Digital collage of a family in a victory garden with agricultural robots added to the background, and sketch of a mixed-used urban farm, and a vertical farm on the facade of a building with a drone. Digital Collage: Eben Kowler

Local Food in 2035: A final project

It’s here, the end of the Fall 2021 semester. In this post, I’m sharing my final project for Futures Research.

The concept for this project is that I was hired” by the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service to help them explore the Future of Local Food in 2035. As a class, we were challenged to go beyond your typical slide deck and present our findings in a more engaging format. I created a micro website exploring two scenarios — Big Brands Green Up and Integrated Abundance.

The site presents the scenarios in a basic choose-your-own-adventure format where you can explore different dimensions of each scenario. Each vignette incorporates an interactive feature that asks you to reflect on the story’s implications, its plausibility, and the potential scale of the impact. The responses are aggregated so that you can learn from everyone else who has visited the site.

The idea is that this interactive site serves as a bridge between mapping the future and having a conversation about implications and options for influencing the future.

→→→Check out the final project here!←←←

Feel free to leave your feedback!

The end of the semester was a real squeaker. I finished this project just before getting a breakthrough case of Covid-19. Feeling #blessed I didn’t have to work on this and could sleep it off 24/7 in bed with my dog Yoko watching What We Do In the Shadows. But really people, these vaccines are incredible. Looking forward to seeing what else mRNA has in store for us.

Stay safe & happy holidays!

December 4, 2021 Food Scenario Foresight


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