Taking back the power of food
(2014) In Diploma work IDEL01 20142Industrial Design
- Abstract (Swedish)
- Talking about the revolution, it sounds like a whisper, but I think even Tracy feels it’s time to scream it from the rooftops; I am fed up of sitting in the bistro of this ever speeding train of consumption, racking up a tab that our coming generations will have to pay for with their future. I want to jump off and run in another direction towards a more beautiful existence. In my life everything has always circled around food, so when I try to picture a different better future that’s where I need to begin. But where does food come from and who controls it?
You probably won’t be surprised to hear it’s not us, that it’s far from us.
To truly take back the power of food we need to scale the production in a way that we can grasp and... (More) - Talking about the revolution, it sounds like a whisper, but I think even Tracy feels it’s time to scream it from the rooftops; I am fed up of sitting in the bistro of this ever speeding train of consumption, racking up a tab that our coming generations will have to pay for with their future. I want to jump off and run in another direction towards a more beautiful existence. In my life everything has always circled around food, so when I try to picture a different better future that’s where I need to begin. But where does food come from and who controls it?
You probably won’t be surprised to hear it’s not us, that it’s far from us.
To truly take back the power of food we need to scale the production in a way that we can grasp and move it somewhere where we can see it. We trust what we know. And the trust in the system that is supplying us with our food today is all about gone.
It is too hard for people to understand the chain of events that have to take place in order to get a tomato from the south of Spain to south of Sweden: that it needs to be picked at least 5 days prior to being fully ripe for it to survive the long and bumpy roads, and how it needs to be ripened by ethylene gas. When the tomato finally arrives in Sweden looking all red and lovely it tastes no better than a stack of cardboard. One common way to judge the quality of vegetables is to use the Brix test; this measures the sugar values and it is a simple test, but it gives a good indication if the produce is good or bad. A good tomato should have a brix value of around 20. Tomatoes from the supermarket rarely hit 10, and most of the time they get somewhere in the region of 1. This is something most of us can relate to, as almost everyone has had a good tomato, and we have certainly had lot of bad ones. But how can this be considered normal? Tasteless food covered in poison that been ripened by gas, traveling for 3000 kilometres in a truck to land on your sandwich. Surely, this needs to change.
-there must be another way?...
...and I think there is. I made a hydroponic system for home use that lets people grow some or all of their own food. The system utilizes a nutritional mist that is transported directly to the roots, saving water, nutrition and energy, like a heaven for the plants. They don’t have to work hard to survive and can instead focus all their energy on growing big and delicious. This system also has some collateral advantages by humidifying and oxidising its surroundings to improve living conditions: imagine growing herbs in your bedroom, waking up to a room that is filled with oxygen and smells like rosemary and thyme.
The system is made of material that is easy to get hold of and to work with: a welded steel frame, wooden details and growing boxes made of composite material. The system is constructed to be flexible and scalable, and can be built out both vertically and horizontally. The smallest configuration can provide roughly 429 heads of salad a year, and almost any type of crop can be grown in the system. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/4918343
- author
- Jansson, Olof
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- IDEL01 20142
- year
- 2014
- type
- M2 - Bachelor Degree
- subject
- publication/series
- Diploma work
- report number
- LUT-DVIDE/ EX--14/50255-SE
- ISSN
- ISRN
- language
- English
- id
- 4918343
- date added to LUP
- 2015-01-07 15:35:41
- date last changed
- 2015-01-07 15:35:41
@misc{4918343,
abstract = {{Talking about the revolution, it sounds like a whisper, but I think even Tracy feels it’s time to scream it from the rooftops; I am fed up of sitting in the bistro of this ever speeding train of consumption, racking up a tab that our coming generations will have to pay for with their future. I want to jump off and run in another direction towards a more beautiful existence. In my life everything has always circled around food, so when I try to picture a different better future that’s where I need to begin. But where does food come from and who controls it?
You probably won’t be surprised to hear it’s not us, that it’s far from us.
To truly take back the power of food we need to scale the production in a way that we can grasp and move it somewhere where we can see it. We trust what we know. And the trust in the system that is supplying us with our food today is all about gone.
It is too hard for people to understand the chain of events that have to take place in order to get a tomato from the south of Spain to south of Sweden: that it needs to be picked at least 5 days prior to being fully ripe for it to survive the long and bumpy roads, and how it needs to be ripened by ethylene gas. When the tomato finally arrives in Sweden looking all red and lovely it tastes no better than a stack of cardboard. One common way to judge the quality of vegetables is to use the Brix test; this measures the sugar values and it is a simple test, but it gives a good indication if the produce is good or bad. A good tomato should have a brix value of around 20. Tomatoes from the supermarket rarely hit 10, and most of the time they get somewhere in the region of 1. This is something most of us can relate to, as almost everyone has had a good tomato, and we have certainly had lot of bad ones. But how can this be considered normal? Tasteless food covered in poison that been ripened by gas, traveling for 3000 kilometres in a truck to land on your sandwich. Surely, this needs to change.
-there must be another way?...
...and I think there is. I made a hydroponic system for home use that lets people grow some or all of their own food. The system utilizes a nutritional mist that is transported directly to the roots, saving water, nutrition and energy, like a heaven for the plants. They don’t have to work hard to survive and can instead focus all their energy on growing big and delicious. This system also has some collateral advantages by humidifying and oxidising its surroundings to improve living conditions: imagine growing herbs in your bedroom, waking up to a room that is filled with oxygen and smells like rosemary and thyme.
The system is made of material that is easy to get hold of and to work with: a welded steel frame, wooden details and growing boxes made of composite material. The system is constructed to be flexible and scalable, and can be built out both vertically and horizontally. The smallest configuration can provide roughly 429 heads of salad a year, and almost any type of crop can be grown in the system.}},
author = {{Jansson, Olof}},
issn = {{ISRN}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
series = {{Diploma work}},
title = {{Taking back the power of food}},
year = {{2014}},
}