And when we were asked to imagine 2050 and food and farming, I think it's a measure
of how exciting it is for designers to just dream without consequences, because we jumped
right in and we thought of just what can we do and we looked at a resource available today
that would still be around in 40 years and could use some rehabilitation and we saw container
ships that are coming off the line right now that have a 30 year lifespan and then they'll
start to decay and they'll be dumped on the beaches and torn apart by hand and we wanted
to find another way for these to have a new life and so we packed them with seeds and
we latched them together and we sailed them off to Singapore and created these huge floating
farms and gardens and that was really exciting but then we thought you know we have to look
back and test this idea a little bit more and see what other people have tried to imagine.
My name is Amy Franceschini with Future Farmers. We found a group of students at Stanford University
who are asked in 1975 to imagine a space colony that would be launched into space by 1987.
Their design brief was following, humans living in space must have an adequate diet and food
must be nutritious, sufficiently abundant and attractive. There must be enough water
to sustain life and to maintain sanitation. The importance of the psychological aspects
of food should not be neglected. The variety and types of food should reflect the cultural
background and preferences of the colonists. So these were considerations that were given
to the designers by NASA and they had two weeks to imagine what life would be like in
a self-sustainable space colony that would orbit planet Earth. We begged the question
to ask what do we see as a potential for this spaceship, planet Earth?
One sort of terrible future scenario that I've envisioned from this is you know SOM aluminum
clad buildings kind of covering the Earth inhabited by photosynthetic people, absorbing
their food from you know from light from the sun. So nature disappears and it's actually
embodied into human beings. I'm going to talk to you about my ideas of the future of farming.
But before I can talk about that, I need to talk about today and what's going on today.
And the way I see things happening is actually happened yesterday. I got a phone call from
a non-profit organization that wanted to know if a corporation could sponsor a farm. And
what that meant is that they would give us free dirt, which is something that we already
have plenty of. They could give us free seedlings, which we have because we have a whole network
of people helping each other. And they could pay a part-time farmer to lead the group for
six hours a week, probably somewhere around $10 an hour. And in exchange, we would put
up three signs on the farm on an area of 400 square feet, which is 20 feet by 20 feet.
And we would put up a sign that would advertise for this corporation. We would allow them
to set up a tent and give away product samples. And the best part of it is that we weren't
allowed to know who the sponsor was. I envision a society that teaches young people that
farming is a really respectable field to go into. That it's not only a valuable pursuit
and a pursuit that requires creativity, but a pursuit that is well-compensated. I mean,
I think it should be illegal for people to own more than, you know, 28 acres of land.
I think that it should be illegal for any one person not to own an acre of land, or
any family not to own an acre, or half an acre. We need people who contain this knowledge
over a great amount of time, which is dependent on all of these small pieces of information
you can't write in a book. What worked in this one farm, one place, and what worked in
this other farm, another place. And individuals like cooperative extension agents hold this
knowledge and dispense it to the public. I think that it'll look a lot like farming
a hundred years ago. That when you take the petroleum out, there will be a lot more manual
labor. The scale will revert to something human scale. And it'll be complicated instead
of simple. It'll be multicultural instead of multicultural. It's 2050. The land is all
barren. Most people have a box like this one. Everyone's life is walking through the gray
and brown world. Gray and brown and brown and gray. Hoping and waiting for something
green. You put it in your box and protect it.
You put it in your box to protect it, or I guess to protect the hope in it. Often you
show friends, often you show friends what is in your box as a way to share your hope.
I mean, it's not always so nice. I saw one man beat someone with a piece of concrete
for the hope in what little green might be in their box. I've also seen fake hope. You
know, the old fake plastic flowers. My grandfather made my box. He lived in a land of green where
people didn't need to carry boxes around to protect their hope.
You know, I mean, we can have all the richer reality, all the high-tech gadgets and all
the industrial design. You know, my bow to the great work that industrial designers do,
but also to some of the damage that they have. They have to think about it. It's important.
Actually, it's again commendable. I honestly believe that as industrial designers they
are thinking about the future of agriculture.
Imagination is a magic carpet upon which we may soar to distant lands and skies and even
go beyond the moon to any planet in the space. We came from nowhere here. Why can't we go?
We came from nowhere here. Why can't we go?
Why can't we go?
Why can't we go?
Why can't we go?
Why can't we go?
Why can't we go?
Why can't we go?
Why can't we go?
