How Might We Build A Food System That Is Healthy For People & The Planet?

Sudhanshu Sarronwala: With the current resource infrastructure that's needed for agriculture and farming to feed 7 billion people by 2050, you need just about 2 planets. That's the first thing. The equation between resource requirement and food output is mismatched in terms of what is actually available. That's the first thing.

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Detria Williamson: We live and work in a world of interlocking systems where many of the problems we face are dynamic, multifaceted, and inherently human. We believe that design thinking can help solve these problems to provide answers, but big answers can only be found by asking big questions. Welcome to The Big Question: an IDEO Podcast. I'm your host, Detria Williamson.

This is Detria Williamson, your host of IDEO's The Big Question. I am super excited in this episode today because we are joined by Sudhanshu Sarronwala and Axel Unger. We are here to unpack the question around how might we build a scalable food system for urban areas that's healthy for people and our planet. I'm so excited to welcome you both. Sudhanshu, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Sudhanshu: Sure. Thank you, Detria. Great to be here. You can call me Suds. People have found that to be a bit easier than my long name, but I'll leave that to you. I currently work as the chief impact officer at INFARM, which is a vertical farming company headquartered out of Germany, though I am based in Geneva. That's where I operate from. I'm a Singaporean of Indian origin, so I have a little bit of a world citizenship built into me. I've been living in Switzerland for the past 12 years, having lived in Singapore before this for about 15 years, and around the world in Hong Kong and India, of course, before that. That's me in a nutshell.

Detria: Well, I'm really looking forward to talking more about your role and your fantastic journey. Axel, tell us a little bit about you and your role at IDEO.

Axel Unger: I'm Axel, and just like Suds, I'm a bit of an international person. I'm half-Austrian and half-Swedish. I've worked and lived in many parts of the world, different parts of Europe, also the US. I'm a partner at IDEO. During my time at IDEO and in working for a lot of different organizations, I've been very fortunate to have designed and launched many new and innovative products and services and businesses for many of the world's leading companies and brands.

Recently, I think some years back already now as we're living in very volatile and uncertain times and the world has just become very complex with a lot of big questions and challenges, my focus has really shifted from designing and launching these new products and services for my clients to helping clients rebuild these capabilities and cultures for themselves that enable them to essentially do what we do. My job has gone from essentially giving our clients to fish to teaching them how to fish.

Detria: I like that. I really like that. I want to hear more about, actually, how INFARM and IDEO came together. Just before that, Suds, can you explain to our listeners, what is vertical farming?

Sudhanshu: Vertical farming is, let's put it like this, you're normally used to seeing fields, which are for agriculture or farming. Then there was the next generation of that which was the greenhouse, which was concentrated but still very much in a horizontal fashion under a cover. Vertical farming is the vertical version of that. You've got farms, which are stacked one on top of the other but in a completely enclosed arena, which is what we call "controlled-environment agriculture."

Unlike a greenhouse, it does not take natural light. The lighting is provided by LED lighting and it uses just a fraction of water and land compared to any other form of farming, agriculture, or controlled-environment agriculture. This is now something that has really taken off in the last 10 years. The main benefit is that it allows you to actually grow close to cities, close to or within the cities.

That is one of the core purposes behind the founding of INFARM, is how do you grow food where you are, where people are rather than have to ferry it across thousands of kilometers, which adds to a whole lot of complexities, which we'll talk about. This is really, how do you get efficiency, how do you get biodiversity impact, and how do you get food grown close to the people? How do you grow food for the benefit of people and the planet? That's vertical farming.

Detria: Suds, thank you. That's fascinating. I'm really looking forward to getting deeper into that. Axel, how did INFARM and IDEO actually come together? INFARM has such a fabulous product. Its mission, its purpose, it's so clear and needed in the world today. How did IDEO and INFARM come together?

Axel: That's actually really funny. About five years ago or so, a team of us from IDEO were working in Berlin for Zalando and we have this long relationship with them. We just, by accident, came across Erez and Guy and Osnat. At the time, INFARM was a very small, little startup in a courtyard in an old building in Berlin. When you enter their space, it was just crazy. It was basically entering a jungle. There were plants everywhere, including the walls and everything like that. Right away, we were not just struck by the space and the technology and all of that, but like something you mentioned, the bold ambition and the potential that we could see and also just the passion and energy from the team itself.

