The love food project is a campain dedicated to spread awareness to reach smart management of food in cities
With a predicted 9 billion people by 2050, agricultural production will have to increase to meet new demands, for food, feed and fuel.
Agriculture must not only meet demands but also minimize its environmental footprint and creating sustainable livelihoods for farmers and others along the supply chain.
Not only we have a problem with food production but also with food waste which is mostly due to the distance between the producer and the consumer. A big part of our food is lost in transport and while one third of the food worldwide goes to waste, there are 1 billion people suffering from hunger on earth. This fact indicates lack of management in our food system.
A personal experience has helped us understand better the food system in Catalonia.
The Valldaura eggs (vdx) project consists in using the available land next to the Valldaura house to raise chickens for egg farming.
So far, 16 chickens are being raised in a coop where they also have a large land nearby to walk around making it a level 0 farm (organic egg production).
This project will collaborate with IAAC and fablab barcelona in order to close the loop of production/ consumption of the eggs.
We have found the existing system’s weaknesses and tried to solve those problems using the efficient ways possible.
The food for the chickens will be collected from IAAC’s waste where we will add a new sorting layer for dry food and bread that will be collected in a net and transported to Valldaura.
We will use the many existing flows of circulation between Valldaura and IAAC to transport the eggs and the dry food for the chickens. Volunteers will be rewarded with free eggs from VDX.
The collaboration with the fablab can help us personalize durable designed packages for students that could be reused every time they buy from VDX. A possible material use for the packages is an actual project done by MAA students: Christopher Wong, Noor El-Gewely and Lili Tayefi. Their project is about combining food waste to obtain a strong material that could be used for our packages.
The material composition is : 240 ml of water + 12 g vinegar + 48 g of gelatin + 12 g glycerin + egg shells.
We were able to find a no-tech cooling system that will be fabricated with the help of the fablab and simply made out of clay and wet sand that will only require watering the sand every now and then for the eggs to be kept cold.
Some preliminary experience have helped know of the interest of students and faculty members into our organic eggs. As this chart shows, some customers have bought again eggs on the second sale and others have bought after hearing of the good taste and quality of the product.
Student : Sherine Yehia Zein
Collaborated with Martin Gutmann
Instructors: Tomas Diez, Mathilde Marengo