The Future of Food Production Speaker Profile: “Agriculture innovators should all be on the same side, supporting science-based solutions to our climate crisis”

Kicking off proceedings at The Future of Food Production Summit on 16 November, the second of the three-day virtual event, will be Henry Gordon-Smith, the globally renowned Founder & CEO of the USA-based urban agriculture consultancy, Agritecture. As well as delivering the first presentation of the day, ‘Strategies to accelerate the transition to climate-smart agriculture’, he will also be participating in a panel discussion on 15 November, ‘Creating food resilience: what is the role for policymakers?’

Sparing 15 minutes of his busy schedule, he tells us that he “dreams of a world where the lines between agriculture, nature and cities are working together in harmony”.

His dream will almost certainly need to become a reality if predictions about changing demographics pan out. Today, some 56% of the world’s population – 4.4 billion inhabitants – live in cities and this trend is expected to continue, with the urban population more than doubling from its current size by 2050, at which point nearly seven out of 10 people will live in cities.

Of course, there is a lot of work to do, advances in technologies are necessary – and some bold decision-making needed on the part of governments around the world – before Gordon-Smith’s dreams can materialize but he and his team have been working hard for the best part of a decade to carry the message about climate-smart agriculture, particularly urban and controlled environment agriculture (CEA), which he sees as a prerequisite to overcoming the challenges that lay ahead.

He first started exploring climate change and urban agriculture back in 2011, when he was a student at the University of British Columbia. He subsequently launched the blog Agritecture to share case studies and analysis that interested him from around the world. “People liked the content, and I got more interested in ways to support the sector,” he reveals. “In 2014, I responded to a global need for technology-agnostic guidance on urban agriculture by launching the advisory firm Agritecture Consulting, which has now consulted on more than 200 projects in over 40 countries.”

In 2014, I responded to a global need for technology-agnostic guidance on urban agriculture by launching the advisory firm Agritecture Consulting, which has now consulted on more than 200 projects in over 40 countries

Agritecture Consulting primarily helps entrepreneurs with vertical farming and urban farming feasibility studies, market research, recruiting, and systems design. He is also hard at work developing Agritecture Designer, the world’s first digital platform for planning urban farms and vertical farms. “It helps entrepreneurs to model and compare an unlimited number of financial projections, calculate a fair market price for their products using our crop pricing algorithm and understand key estimates related to payback period, energy and water use, equipment depreciation, and more,” he says.

If you have watched any of Gordon-Smith’s engaging talks, you’ll know how passionate he is about transformation in agriculture and indeed society. He holds a BA in Political Science, coursework in Food Security & Urban Agriculture, and an MSc in Sustainability Management from Columbia University. He has visited urban farms on five continents and worked on community and for-profit urban farms. “There are plenty of satisfying aspects to my role in the agtech community and I’m really grateful for this,” he states. “If I had to pick one, it would be working with my team at Agritecture. Having worked with my company on a lot of different projects from all around the world and being trusted by so many different businesses and people, is something unique and inspiring. It’s satisfying to provide quality services alongside my team to people and companies who really want to change the way farming is done, in a more sustainable and climate-smart way. Their energy drives me and makes me excited for the future.”

As well all know, that future is filled with a lot of geopolitical and environmental uncertainty. “Right now, Gordon-Smith’s major concern when it comes to achieving the various targets that we need to hit to supply humanity with food sustainably is the polarization within the community itself. “Agriculture innovators should all be on the same side, supporting science-based solutions to our climate crisis,” he suggests. “Instead, we try to outcompete alternative approaches before we have fully proven our own.”

Another of his concerns, especially in the vertical farming sector, is the secrecy that some companies have concerning their data, leading to misinformation and greenwashing. “Companies tend to promote vertical farming as a key to sustainability, hiding the truth that energy consumption and its resulting carbon footprint is often higher than greenhouses or more traditional farming.”

Companies tend to promote vertical farming as a key to sustainability, hiding the truth that energy consumption and its resulting carbon footprint is often higher than greenhouses or more traditional farming

Those concerns aside, does he think this rather gargantuan nut can be cracked – feeding the future without further damage to the planet? “I’m being optimistic that we can reverse the tide and walk together to a more sustainable future,” he says. “To do so, more companies must collaborate and, I will say, we are making some progress as an industry in this area.”

Given Gordon-Smith has his finger on the pulse of technology – and has done for more than a decade – what innovations does he believe will have seismic impacts on the food production system of the future? He doesn’t even hesitate to respond. “Reliable data, reliable data, and reliable data!” he insists. “We live in a world where data is priceless and can lead to huge improvements when it is reliable and open to the public. That’s the case for the food sector and food production as well. Technologies and applications that use less input and have a higher output are the ones that should thrive in the future and should be trusted. We cannot get there without reliable data and data sharing. That’s one of the reasons why we built Agritecture Designer where people can find and share data to plan smarter farms.”

Away from technology, the role of policymakers is clearly an important one in creating future food resilience, too, and is the topic of the panel discussion in which Gordon-Smith will participate. Although he doesn’t want to give away any spoilers, he states that one major position he will be taking revolves around planning and context. “We need more tech for farms to adapt to climate change,” he says. “That means more equipment and higher capex for farms. It means farms need to evolve. I want to emphasize that when you really consider the context of a farm site from the lens of market, climate, and other key variables, you are more likely to succeed across the triple bottom line of sustainability. My focus for the panel discussion will be on how cities can activate their urban agriculture communities for greater climate resilience.”

So, does he believe his dream will come true? “I hope we collectively minimize our impact and have enough time to get to realize it,” he concludes.

The Future of Food Production Summit is a virtual conference and takes place 15/16/17 November 2022. It features more than 75 speakers, 50 presentations, seven panel discussions and two start-up pitch symposiums. Even if you can’t attend live, you can access all the content – more than 20 hours’ worth – on-demand. Tickets are priced at just US$495. Click here to secure your virtual seat!