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speculative future of industrialized foods

AN AGROFUTURE

The past futures was a speculative partnered studio based in the American rust belt (Ohio river valley).

The goal was to analyze past trends of the region and speculate a prospective future through world building at a full and complete scale, from culture and artifacts, to built structures and systems.

The agrofuture speculates a world in which the role of food shifts as a central aspect of the home, stripped of its cultural significance.

A “villain” is introduced named pacmore to bring tension and propel the story. It is a power hungry mega monopoly of the food industry, much like modern day corporations in various sectors (won’t be named).

People reject this future and eventually reclaim food’s identity. through localization of food production, bridging the gap between producer and consumer.

Much of the difficulties in this project came with developing this complex narrative, weaving together various types of artifacts including foods, government regulations, structures, and systems.

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To frame our project, my partner and I devised a timeline of events ranging from the 1800s to 2200s. This timeline includes historical non-fiction and a fictional future that is derived from past events.

Events that are heavily significant to the project are highlighted in green, including: environmental disasters, government intervention and policies, food inventions, and a people’s resistance movement called the agrofuture.

This food journey map (yellow) outlines the evolution of the industrialized food scene, largely propelled by the industry boom and subsequent immigration into the rust belt. This revolutionized American people’s diet and relationship with food.

To visualize the future created with the timeline, we generated renderings that reflect a potential future landscape, inspired by Tom Hegen’s aerial photography.

The goal of these images is to imagine a future where the producer and consumer of food is seamlessly weaved into each other. Large scale urban farming is introduced into a modern cityscape.

A new “green future” movement endorsed by the government come with 3 new acts that aim to reduce emissions and waste in the food industry.

While implemented with good intentions, all these acts do is topple existing food empires, allowing the opportunity for one that will leverage loopholes to grow. This company will become PaCMORE, short for “purchase and consume more”.

1. Monocultures are banned in favor of diversifying crop to promote sustainable farming.

2. Food producers and retailers are required to document emissions and byproducts in order to reduce waste.

3. Food and beverage operations are required to source 60% of their raw goods from alternative, sustainable sources.

To visualize the future created with the timeline, we generated renderings that reflect a potential future landscape, inspired by Tom Hegen’s aerial photography.

The goal of these images is to imagine a future where the producer and consumer of food is seamlessly weaved into each other. Large scale urban farming is introduced into a modern cityscape.

These are a series of advertising campaigns that aimed to convince the public towards alternative food sources.

The kitchen looses its purpose as a necessary space in the home and becomes a commoditized unit, an auxilary piece. With the unit comes highly specialized foods and modules like the protein cubes and pan mate.

As more and more families adopt this new technology, the food scene is drastically altered and homogenized.

While the majority of the country accepts this as the new normal, pockets of people who want to hold on to their cultural roots resist. Grandmas and families who have saved seeds of significance begin growing underground, allowing the continuation of their collective history.

Eventually the activity of cultural preservation through farming catches on, and adoption of local production begins to grow and take over old infrastructure of the 2000 and 2100s.

In resistance towards PaCMORE, a non-central group comes together to create the agrofuture collective.

Industrial farms are replaced by large scale industrial indoor vertical farms to reduce land waste. Communities take over the excess land creating new cities.

Charging stations render gas stations antique, the remaining infrastructure turns into prototype and eventually permanent buy n’ grow spots that promote “local grown”. Plots and freshly harvested items can be purchased and accessed 24/7.

Having a personal grow room as part of your home becomes commonplace. For some, it is even the primary food source for their families.

Port usage drastically decreases as food production has been entirely localized. Shipping containers get repurposed into temporary grow rooms to jump start localized production communities.