This piece is part of the weekly series “Growing Forward: Insights for Building Better Food and Agriculture Systems,” presented by the Global Food Institute at the George Washington University and the nonprofit organization Food Tank. Each installment highlights forward-thinking strategies to address today’s food and agriculture related challenges with innovative solutions. To view more pieces in the series, click here.
Last summer, I visited one of North America’s most sophisticated vertical farms: Avery Family Farms, owned by the Peters family in rural British Columbia (BC).
Most of North America’s vertical farms produce baby lettuce and microgreens, but Avery specializes in head lettuce. Their quality is unparalleled and costs of producing each head of lettuce are coming down. They use almost no land and are extremely water efficient, pesticide free, and have a nutritional profile that surpasses comparable products on the market. And because BC’s electricity is mostly renewable, their carbon footprint is low.
The hitch? An eye watering price tag: one of these ‘plant factories’ cost about $30 million to build. When I asked the founder, Garry, why they spent so much to build a box that produces tasty leaves, he pondered for a moment and provided two answers.
The first was seemingly simple. His forecasting predicts that this heavy investment will provide a return within 5 or 10 years—a straightforward incentive but notably fast for agricultural ventures.
The second reason was more layered. Garry thought it crazy for BC to depend on greens from water-starved California. He noted that the quality of supermarket lettuce isn’t all that good, and that unless people like him invest in agri-food innovation, the food system might not work for another generation. It’s fraught to depend on global supply chains for food security given trade wars, geopolitical upheaval and climate chaos.
By, of, and for the local
Two months before my trip to Avery farm, I found myself observing a different part of the world’s food system.
I was helping with a project aimed at boosting the resilience of food systems in Sierra Leone, Malawi, and Ethiopia. We travelled into the countryside of Sierra Leone to see how farmers were coping with climate change, the aftermath of COVID and Ebola, and the recent civil war. Dr. Patrick Kormawa, a former U.N. official whose now directs programs from the President’s office on food security and climate change, took us to see two fish processing facilities.
The first was local, small scale and humble—barely a cluster of cinder block buildings with some charcoal fires under wracks of fish. The other was a multimillion-dollar investment sitting behind tall brick walls.
Patrick wanted us to see that the multimillion-dollar facility was idle, mothballed, and had barely seen any use. The small facility, however, was at full capacity and bustling seven days a week.
Why? The big project had become mired in governance problems, rumors of corruption, and required massive catches of fish to operate. In short, it was out of scale with the community’s needs. The local one was what the entrepreneurs required because it filled a hole: what to do with the relatively small quantities of fish local fishers were catching. In the small facility, fishers were able to preserve their catch and add value to the harvest, insuring their families against shocks. In doing so, the humble facility was creating resilience.
Entrepreneurship for resilience
What links these two vignettes—one in Canada and the other in West Africa—is the idea that local entrepreneurship can build resilience. Across the world, from high-tech vertical farms to community-organized facilities, the roots of many solutions to today’s food system crisis lie in the hands and minds of local innovators.
Much like in many regions, where I live in Canada, we depend on small businesses that contribute an upwards of 75 percent of our agricultural GDP. So while big businesses sometimes capture most of the attention, supporting small enterprisers is key to reaching this sector’s potential.
To be resilient, we must nurture agri-food entrepreneurs, especially when they emerge as newborn companies. We need to train the next generation not only to be excellent scientists and farmers but also innovative and entrepreneurial systems thinkers. And we need to reduce the risk of investing in this sector, using models like Avery Family Farms to encourage private capital to invest in agricultural spaces.
Amid growing calls to transform food systems into engines of sustainability and economic growth—and ongoing global debates about the ups and downs of international trade—local food enterprises have a vital role to play. When well-resourced, tech-enabled, and responsive, these businesses can significantly improve food security for everyone. That’s something worth remembering—and investing in.
Photo courtesy of Evan Fraser
