A Balanced Farm Fusion Ecosystem Checklist
A strong farm fusion product embraces all of these as best you can. How can you best optimize for each of these? If you’ve got an idea to work with, write each heading down and answer for yourself.
Hyperlocal Food Miles
The realities are that we will always need some products from other parts of the planet. Spices, coffee and other specialities have been shipped across the seas for thousands of years. It’s just gotten out of hand, so we need to scale it waaaaaaay back- and that starts with us.
Renewable/Regenerative Agriculture
Putting homegrown cilantro on a taco that has the rest of it’s ingredients from monoculture and factory farms isn’t actually doing much good. If your product or service can’t price in the use of products from local, renewable or regenerative sources, you’ve got to keep digging.
Embraces Seasonality
Building your products and systems around maximizing your bounty during the most productive months is critical. That said (and to the people growing completely indoors), know that people still love the taste of the seasons as they change.
How can your product evolve over the course of the year to remain relevant and fresh in the minds of the market?
Zero Waste
Biodegradable or compostable products are a step in the right direction, but it isn’t enough. Consider how a cast iron pan can be used to make millions of meals over its lifetime. If we start from the ideal, we can think about how we can apply this mindset to our packaging too.
What kind of exchange model can you set up?