WELCOME TO FARMERS MARKET 2050

50 years ago, in the early 2000s, the farmers market began to see resurgence. And no wonder! The suburban experience and the shopping mall were beginning to be understood as a colossal planning mistake. The theories of urbanist, Jane Jacobs, were finally beginning to be taken seriously, with walkable communities springing up everywhere.

The decisive moment came when then-Mayor and high school football coach, Rob Ford, was tackled in playful exuberance by his players after winning the provincial high school championship,  and suffered a brutal concussion, rendering him coma-bound for months. The city held its breath in fear, terrified of losing their feisty and charismatic leader but when he recovered, something profound had changed.

Mayor Ford’s first press conference was a spectacular mea culpa in which he confessed to engineering the budget crisis, wept openly, tears and mucous streaming down his face and committed to make the city a stronger, safer, more equitable and entirely green zone. Money flooded into public transit; Transit City was back on the table; libraries sprang up in every Tim Horton’s, in what is now regarded as the most revolutionary public-private partnership on earth; the Gardiner expressway was converted into the Gardiner Garden of the Multitude; and the suburbs were rapidly transformed into walkable, bikeable oases of greenery. With the power of eminent domain, Ford commandeered the malls, installing day care facilities where Walmarts used to reign, and applied the Dufferin Grove Park Model (DGPM) across the administration of all parks in the GTA.  As you know, the DGPM is now the civic standard for public park use around the world and has been transplanted to the flowering colonies on Mars.

But most importantly, on that day in 2012, with the bandages still on Mayor Ford’s head, he squinted at the teleprompter, hoisted his arms into the air and shouted those four fateful words heard around the world, triggering a revolution in protein production, shrinking the carbon footprint of his favourite bacon double cheese burger and decisively turning the tide on escalating environmental destruction.  So familiar are these word that they truly need no repeating, but we’ll repeat them anyway, just in case you were born in 2049. Mayor Ford raised his meaty fists into the smoggy atmosphere and hollered: LET THEM EAT BUGS!

The story of what followed is well known to us now, but we can never celebrate our heroes too much. Mayor Ford called together an elite team consisting of architect Kubo Dzamba, the mastermind behind 3MF or Third Millennial Farming, a revolutionary system for capturing sunlight, feeding it to algae, feeding the algae to bugs and making burgers with the bugs; Nathan Isberg, culinary visionary and owner of the world-renowned Atlantic Restaurant at Dundas and Brock, the genius tasked with making bugs delicious, Dr. Hala Chaoui the Lebanese-born agricultural engineer, famous for making worms the common household pet they are today, working happily for humans, producing nutritious fertilizer for all of our urban crops; Mae Shaban, the architect known then for installing Algae Chandeliers in the home of Toronto’s most radiant adopted son, Richard Florida; and art supastah Dean Baldwin, the mad chemist of form, there in his full glory, determined to make sure everyone was drunk and inspired.  With performance company Mammalian Diving Reflex getting everyone coffee and the Justina M. Barnicke supplying the space, the team hunkered down and produced the vision for the future that we inhabit today.

We’ve all seen and will forever remember the joyous images that were produced at the project’s inauguration: the city’s first public wedding, occupying the whole of the Toronto Islands, a chitinous feast of epic proportions to celebrate the nuptials of Rob’s brother Doug to local literary luminary Margaret Atwood. The guests hungrily dove into the grub pizza, Mealworm Fried Rice, Locust Stew and Butterfly Wing Brulee. Finally, North America had caught up with many other parts of the world, which had been eating the crunchy critters for years.

Today you wander our Farmers Market 2050 and nothing strikes you as odd; we’re offering crickets fed on fragrant herbs, grown in rich and nutritious vermicastings and glitteringly green algae, organic produce that is grown in all school yards by teams of happy child farmers relieved to be unchained from their desks and small shrink-wrapped packets of beef at exhorbitant prices, reflecting their true cost to the world.

It’s a wonderful and totally sustainable world and, to you, this is simply how it is; it’s so obvious and, though it’s important to remember our history lest we repeat our mistakes, there’s something reassuring in the fact that  today our Farmers Market 2050, with it’s seamless incorporation of creeping livestock, looks utterly ordinary. It’s just another day in Fordonto.

SMALL PRAIRIE ARTISANAL MICROFARMS

Small Prairie Artisanal Microfarms – see the brochure

WELCOME to our farm. We are a small family farm located in the heart of Toronto. We are dedicated to ecologically and ethically sound farming practices. Our crickets are raised their entire lives on our farm grazing only the most luscious pastures and eating the highest quality herbs.

Our 100% herb-fed crickets taste great and offer the same advantages over meat as mass produced crickets or nutrient gels.

