Envisioning Sustainable Food Sourcing Solutions
From policy policing to self-governing system
Sponsor:
New Futures Lab (Fabri-Kal)
Partners:
Chicago Food Policy Action Council
Collaborators:
Chicago Park District
YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago
Chicago Public School Chicago
Department of Public Health
Technology & Data Consultant:
Zachary Pino
Faculty Lead:
Carlos Teixeira
Teaching Assistant:
Hendriana Werdhaningsih
Class:
Sustainable Solutions Workshop
Project Team:
Harini Balu
Justin Bartkus
M. Todd Cooke
Jessica DeMeester
Audrey Gordon
Grace Hanford
Alvin Jin
Zhongyang Li
Shuyi Liu
Jason Romano
McKinley Sherrod
Brian Siegfried
J Smyk
Yutian Sun
Xiaoqiao Tang
Andreya Veintimilla
Justin Walker
Wanshan Wu
Shiya Xiao
Yueyue Yang
#provokesandreimagines
#systemsdesign
#data-drivendesign
#challengesandhopes
This brief was developed by graduate students and faculty as part of the Sustainable Solutions Workshop at IIT’s Institute of Design. The work is the result of a 14-week collaboration between a variety of community partners involved in the Chicago food ecosystem.
Our class began with the challenge of developing infrastructures to support the goals of the Good Food Purchasing Program, an opt-in policy framework that allows public institutions to “lead the movement towards a values-based food system” by leveraging their billions in collective purchasing power. The goals of the GFPP center on the values of good nutrition, fair labor practices, animal welfare, local economic development, and environmental sustainability. Over the course of the semester, the challenge evolved into an attempt to define the most equitable and sustainable system for the movement of nutrients throughout Chicago.
We gained an understanding of the complex challenges and assumptions that underlie the current food system in the United States through site visits, secondary research, and prototyping. The proposals offered in this project represent achievable micro- and meso-level interventions in service of macro-level paradigm shifts. As such, they are intended to expedite the development of new methods of production, distribution, procurement, consumption, and disposal of food.
We proposed four macro-level paradigm shifts:
A shift from standardized, mass-produced offerings to made-to-order, small-scale batch-based offerings.
A shift from opaque, rigidly optimized global supply chains to transparent, agile forms of distributed production.
A shift from subsidizing single-source calorie-rich foods (e.g. dairy, refined grain, meat) to cultivating crop diversity among nutrient-rich foods (e.g. vegetables, fruits, fish, and whole grains).
A shift from conceiving of healthy, nutritious food as a premium offering to a conception of such food as a mainstay of ethical and culturally enriching eating practices.
To learn more about this project, please click here to read the final report.
“This work shows that policy, by itself, is a necessary but insufficient means to systemic change. It must be bolstered by new markets, behavioral incentives, modes of production, governance models, distribution systems, and infrastructures.
The infrastructures prototyped and the systems rendered in this report represent feasible, viable, and desirable pathways towards equity and sustainability for the GFPP. The tangibility of the ideas is their fundamental strength, not their infallibility. These proposals are intended to facilitate further conversation and debate and should not be understood as ready-made blueprints for implementation. Nevertheless, we stand by the rigorous research, thoughtful debate, and strategic planning required in their development.
We hope they may serve as actionable guide posts for the GFPP, and other industry stakeholders, looking to transform our food economy.”
