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Next week, my latest publication in Frontiers (q1) should be appearing. And I rather hope it will provoke something considerably more useful than polite applause. I want people to engage with it, challenge it, and, better still, replicate what I have done.
The idea is deceptively simple. Forty families. Not forty corporations, forty government departments, or forty committees convened to discuss the theoretical possibility of growing a lettuce. Forty families, participating in a sustainable agricultural system that actually produces food.
I have taken industrial land and demonstrated how it can be used to produce vegetable crops, chicken eggs, and more. Not merely imagined it, not commissioned an expensive consultant to produce a beautifully illustrated report about it, but built a system in which production can be recorded, measured, and examined.
There is something wonderfully absurd about a civilisation that can manufacture a computer capable of discussing agricultural sustainability for six hours, yet struggles to imagine growing vegetables on land it has already industrialised.
We have become remarkably talented at discussing sustainability while remaining rather less enthusiastic about sustaining anything.
The important word here is families.
Food is not merely a commodity moving through a supply chain. It is the foundation of independence, resilience, community, and the rather unfashionable proposition that people should have some meaningful connection to what keeps them alive.
If industrial land can support productive agriculture, if families can participate, if vegetables, eggs, and other outputs can be measured and recorded, then we begin to challenge the assumption that food production must always be distant, centralised, and disconnected from ordinary life.
And that changes the conversation.
Sustainability should not be an expensive moral accessory worn by those wealthy enough to purchase it. It should be practical, measurable, reproducible, and accessible.
Forty families are not the end of the ambition. They are the beginning of the demonstration.
I want people to read the research, question the methods, examine the results, and consider what might happen if we stopped treating industrial land as the opposite of agricultural opportunity.
Because the purpose of research is not simply to publish another paper that will be admired by twelve academics and forgotten by thirteen.
It is to discover something that others can use.
I have built the system. I have recorded what it produces. And I want others to take the idea further.
Perhaps the greatest obstacle to sustainable agriculture is not a shortage of land, technology, or imagination.
Perhaps it is our extraordinary determination to keep doing things as we have always done them, while congratulating ourselves on how desperately we desire change.
The future of food should not belong exclusively to those who sell it. It should also belong to the families who produce it.
That is the conversation I hope this publication begins.
The idea is deceptively simple. Forty families. Not forty corporations, forty government departments, or forty committees convened to discuss the theoretical possibility of growing a lettuce. Forty families, participating in a sustainable agricultural system that actually produces food.
I have taken industrial land and demonstrated how it can be used to produce vegetable crops, chicken eggs, and more. Not merely imagined it, not commissioned an expensive consultant to produce a beautifully illustrated report about it, but built a system in which production can be recorded, measured, and examined.
There is something wonderfully absurd about a civilisation that can manufacture a computer capable of discussing agricultural sustainability for six hours, yet struggles to imagine growing vegetables on land it has already industrialised.
We have become remarkably talented at discussing sustainability while remaining rather less enthusiastic about sustaining anything.
The important word here is families.
Food is not merely a commodity moving through a supply chain. It is the foundation of independence, resilience, community, and the rather unfashionable proposition that people should have some meaningful connection to what keeps them alive.
If industrial land can support productive agriculture, if families can participate, if vegetables, eggs, and other outputs can be measured and recorded, then we begin to challenge the assumption that food production must always be distant, centralised, and disconnected from ordinary life.
And that changes the conversation.
Sustainability should not be an expensive moral accessory worn by those wealthy enough to purchase it. It should be practical, measurable, reproducible, and accessible.
Forty families are not the end of the ambition. They are the beginning of the demonstration.
I want people to read the research, question the methods, examine the results, and consider what might happen if we stopped treating industrial land as the opposite of agricultural opportunity.
Because the purpose of research is not simply to publish another paper that will be admired by twelve academics and forgotten by thirteen.
It is to discover something that others can use.
I have built the system. I have recorded what it produces. And I want others to take the idea further.
Perhaps the greatest obstacle to sustainable agriculture is not a shortage of land, technology, or imagination.
Perhaps it is our extraordinary determination to keep doing things as we have always done them, while congratulating ourselves on how desperately we desire change.
The future of food should not belong exclusively to those who sell it. It should also belong to the families who produce it.
That is the conversation I hope this publication begins.
