Food network : design for a new territorial logic

Abstract

Food shapes territory. While only 3% of the world's surface is occupied by cities, 38 % is used for agriculture. Most of this land is used to harvest the 7,605 tons of food that are produced per minute worldwide. Of this, almost one third will be wasted, while only two thirds will be consumed, most probably, miles away from its origin. Although humans have historically eaten food coming from lands far away, the size of the world's current population makes the scale of the logistical endeavor astronomical. As a consequence of this, some countries are transformed into global hinterlands, dedicating huge percentages of their land to produce what other countries are demanding for their consumption. But how do these global hinterlands work? The thesis studies food production and its rural urbanity in the Argentina's Pampas, an area which was once considered the world's granary and is still capable of feeding a population ten times the country's current size. Extremely flat, with mild weather, and fertile soil, the pampean region was the perfect place to fulfill the role of an agricultural hinterland at a global scale. The resources were always so vast for its own small population that the territory was shaped focusing on the external market without considering the internal needs. Crops in productive regions were chosen to please stronger economies in different corners of the world, making whatever is more demanded in the global market the one and only crop for that moment, forgetting that this monoculture strategy cannot feed Argentineans. In the selected site, a pre-existing grid of 30 towns is now "floating" in a "sea of soy production", while they are forced to "import" the food they consume from other regions of the country. The thesis creates a set of strips that host the production of the food required to feed the area while, at the same time, connect the towns, enabling them to work as a network. When the strips approach the towns, they open up possibilities to intervene in their urban structure, creating new ways of inhabiting rurality.