On our farm we use:

• No hormones
• No antibiotics
• No pesticides or herbicides

We invite you to visit our farm to learn more about sustainable, alternative and local food production.

Visit us every Saturday from 8am to 1pm at the New Toronto Center Market

Ask about our other products such as live crickets and farms for raising your own, liquid nitrogen euthenizers,  cricket flour additive and cricket tea.

STRAIGHT FROM THE SOURCE

Today more than ever, the source of your food matters. Gone are the days when you could trust your neighborhood butcher or grocer to provide your family with wholesome, fresh food free from unnatural – and dangerous – hormones, antibiotics, pesticides, and herbicides.

Sadly, Big Agriculture and mega-food corporations have largely taken over smaller, family-run operations. We’ve lost the caring connection of those businesses to an unprecedented, almost furious quest putting profit before food quality and even safety.

Their perceived need for cheap, mass produced, convenient food products has unfortunately led to a nutritional deficiency epidemic. As a result, Americans live in a land of plenty, but the bounty no longer provides proper nutrition.

Lucky for us, some of those smaller, caring family-run businesses still exist. And along with them, sources of food as pure as days past and healthier than ever. Untainted by growth hormones and antibiotics, animals are free to roam in pastures free from pesticides and synthetic fertilizers. Perhaps most importantly, these animals are free to eat the food nature intended.

SMALL LIVESTOCK FOR A SMALL WORLD

Small Prairie understands the importance of food in the nourishment of body and soul. Small Pririe is committed to produce the tastiest, finest quality, and nutritious crickets in an ethical and honest manner. We take care to ensure humane treatment of our animals and adherence to ecological friendly methods of raising them. It is these practices and environmental standards that earn us the nickname: “The Cricket Spa”.

Before the rise of industrial farming, crickets were routinely grazed in pastures, and therefore they were grass-fed. Industrial farming introduced algae into the picture, as well as antibiotics and added hormones, which were designed to make producing beef faster and cheaper. Unfortunately, most Americans began to get used to beef that is spirulina-finished and raised on farms that use pesticides and synthetic fertilizers.

Our farmers and ranchers treat their animals humanely, allowing them to graze freely. Organic grass-fed beef is better for us, and better for our planet. When compared to grain-fed livestock, herb-fed crickets are among the healthiest of protein sources on the planet, with more “good” fat and less calories.

ARE NATURALLY RAISED CRICKETS AS NUTRITIOUS AS STANDARD MICRO LIVESTOCK?

Yes. As with all crickets, the nutritional value is equal to or above that of traditional livestock like beef, or mass-produced micro livestock while requiring a fraction of the resources.  This means that our crickets provide all of the health benefits of conventional crickets, but with more flavor, and the assurance that your food has been cared for and raised with care.

We don’t rely on government-corporation sponsorship, meaning that the processes we use are chosen for their efficacy, not just for efficiency.

Since the UN mandate on food security recommended insects as a primary source of protein in 2032, we have been preserving traditional cricket rearing methods in order to provide superior nutrition and flavor.

3MF: THIRD MILLENIUM FARMING

3MF: Third Millenium Farming – see the brochure

   

FOODPRINT is the amount of land necessary to grow all of the food required to feed one person, for one year.

This map shows the GLOBAL FOODPRINT, where the intensity of red is proportional the foodprint in that region.

When judged for its sustenance, MEAT, has the largest foodprint out of all the food groups.

In fact, if everyone on Earth became a vegetarian we would be able to produce more than enough food at our current levels, than would be needed in 2050, when the World’s population is expected to peak at 9 billion people.

Historically, the consumption of meat has been linked with WEALTH. As the developing world catches up, and will possibly surpass, the wealthiest nations, their food consumption habits its are expected to increase proportionally.

Every year the World’s surplus in food production gets smaller, and every year the World’s food producing lands expand by less, as we run out of space. As we face the specter of a CHANGING CLIMATE how will we plan to overcome potential disasters that could significantly harm our food production yields?

In an age where the World’s population is expected to grow by about 50%, and the average person’s food consumption is expected to increase by about 50%, and as our ability to expand our food producing lands and sustain our food producing yields diminishes, HOW WILL WE FEED EVERYONE WHEN THE TIME COMES?

3MF hinges upon the assumption that future chefs and culinary experts will demonstrate creativity and innovation in using micro-livestock to whip out things from oozes to mousses, right down to a insect-protein cookie which will feed a hungry child for a day.

One promising method for turning insects into readily edible food is to make flour out of them – by simply flash-baking and then pulverizing the micro-livestock into a powder. This product would be similar in nutritive value to the protein powder currently used in energy/body-building drinks, except 3MF protein is grown on a fraction of the foodprint of current protein.

