The Future of Food Production Speaker Profile: “Our tunnel-vision approach to a problem has often caused latent problems that render further damage in later years”

With The Future of Food Production Summit taking place in a little under two weeks, we’re getting to know some of the expert speakers who will be gracing our virtual stage. Today, we’re catching up with Alakesh Dutta, Research Associate at the esteemed National University of Singapore.

“For too long, we have been blind to how food is produced,” suggests Alakesh Dutta, Research Associate the National University of Singapore, who will be participating in a panel discussion at The Future of Food Production Summit on 15 November called ‘Building resilience within food supply chains’.

Realizing this future resilience will require a multi-pronged approach, of course, hence the panel features experts from across the food value chain, including Gavin Hodgson, Director of Agriculture, Horticulture & Aquaculture at supermarket retailer, Sainsbury’s, Semi Hakim, Co-founder & CEO of the Kök Projekt, Robert Gerlach, Co-founder & CEO of Klim and Jackie Wild, CEO of SmartParc.

Complete transformation is not merely desirable but a necessity. As Dutta explains, our previous farming technologies have already had such a detrimental impact, with more than 40% of land rendered degraded and unproductive. This is predicted to increase to about 90% of our lands by 2050. “The traditional fishing waters, too, face a similar fate,” Dutta notes. “This has all happened because the 55% of us who live in cities and consume 80% of the world’s food have conveniently exported the need to produce the food to our valuable hinterlands.”

Dutta believes action to stem this should be twofold. “We need to leverage the best of technologies to make our cities productive,” he says. “As designers, we can use our skill of spatial design to create space within dense cities to integrate such technologies and transform non-conventional urban spaces into productive food farms. It’s also vital that we implement nature-based solutions such as permaculture and regenerative design principles to resuscitate our soil, our ecosystems and our environment – both in cities and in our hinterlands. The imperative is not just to address the challenges of food production, but also to mitigate the impacts of climate change.”

As designers, we can use our skill of spatial design to create space within dense cities to integrate such technologies and transform non-conventional urban spaces into productive food farms

Although Dutta trained as an architect, designing buildings that look good and function as per the clients’ needs, he now finds himself practicing and researching regenerative designs that look at how buildings, neighborhoods and cities can be producing food. “This was something unheard of 10-15 years ago,” he says.

He first came across the concepts of agritech, urban farming and urban agriculture during his graduate training in Integrated Sustainable Design (ISD) at the National University of Singapore. “We were exploring ways to integrate food/urban farming systems into the design of buildings and cities. It was a deviation from how design is typically taught and piqued my interest throughout the tenure of my time in the program.”

ISD was founded on a systems-thinking approach to design – an idea that is presented brilliantly by Donella Meadows in her book Thinking in Systems. “Everything that we design and build in cities is embedded into numerous systems – for example, the electricity grid, food networks, mobility networks, natural systems etc. These are complex systems that can be degraded or improved through our actions,” says Dutta.

With ISD, the idea is to design buildings and neighbourhoods as a medium to create catalysts that could have positive impacts and improve the performance of these systems. For instance, instead of merely consuming water that the municipal grid supplies, buildings could instead reduce the pressure on the municipal water networks by harvesting water from rain or recycling ‘gray’ water through natural and/or mechanical means, in doing so cleansing it through nature-based spaces and returning surplus clean water back to the city.

Similarly, Dutta goes on to say that dense urban districts that require humongous amounts of food that the city needs to import could instead be transformed into food-producing clusters. “Through design, food systems can be integrated into urban districts to improve their self-sufficiency of food and reduce the amount that needs to be imported,” he adds.

“Upon graduation, when I entered practice, we came across a client who had a traditional land-based fish farm and wanted to redevelop it,” Dutta continues. “I was able to implement systems thinking into the design process, which enabled us as a consultant to radically transform the traditional farm into one that is more productive than before, uses less resources than before, produces less waste, and also produces additional products of value.”

That project, ‘Floating Ponds’, scooped an award at the World Architecture Festival (WAFX 2017) in Berlin. “Ever since then, I have always been extremely interested in the aggrotech sector as I believe that through design, based on systems thinking and complexity thinking, we can amplify the capacity of our physical environment to be more productive and at the same time reduce the pressure we put on our environment and its finite resources.”

Just as Dutta believes that solving some of today’s challenges will require collaboration from across the value chain, he believes no singular technology will be a silver bullet – rather it will be the “synergy between technology and nature-based solutions that will deliver the optimum outcome that is required”.

As we can see from developments around the world, researchers, scientists, entrepreneurs, etc, are pushing the boundaries of improving our capacity to produce food from less through amazing technological innovations and ideas, and Dutta only foresees this will only get better as this sector continues to accelerate and attract more talent as well as investments. “But we must also be cautious that we, as a collective, do not repeat our common mistake of thinking and act in silos as we have often done in the past,” he warns. “Our tunnel-vision approach to a problem has often caused latent problems that render more damage in later years.”

But we must also be cautious that we, as a collective, do not repeat our common mistake of thinking and act in silos as we have often done in the past

The Green Revolution, he feels, is one such example. “Although it lifted countries such as India out of being food deficient in food production and propelled it into surplus production, the underlying impact it has had on ground water levels and soil fertilities has presented a severe set of problems to the farmers today,” Dutta explains. Hence, it is imperative to think beyond one singular issue and adopt a systems-thinking approach to comprehend the complex network of systems that the food sector operates within. “This will enable us to produce ample food to sustain ourselves while also alleviating other aspects of our life and our planet,” he adds.

On his wildest dreams for the future, Dutta simply says he hopes “we are able to transform our lifestyles, our culture and our aspirations” to the extent that “food is an integral part of our living – not just the act of consuming food, but also the act of growing/ producing food”.

What holds great promise is that Dutta sees such a transformation happening already. “Technology is transforming the whole food sector from a being a labor-based industry to one that is knowledge-based and at the forefront of various technological innovations,” he concludes. “This is and will attract more people – educated and well-trained youth, professionals, etc, to participate in the act of growing food. Awareness toward the way food is produced will also improve our relationship with nature, its finite resources, and our consumption patterns.”

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 at the conference!