How to turn unused land into an urban farm? Ask The Foodprint Lab! Or use the land sharing platform Grow Here. Specialised in bringing urban agriculture into cities, this company – and the people behind it – work hard to make cities greener and healthier. And we spoke with none other but its co-founder…
The Foodprint Lab is “Sweden’s only architecture office specialised in Food System Design.” We spoke with Jonathan Naraine, one of the founders of the company, about their work, their goals, and the impact the Lab has had so far on numerous communities, landlords, and cities.
What Is The Foodprint Lab?
“We are a couple of architects and planners on a mission to create more local, resilient, regenerative food systems.”
The Foodprint Lab opens up the possibility of having more insight into where food comes from. It enables a direct connection with the farmer, and thus provides the “ability to co-create your local food system” through food sovereignty. In simple language, The Foodprint Lab connects local farmers with volunteers, consults landlords on turning unused land into urban farms, gardens, or parks, and helps spread awareness of the importance of local-grown food. “Having influence over your local food system is an important part of our aim from the beginning,” says Jonathan.
“We use the term ‘food system designers’ to describe what we do. And it means that we are designing food systems,” but not necessarily on a global scale – it’s mostly and foremost about bringing people together through food.
“It’s a collaborative approach where we believe that anyone who eats food can actually be a food system designer – but architects and planners maybe have to take a leading role in actually acknowledging their potential of impacting the food system and co-creating it with the inhabitants.”
Different paths led team members to The Foodprint Lab; for Jonathan, it was the “interest in food and sustainability issues related to food.” His colleagues, Christina Ramos Cáceres and Victoria Bengtsson, were interested more in climate adaptation and managing land and other resources in the city – which ties in perfectly with food production and urban farming “in terms of making the land and cities more resilient to more extreme weather.”
“We started out with food and farming as a way to solve many of the sustainability challenges we face, especially ecological issues like climate and biodiversity, but also because local and urban farming can be a way to bridge some social challenges that we’re facing,” explains Jonathan, speaking of the team’s vision upon officially establishing The Foodprint Lab in 2016.
Work & Projects
The team has created a great many projects through designing and co-creating various urban farms, pop-up parks, and similar projects. Moreover, the overall success of their work inspired them to create another purposeful project in 2016, in collaboration with the City of Gothenburg: Grow Here.
Grow Here is a platform for connecting farmland owners and people interested in growing food or gardening. It offers a space for landowners to share their land, and for those with green fingers to find land and farmers to work with. The platform was originally named Grow Gothenburg and it was launched locally in 2017, but in 2020 it transitioned into an international platform, renamed, and is now a valuable platform for farm and gardening communities worldwide. It’s a similar idea to Community Gardens Australia – however, Grow Here “maps not just existing community gardens, but a variety of urban and rural farms,” and shares any potential farmland.
“Setting high goals is a really good way to motivate and bring about a big change, because I think that these types of things need to scale up more exponentially in order to solve some of the major challenges that we are up against,” comments Jonathan.
Getting the Urban Farm: From Idea to Implementation
What does the process of turning brown corners into green ones look like?
First things first, once the client reaches out to The Foodprint Lab, it’s most important to the team to fully understand the needs of the community they would work with.
Next is a site study, analysing what kind of farming is suitable for the land, what are the weather conditions, what are the social aspects of the site, if it is accessible, etc. With this research, they can better understand the needs of people and their objectives for the future of that particular land.
Following this is a collaborative design process – engaging people in the design and creation of what The Foodprint Lab is doing. This is achieved with different types of workshops. “When it comes to urban farming, it’s even more important to involve people who will farm there,” says Jonathan, “the website Grow Here is a really good tool to reach those people.”
In many of their projects in fact, the team has worked both parallel as consultants and as head-hunters for people who will actually farm on the land.
“The idea is to know that you have a group that can take care of this farm.” it is important to The Foodprint Lab to engage “future farmers in the very early stage” to ensure project investments from landowners, municipalities, and others don’t go to waste due to no one taking care of the land in the years that follow.
Growing and Learning
When it comes to the company’s various successes, for Jonathan it’s (modestly) the very existence of The Foodprint Lab that he cites as the highlight.
It’s the creation of “a new model that has not been so much tested before, in terms of establishing partnerships with property owners, both in the public and private sector,” and showing the many benefits that projects around urban farming bring.
As a platform that helps property owners and potential farmers “get closer to their dream of creating a green meeting place and growing their own food,” The Foodprint Lab serves as a facilitator to make sure the farms have a long-term maintenance solution and are able to meet the needs of the landowners. These are, to Jonathan, all successes in their own right.
“We’re now seeing that the idea is being scaled up in other cities,” he proudly remarks, adding that this is a “big accomplishment, and ultimately aligns with what we want to be able to do.” The point is not to create a business monopoly, but to encourage others to do the same: to “facilitate for this to spread far and wide, and thus increase ecosystem services, give access to healthy food, social meeting places and give people the influence to make their local area better.”
“It’s about sharing the knowledge that we have gained during these years. We can advance, create the changes faster than we would have if we would have tried it all alone.”
When pressed on the things he would have changed given an opportunity to start again, Jonathan relishes in past errors: “I’m very happy for the mistakes we have done.” Without them the team wouldn’t have gained such valuable lessons. Jonathan is also grateful for not having to go through it alone, for having support from his co-workers.
Inspiration for Others
“This whole idea of localising food production in a community can be applied to both urban and rural communities,” points out Jonathan. It’s a form of regenerative agriculture, as it can revive both communities and soils by building healthy ecosystems and simultaneously focusing on the communities of people.
“Farming shouldn’t be at the bottom of the list of potential land use,” Jonathan feels strongly. The issue, too, is with existing farms, gardens, even big allotment areas that are removed just to be replaced with more buildings. This is contrary to the importance of increasing the number of green and productive meeting spaces in cities, to make cities more resilient.
Advice for CityChangers
Start small. Start where you are, “even the smallest things can have very big impacts.” Have the courage to simply do it.
For Jonathan and his team, The Foodprint Lab was a fight – and it still is. They gave themselves a year to try and test it out; if it wouldn’t have worked, they would have walked away. That was seven years ago. Since they were established, opportunity after opportunity presented themselves and though “it’s still an uphill battle, working in a niche that is not developed,” the team is aware of the importance of their work: “You get so much meaningful feedback from people that really value your work that it’s all worth it.”
However, an entrepreneur should also be realistic: understand your clients. “That’s where we started, and without it, we would have just been dreamers trying to change the world, but not really able to sell anything.” Find out who it is you’re working with and how you can do it to also sustain your business, advises Jonathan.
The Foodprint Lab in a Flash
For anyone wanting to change their unused land and create something meaningful, green, and a place for people, The Foodprint Lab is a company to go to. They advise, design, connect, and implement urban farms, pop-up parks, gardens, etc. And by changing the plots, they’re creating a social place for the community, while simultaneously allocating space for healthy food production, raising awareness of what it means for the city to have green nooks, and all the while improving the overall feel of the municipality.
“We’re inviting other consultants to become local facilitators for local farming, just like we are. This way they can use the Grow Here platform and spread the model of land-sharing in their local city or region,” adds Jonathan in conclusion. And if you want to either transform your piece of land into an urban farm, or want to implement more green areas in your city, you can read more and contact The Foodprint Lab and the Grow Here team via this link.
