The Future of Food Production Speaker Profile: "We have developed a society with the myth of efficiency"

With The Future of Food Production Summit just weeks away, we thought we’d get to know our speakers a little better. Today, we meet Antonio Scarponi, the Founder of Conceptual Devices, who will be taking part in a panel discussion on 15 November 2022 – ‘Creating food resilience: what is the role for policymakers?’

Ten years ago, Scarponi was commissioned to develop a concept for the first aquaponic rooftop farm in Europe. “It took me a little while to get my head around how aquaponics worked as it was the first time I had ever come across the term,” recalls the Italian architect, based in Zurich, Switzerland. It was conceived initially as an artwork and produced for an exhibition in Sweden.

Scarponi dubbed his creation ‘Malthus’, after the British political economist, Thomas Robert Malthus, one of the first scholars to ponder how many people the Earth could feed. Malthus’s work, An Essay on the Principle of Population, was published in 1798 when the global population was believed to be around 800 million people. Today, in 2022, we have that number of people in malnutrition and a population of just under eight billion. As we know, this is predicted to reach ~10 billion by 2050. And more than 200 years after Malthus, we are still questioning how many people the Earth can sustain.

“Alongside the commission, I also created a device in my office to grow ‘one meal a day’,” reveals Scarponi. “I was interested in exploring how much food (fish and salad) I could grow in an apartment setup. So, I calculated the volume of water in a bathtub, how many fish could thrive in that volume of water, and then I figured out how many vegetables the fish could nourish, and then I put all that information together.

“It was a big installation, as large as two refrigerators,” Scarponi adds, “providing 200g of fish a day and a head of salad.”

Soilless farming, he believes, is much more straightforward and uncomplicated than traditional soil farming. That’s why he decided to design a product to grow food at home that would only exist if somebody wanted to build it.

“To do this, I hacked an IKEA product and, in doing so, hacked (symbolically) their distribution infrastructure,” he reveals. “IKEA is, for me, a distributor and supplier of a product that doesn’t really exist. So, I wrote an instruction manual called ‘ELIOOO’ that could activate people to grow food at home with a simple box that could be distributed worldwide and was PBA-free, using simple IKEA products.”

The fun part of the project for Scarponi was that, while doing his research, he realized humans could be the fish to fertilize vegetables. “This is because fish urine, from a biological standpoint, is identical to human urine,” he says. The only difference is that humans are better fed than fish and usually require fewer antibiotics than fish farmed in tanks. “Therefore, for hydroponics, one could use homoeopathic doses of human urine (2.5ml in every five liters of water). The significant advantage is that it can provide micronutrients to plants, which is impossible to recreate artificially with traditional synthetic fertilizers.”

He called the system ‘humanponics’, although his friends refer to it as ‘Scarponics’, Scarponi laughs. “I found guidelines from the World Health Organization about it and, for the record, this system is not allowed in the industry currently. For me, this is an ‘art project’, but I am interested in awakening possibilities and making the symbolic connection between what we excrete and consume.”

I am interested in awakening possibilities and making the symbolic connection between what we excrete and consume

Scarponi regards his role as an architect, artist and designer as exploring, redefining, and innovating the millennial culture as to how we grow food and overcome the historical dichotomy between city and countryside. “When we plant a seed in the soil, we celebrate an act that is 11,500 years old, which is embedded in our DNA. It goes back to the origin of our species as humans. When we grow food in water, we push our evolution forward and confront the challenges our species is facing, and this can be one of the answers to our survival on this planet.

“As an architect, I am interested in exploring these new relationships. As a designer, I am interested in empowering people about it. And as an artist, I am interested in providing an aesthetic to it, giving it a voice, and letting it talk to and explore the contradictions of our society.”

As we stare at the problem of feeding ~10 billion people by 2050, does Scarponi think the problem has raced too far ahead of any solutions? “I am still trying to figure out what this would mean – I wish I were a fortune teller,” he says. “But unfortunately, nobody can predict the future. What I am sure about, though, is that one way to face the challenge today would be to reduce not only consumption but, most importantly, waste. This is because our resources are used so inefficiently. We have developed a society with the myth of efficiency, and we are by far the least efficient society in the whole history of the world regarding the use of resources, processed food included.”

We have developed a society with the myth of efficiency, and we are by far the least efficient society in the whole history of the world regarding the use of resources, processed food included

In developing countries, 50% of food that reaches our tables is thrown away. This is not only a waste of food but also a waste of energy. “There is energy that produces this food and brings it to our table and there is energy that can be generated by bio-digesting food waste and producing gas. The technological answers to this are well known – it is not something that belongs to the future. Although we have the technology, we need ‘technology’ to put it to work. We need software that makes us see what is in front of us.”

More than mere technology, though, Scarponi suggests we need techniques and knowledge. “We have all the technologies we need,” he feels. “We need to put them to work and make them affordable. Hydroponics can be very efficient in ways of producing food in many ways. We need to learn how to provide alternative sources of proteins, so I hope we will learn from Asiatic and African cultures, which have been doing it for centuries.”

That said, Scarponi suggests the keyword for the future is ‘autonomy’, producing what we need where it is consumed. “This should be seen as something other than an ideological statement,” he notes. “Transportation is expensive and inefficient, especially when it comes to renewable energy. Food included.”

For Scarponi, it is not a matter of technologies but culture: eliminate waste and reduce consumption. “The technologies that can have a genuine impact are relatively primitive. We need to invest creativity in ways to optimize consumption more than production. I see positive signals in different fields, also thanks to digitalization.”

Which brings us rather neatly onto the panel discussion that Scarponi will be participating in at The Future of Food Production Summit on Tuesday 15 November 2022, featuring Henry Gordon Smith from Agritecture, Willem Frens from BA2C Europe and moderated by Hermione Dace from The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. “Policies are the key to imagining sustainable food production and growing food in cities is the key to sustainable development,” Scarponi concludes. “Policies can affect building standards to facilitate a more flexible roof adaptation. Likewise, a wise and flexible land-use agenda can significantly impact how urban agriculture can be seen as a means to farm the city. The main challenge of urban agriculture is the cost of the land, the cost of infrastructure and air pollution. Wise policies can encourage entrepreneurs and developers to develop profitable and sustainable food production programs.”

The Future of Food Production Summit is an online, 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 seat