed quality testing and certification. In other words, we want to give every individual the ability to easily test the quality of soils, water and foods, anywhere, anytime.
Our network has engaged with growers and farmers since 2011. See our traces from the past.