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Axel: We were very excited. We decided to essentially work together and co-create an initial vision and ambition of what INFARM could be and to make that a bit more tangible and integrated. We worked on everything from what is the value proposition, what's the purpose, the vision, the business model, all the way to what our initial, maybe products and services and digital touchpoints and the brand for this new vertical farming offer and the rest is history. We've been super delighted to have stayed in touch since then, and also especially delighted just by the growth and the success and that others have also come to see the real potential of INFARM.

Detria: Suds, you have quite a coveted background and you're actually in this new role, chief impact officer. Can you tell us a little bit about your role, the importance of your role, and really the importance and significance of having a design partner in today's time?

Sudhanshu: The chief impact officer, which is a title or a role, which is growing in need more than popularity, and that's really quite an important factor. The impact titles, so to speak, encompasses, for us at least, and there could be variations of it out in the marketplace, but it encompasses sustainability, partnerships, and primarily, I would say non-commercial partnerships, and there's a role for that and I'll explain it as we go along, and communications.

You're looking at what is the overall impact the business can have internally in terms of the people that work with you, in terms of your partners and suppliers that you work with, and then in the external world as to what is the impact that you can bring to the larger world. Let say the INFARM objective here is to help create a new food system. We are talking about, how do you change fundamentals in the food value chain that exist?

This is also where the design thinking and the design partner comes in because you're looking at, how do you communicate about food? How do you market this food? How do you deliver the food? How do you grow the food? All of this is new and it's all done in a manner that's not been done before. Therefore, the design partner becomes quite important. Then, of course, all of the other non-commercial partners like I mentioned becoming really important in terms of taking the narrative out there, bringing in other people to create the necessary ecosystem.

Any business, any industry needs an ecosystem and building that through the partnerships becomes really important and really critical. That's really what I'm doing here at INFARM with my role in impact, is ensuring that sustainability is not just built-in but deeply embedded into the DNA of the organization, that it's future-proof, that we're building the ecosystem, both from within and without. We are being able to communicate all of this in a narrative that appeals to partners and appeals to consumers, who ultimately are going to decide how the take-up of this concept is going to be and how important this is going to be.

Detria: Suds, as I mentioned before, you have quite a coveted and fascinating background. In some way, this must-have contributed to this role that you have as chief impact officer for INFARM. Can you tell us a little bit about how your journey has contributed to you being in this role?

Sudhanshu: An important part of my trajectory as it were has been about working with sunrise industries or greenfield industries or new industries. It goes back about 30 years really when I started working in what was then the cable and satellite television revolution. Nobody watches that anymore. Everybody's on streaming services, but that's how old I am. It was really the introduction of satellite television into Asia.

Therefore, the entire system of battling with the terrestrial, incumbent television stations, mostly government-owned in every country, was the norm at that point. I was fortunate to be able to work in that industry right from its birth to the point where it became a solid industry with hundreds of millions of viewers, billions of dollars in revenue, et cetera. I moved from there into the digital music industry, and I was there at the very dawn of it, based out of Singapore and Hong Kong operating the Asia Pacific.

We were basically working on the format shift from the CD to a digital format. Again, it was rewriting the rules, rewriting how licensing is done, rewriting how the technology is enabling the shift to take place. There was a whole lot of change to happen, not just on the legal and the technical side but also on the consumer consumption side as to how were people going to buy or rent music. Renting music was a very rare concept in those days.

Today, nobody thinks about it when you switch on to your Spotify or another streaming service for music. We went through that and that was a solid decade of that. Then I worked with WWF in the non-profit space, but a big part of my work there was the creation of something called the open-source movement. I worked on a prompt Earth Hour, which is the lights-out campaign that happens every year around the world where consumers, societies switches off their lights for an hour in support of changes for climate change. That was my understanding and the birth in many ways of an open-source movement.

Today, you see open-source being MAGA. You look at things like Black Lives Matter. That's a brilliant open-source movement to address racial injustice. You talk about things like anonymous, et cetera. Again, in all of these industries, it's been about coming in very early, doing design thinking at multiple levels, and helping it create or helping to be part of that team or movement that creates a new industry. I put vertical farming very much in that even though vertical farming has been around for a few years. This is the moment when it's really moving into the commercial space and into the consumer mind space at a very different rate.

I'm very privileged to be part of that journey because I get to work on yet another industry, but with a difference because this is something that is fundamental to how are we going to feed 7 billion people in cities by 2050 when the current farming methods means that we require another planet, which we don't have. How are you going to create efficiencies that allow for that to happen? This is one of those solutions. Bringing my learnings from working in new sunrise breakthrough industries to vertical farming here at INFARM is what I would like to say a red thread.

