2021 proved one other busy yr for the Farm City crew; we labored on a variety of tasks with companions as numerous because the Welsh Authorities, RIBA and group teams throughout Birkenhead. Right here’s a taster – pun meant – of a number of the issues we labored on.

Crop Cycle

The Welsh Authorities’s Crop Cycle undertaking introduced collectively group organisations throughout Wales and organisations working with Managed Surroundings Agriculture (CEA). 

Farm City labored alongside LettUs Develop, Digital Farming and GrowStack, connecting after the primary COVID lockdown to develop new relationships, construct networks and share concepts. We put in Edible Partitions in communities throughout Wales, permitting us to develop our method to managing our applied sciences and sharing that data, constructing a person information to coach native employees, make the Edible Wall extra accessible and empowering companions to take management of the programs.

 We additionally visited major colleges native to our companions to ship aquaponics workshops. We educated our companions to ship the workshop, rising the variety of younger individuals who can find out about sustainable meals options by way of hands-on expertise of constructing their very own Produce Pod.

We labored with group organisations throughout the nation, together with Inexperienced Meadow Group Farm in Cwmbran, Welcome to our Woods in Treherbert, Xplore! Science Discovery Centre in Wrexham, Domesticate and the Neath Port Talbot Faculty’s Group Rising House in Newton.

Group Edible Partitions: Make Hamilton

Residents from throughout Birkenhead constructed and operated one in all Farm City’s revolutionary hydroponic Edible Wall programs at Make Hamilton. Contributors took the lead – guided by our crew – to construct expertise, whereas rising their very own meals and experiment with hydroponics. It additionally gave them the chance to find out about world meals programs – and make more healthy and extra sustainable meals decisions. 

Funded by Liverpool Metropolis Area’s Group Surroundings Fund, the Group Edible Partitions had quite a few optimistic impacts, together with:

• Friendships that strengthen group connections, constructing relationships for folks by way of shared experiences and pursuits.

• Studying about meals rising and the programs led to behavior change. Contributors had been extra aware about what they had been consuming, the place it got here from, and its environmental impacts.

• New expertise meant that individuals had been capable of develop meals at house, take over the upkeep of the Edible Wall, and acquire transferable technical and crew working expertise.

We delivered Group Edible Partitions in partnership with Make CIC, the nice folks of Birkenhead and LCR’s Group Surroundings Fund.

The Heath – promo video 

We started work with SOG, proprietor of Runcorn’s The Heath Enterprise Park (you may learn the case research right here). A RIBA name for designs for the undertaking noticed an attention grabbing entry function a vertical farm at its centre and Paul Myers, Farm City’s managing director, was introduced in as a guide, to advise on making a vertical farm for the event. 

Because of the collaboration, a Greens for Good-serviced Edible Wall has been put in within the cafeteria, giving customers of the park entry to recent greens each day. The Heath shares its location with the North West Hydrogen Alliance, which suggests we’ve been capable of conduct a pilot undertaking to check powering a vertical farm utilizing electrical energy from hydrogen gas cells, making this power-intensive course of carbon impartial. These new developments are extremely thrilling, providing enormous potential for brand spanking new applied sciences and methods of dwelling to be examined. A mini-city, with a vertical farm at its coronary heart, offers us a spot to check the scalability of those applied sciences to complete cities, placing vertical farms on the coronary heart of day by day city life. 

Key assist has been provided by Liverpool Metropolis Area Mixed Authority: Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram says the undertaking ‘should occur’.

Sustainable Steps

We developed and designed a web based interactive platform for Liverpool John Moores College. Sustainable Steps will give learners entry to information that’s key to creating efficient change. This assortment of mini programs offers an accessible introduction to the science of local weather change, the underlying causes and its results on the pure world and our private wellbeing. It contains actionable parts of environmental science and sustainability that each single one in all us can make use of.  

Future Meals Problem 

Our aquaponics expertise noticed us launch a brand new competitors for varsity college students in autumn 2021.

Future Meals Problem is an extra-curricular programme for 12 months 9 secondary college pupils in Liverpool Metropolis Area, funded by the Royal Academy of Engineers (RAE), that sees us working in partnership with College of Liverpool’s College of Engineering. 

Groups of between 12 and 15 younger folks have been challenged to develop a enterprise concept and prototype system to deliver aquaponic meals rising into their local people. Every college has been paired with knowledgeable engineer and a scholar engineer from the college who will mentor and encourage the younger folks concerned all through the problem. 

Future Meals Heroes

We additionally put collectively Future Meals Heroes for 12 months 5 pupils throughout Liverpool, serving to them discover zero-waste meals and a round financial system. 

We labored in partnership with Merseyside Waste and Recycling Authority and Patagonia to see every college buddied with a scholar mentor. The mentors come from a gaggle of younger individuals who’re captivated with sustainability and community-building, who will assist lecturers and pupils to develop undertaking concepts to deliver sustainable meals rising into their very own communities.