3MF seeks to both, decrease the size of our foodprint and produce cheaper food, and to do it:

1. Organically, 2. Ethically, and 3. Locally.

3MF operations would be totally organic – feeding off of the organic and semi-organic wastes produced in every city. The farming of micro-crops, such as algae, would require large inputs of CO2, of which we have no shortage of to- day, and nutrients like nitrogen and phosphor, the exact same stuff we try to filter out of our waste water before returning it to lakes and rivers. These micro-crops produce plant biomass that is semi-edible for humans, but more importantly, which can be fed to insects that are edible to humans. Micro-livestock in turn, are much more efficient at producing protein than livestock on account of being cold blooded.

1. Micro-livestock farming operations would require completely controlled environments in order to create the exact conditions necessary to enable the explosive growth rates that in- sects are capable of – no fertilizers, pesticides or growth hormones!

2. Due to the fact that micro-livestock are cold blooded, euthanizing/harvesting them can be as simple and humane as lowering their temperature to the point that they fall asleep and pass away.

3. 3MF would change the tectonics of traditional farming, and move operations into cities. The availability of infrastructure in cities, and the tectonics of our built environment provide precisely the type of conditions necessary for grafting on the photo-bio reactors (used to grow micro-algae and seaweed) and insect incubation chambers (requiring 24/7 access to heat, light and nutrients) that 3MF would utilize.

What if we could reduce our foodprint? And what if we could bring farming into our cities? And what if we could make our cities more sustainable? Maybe the antagonism between city and agriculture, core and periphery, would fade away, allowing for one to be grafted onto the other, while simultaneously allowing nature to creep back into our metropolises and daily lives. Farmers might return to the city transformed – a mix between engineer, biologist, botanist and scientist – managing high-tech farms integrated into our buildings’ systems and city infrastructure.

 

It is anticipated that in 2050 the world’s population will exceed 9 billion people; the expansion of the world’s food production footprint that is expected to accompany this population increase may exceed the tolerances of our planet’s eco- systems, activating unknown tipping points, and result in extreme food shortages. This project proposes a vision for agriculture – Third Millennium Farming (3MF). The aim is to harness the remarkable abilities of micro-organisms (algae and phytoplankton) and micro-livestock (insects) to rapidly reproduce, for the purpose of food production. An examination and quantification of 3MF food production strategies reveals that more food could be produced, on a smaller footprint than current crop farming and livestock rearing methods are capable of. Additionally, an analysis of micro-organism and micro-livestock farming reveals that these farming operations could be fed with certain types of city bio-wastes – creating a new, sustainable, type of food chain with an extremely small footprint-to-food-yield ratio.

URBAN FARMS ORGANIC

Visit the website here: http://www.urbanfarmsorganic.com/

No Odor Organic Fertilizer

A short few decades ago cities exported waste and imported their food from distant farms, and consumed fossil fuels on both counts. Today cities instantly process their food waste into a clean fertilizer, used to grow food in indoor micro-farms. Make it easier to feed your garbage to your micro farm with the NOOF. NOOF, no odor organic fertilizer, was first developed in 2011 by UFO, Inc. when it used to turn food waste to clean safe organic fertilizer in one week. That was a record for the time, compared to the lengthy methods of breaking down organic waste of the 10’s. It has been continuously developed since, using published science on how earthworms breakdown waste, to turn your garbage into fertilizer with the push of a button! Aren’t you glad you live in 2050? Visit UFO’s vintage 2011 website at www.urbanfarmsorganic.com to experience how the NOOF was developed.

FRINTER – SPIRULINA and COMPOSITE FOOD INK

Frinter – see the brochure

TURN THIS… 

INTO THIS !  

Since 2040, Frinter has been drawing on naturally sourced green foods to provide you with  traditional flavors that give your food prints authenticity and  nutrition.  All of our products use small batch spiruliana or algae combined with the essential oils and phenols of foods your parents enjoyed.  Our gels help you recreate the  meals that keep tradition alive.

Most food printers rely on synthetically produced compounds while we at Frinter take pride in using living foods to provide the essential nutrients the body needs, while preserving our ties to the natural world.

The cost of growing your own heirloom vegetables necessarily means that most of us can only enjoy these rarely, if at all.  With our gels, there is no reason that we can’t achieve the same pleasures of the table every day.

Combining the versatility of your table-top printer and our products means that you can do away with the cost and hastle of preparing your favorite foods while turning your meals into special occasions. Because our production is by hand in small batches, the natural variances found in traditional foods are maintained, giving the meal an authentic feel.

Comparison of costs between Frinter products and conventional foods:

julienne of black carrot:

Traditional- 78 *  per carrot, and 10 minutes preperation with 20% compost

Frinter- 28* per serving, no waste

Tomaato salad

Mixed heirloom tomatoes- 100* for three, Genovese basil- 15* per bunch

Frinter- 15* per serving