Detria: Suds, what you've just shared is so important and it really demonstrates to our listeners the criticality of your role as chief impact officer. Axel, have you found that there are more clients with this role now in the industry? Does this give you hope in terms of your role at IDEO?

Axel: Yes, absolutely. I think what Suds was talking about there and I think what a big advantage almost of INFARM is that they were really born as a next-generation organization, which doesn't just measure and look at and pursue the business bottom line and the business impact, but also the societal and the planet impact. That's something we're seeing actually more and more and more companies, even legacy companies, starting to pursue and to start measuring that and seeing, are we actually becoming more successful?

I think another thing that's related to this and what we've also been working quite a bit with our clients is the rising importance of defining and activating a purpose. Why does your company exist beyond making money? There's a really great Mark Twain quote, which is, "The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why." Answering the why the question is something that pulls tremendous potential.

There are so many advantages of building that into the core of your company from providing focus and direction in these very ambiguous times. Also, something that often is not seen as much is that it allows those companies that are much more purpose-driven and that have this kind of triple bottom line in mind the ability to hire and retain some of the best talents out there. I think it's exciting times. I think that, basically, all of the conversations that I'm having these days with our clients touch on all of those topics.

Detria: INFARM has been recognized as the world's fastest-growing urban farming network now, harvesting and distributing more than 500,000 plants across your network each month. Suds, can you tell us a little bit about how does this work?

Sudhanshu: Sure, this is a very fast-moving company. Just to update that number a little bit, Detria, we're now harvesting more than a million plants a month.

Detria: We got that wrong by almost half, Suds. That just shows how quickly you all are growing, which gives us great hope.

Sudhanshu: It is exactly that, so it's tremendous. Let me just quickly try and explain in terms of how this works. I don't know. Some of your listeners may have actually seen, especially if they live in Europe or if they live in Canada at this point in time, that many of our retail partners have an INFARM farm inside their store, which means that the plants, the food is growing inside the store and is being harvested at the time of purchase.

This is and was a radical concept that people could see the food growing that they were about to buy, which means that it had not travelled, it was fresh roots and all and being provided. Now, that is one component of our production of the INFARM system. What allows that to happen is quite important. You have in-store farms like the one I described, but you also have larger farms in a warehouse within the city limits where there are much larger versions of this, okay?

The reason that we are able to do this is because of our technology, which is what we refer to as modularity, because we are a cloud-connected network of urban farms, all the farms, whether they're large or whether they're small, all respond or are controlled by the INFARM brain, so to speak, which is this artificial intelligence-fed, internet-of-things brain, which then controls the plant growth, depending on whether it's in a large warehouse or whether it's in an in-store.

That modularity allows us to build farms in any size anywhere and have it up and running in a very short space of time, which is why, suddenly, we've gone from 500,000 to a million plants means that another growing center may have come online, which means that we can actually start doubling at this point our growth rate. This modularity is really important and what this allows us to do is also whenever we are doing upgrades, we don't need to go to all of our farms.

We currently have something like 1,400 points where there are farms functioning. We don't have to go to each of those. We just need to update at the backend and everybody gets the benefit of that. When the spectral scanners are scanning the plants and each plant is scanned for 50,000 data points from seedling to harvest, all of that data comes back into that central brain. Therefore, the more we grow, the better we grow.

The modularity allows us to expand, which is why we are in 11 countries. Most vertical farmers are in one or two countries. This allows us to grow on demand. If a retailer is seeing a particular type of crop moving much more quickly, they can ask us and say that, "Okay, can we actually replace this crop with this because the demand for this is growing?" Within the two-week cycle, we are able to do that pretty quickly. It's responsive and it's modular. It really is a very powerful mechanism that we're working with.

Detria: Suds, that's absolutely fascinating. I want to do a double-click when you mention the retailers and you tie that to this incredible growth that you're finding and experiencing. Our retailers just lined up out the door. Maybe talk to us a little bit about the importance of the retailers, how that's going, maybe the challenge if there's any challenge that you're finding with the retailers because your technology is so new.

Sudhanshu: The retailers are a critical, critical part of the entire value chain. Ultimately, that's where you and I and millions of other people go to buy their food. This is really quite important for retailers to see the value of what INFARM is bringing to the table in terms of fresh nutritious food that has not travelled hundreds or thousands of miles and can be sold to the consumer at a comparable price to other products in that category.

The retailer plays a very big role here. Now, for the retailer to bring the consumer onboard, this in-store farm played a very big role because that allowed the retailer to also showcase to the consumer that this is where this food is coming from and this is how it's growing. Look and see for yourself how we are introducing new and advanced forms, next-generation forms of sustainability and food to you.

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Sudhanshu: That experience was critical for the consumer. The retailer played a very big role with us to be able to showcase it in the store for consumers to understand, accept, and not feel that they were buying something alien in that sense. The retailers are a very, very important part of this value chain. At present, we work with something like 40 of the world's largest retailers across Canada, parts of the US, and several countries in Western Europe as well as in Japan.

Detria: This all sounds very positive, but we know that there must be some big hurdles. We know that something's broken with our system. What do you feel is broken in the current food system and what are some of these hurdles that INFARM is experiencing?

Sudhanshu: In terms of what's broken out there, there are three broad areas that we look at. One is that with the current resource infrastructure that's needed for agriculture and farming to feed 7 billion people by 2050, you need just about 2 planets. That's the first thing. The equation between resource requirement and food output is mismatched in terms of what is actually available. That's the first thing.

The second is in terms of the long supply chains. Fundamentally, food grows in five climatic zones around the world. It means that food travels for thousands of kilometers before it hits the plate, particularly in the Western world. That is a real problem because not only is it carbon-inefficient, it's adding miles and miles to your food, but it also creates a certain vulnerability in terms of the supply chain.

We saw that during the pandemic. As soon as transportation was impacted, food supply chains suffered because they were such long food supply chains. The third is around climate resilience. We all know that we are going through a terrible period for several years and it's probably going to get worse in terms of climate change. Now, as we go through climate change, agriculture, which is open-air, obviously feels the impact either of floods or of droughts or other forms of weather pattern changes.

Within controlled-environment agriculture, you can actually impact that. That is one area, a third area, which is how to create a climate-resilient food system. Those three areas match the resource that's available, creating a climate-resilient food system, and eliminating that long, vulnerable supply chain, those are the three main areas that we are focused on and then, of course, therefore, growing food where you live.

Axel: Yes. If I may just build a little bit upon that, I think that's spot-on. I think one of the other things that I feel is broken at maybe a slightly more fundamental level is the misalignment of incentives and goals for most of the especially commercial stakeholders in this ecosystem.

Most businesses and business leaders in the food system currently are incentivized to essentially optimize profits and market share for themselves and shareholders, and not necessarily answer some of the big questions and challenges that we're talking about even on this podcast about, "How can I help people to eat healthier? How can I minimize or even reverse the impact on the planet?" I feel this naturally creates winners and losers rather than aligning people and partnerships in an ecosystem ultimately around shared goals and values.

Detria: Axel, It's interesting that you share that because, at IDEO, I know that we're doing more and more of this workaround designing for impact, designing for trust even, particularly when we know the scaffold for trust is purpose. Do you have a point of view about how to align company purpose with the purpose for the world, for example? I'd love to hear you and Suds talk a bit about that.

Axel: We already talked a little bit about that, which is defining what is your purpose and beyond making money and putting that at the core of your company. I think the other thing to realize though is that trust takes many years to build usually, seconds to break, and then forever to repair. Trust is about getting it right and being consistent over the lifetime of a relationship. Just like we were saying, I think a good start there is to have a meaningful purpose and put that at the core of your business and your organization, and then demonstrate it to consumers and stakeholders, not through words but through actions since I think people will judge you by your actions and not your words.

Another key element in building trust is, I think, radical transparency. Transparency on what is your purpose, what are you trying to achieve as a company and a stakeholder in the system, where are you falling short, where do you still need to improve, what ingredients are you using, what processes are you using, and things like what and how are you using people's data, especially in today's age.

Then a third element that I also see over and over again being really important is the topic of inclusion and co-creation, so really involving all the stakeholders that you're serving or that have an impact on the ultimate bottom line, so to say, and involving them through the design, the launch, the operation, and iteration of what you're doing.

Detria: Suds, I know that you have quite a compelling point of view around purpose-driven companies. Can you tell us a little bit more about companies of yesterday versus today?

Sudhanshu: I think when we talk about the next generation of companies, and I really do want to count INFARM amongst those, is that purpose is something that's inbuilt into your company's DNA. That's the reason for your existence. I think that that's the big difference with legacy companies because legacy companies-- Don't get me wrong. They have their heart in the right place.

As they've learned more about sustainability, they have moved to actually incorporate sustainability into their business the way that they operate so that it makes for the most sustainable operations. That is still one step removed from purpose because purpose defines what is the benefit to people and the planet that your company and your company's product is geared to do.

I think that that's a big difference. I really love the fact that this is very much part of the technology of the business and of the being of INFARM that it looks to save land, it looks to save water, it looks to eliminate food miles, it looks to give people low carbon food, it looks to feed people sustainably because that is critical for the environment and for the planet that we call home.

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Sudhanshu: I think that that is so core for what we are seeing in a lot of the companies that we are seeing being born in the last few years. I hope many of these companies are going to be out there as we move forward because they're not looking to just make money. That's where I would say that companies will be looking to make money and have a purpose. I like the idea of people being conscious of both. I think INFARM is acutely conscious of both. Even our investors look at our purpose-driven sustainability creds along with our financial performance.

It is possible to do both. I think that that's going to be the big difference as we move forward in the business world as a whole. Again, being at the dawn of this entire movement is fascinating for me. As I go through a process, which is the B Corp process, which actually seeks to define business as a force for good, you can see how purpose inbuilt into the very being of a company allows you to grow in a particular trajectory that benefits all stakeholders from internal staff to external communities. That's really the view that we take at INFARM.

Detria: Suds, there's clearly a huge impact that INFARM is creating as you mentioned for the greater good of our planet. How are you measuring this impact? What are the key metrics around this?

Sudhanshu: The first thing that I would say is that it's not something that we do on our own. No individual company, person, the organization can do this on their own, which is where the fundamental area of partnerships comes into being. It's really important for the industry to come together, whether it be the vertical farming industry or whether it be food tech. All of these various players who are looking to define a new food system need to come together because, collectively, that change is going to be [inaudible 00:32:35] going to be made possible. This is really pretty important in terms of how the collective moves and defines a new food system or whatever be that industry. In our case, a new food system.

Detria: Axel, do you have anything to build there in terms of systems change and where design fits into that?

Axel: I think that's right. I think that it'll take new partnerships and it'll take a village, so to say, to not just affect change but make that change stick and be sustainable. I think one thing that I wanted to talk a little bit about because we didn't so much, I think there are, of course, the commercial stakeholders, the food producers, the retailers, and so forth. I think there are other people in the ecosystem that can play and should play, in my mind, a much bigger role.

One of them is, actually, city governments and cities because it's in their interest to provide a livable and great environment for its citizens to be healthy and to thrive. They also hold a lot of the key levers like transportation, education in schools. They can affect zoning and so many other things. I think the other nice thing about cities is that they are able to really move and take action as, for example, opposed to bigger governments who might be much slower and more cumbersome in this.

Sudhanshu: If I could just add something there, Detria. It's so true that what we see as, I don't know, whether you term it as hurdles or we see it as preconditions, but city governments are really important in that sense because they should want to create sustainable alternatives and food systems for their citizens, so they are one.

Because you're asked about hurdles earlier, again, it's about the demand for sustainability at multiple levels like the city governments also with consumers, also with retailers. I think all of these things come together to create a necessary recipe, if you will pardon the food pun, to come in and set up and establish vertical farming or, indeed, any other next-generation farming within a city.

Detria: Suds, in your role, there's no shortage of big challenges that you're taking on. Is there a question that actually keeps you up at night?

Sudhanshu: I'm a bit of an invincible optimist, Detria, a real Pollyanna. That said, while I may not lose sleep over it, there are certainly some things which are bouncing around in my head as I look at the state of the planet and I look at next-generation food and other systems, whether it be for energy, et cetera, that are looking to address this. One of the things that really troubles me is that, at this point in time, you hear a lot of the rhetoric around the-- and we're all coming out of climate COP26 right now, about the 1.5 degrees.

We know that irrespective of the political narrative and the scientific desire, the reality is that we are going to blow past that. We, therefore, need to be preparing for a 2-degree-plus world. What are the things that we are doing in order to make sure we are ready for that and can deal with that? I think that's the question in my mind that, are we actually going down the wrong trajectory and not creating the breakthrough technologies that we do need to live in a 2-degree world?

It's going to get a lot worse before it gets better. That's the part that troubles me as to, how much worse is it going to get? Can we not focus on the new groundbreaking technologies, which is going to be a very important part of the solutions as we get to a sustainable and happier planet because it involves its people as well?

Detria: Suds and Axel, it has been such a wonderful gift to actually spend this time with you both today talking about something, which is critical for not only our survival but for the survival of generations to come after us. Suds, thank you so much for highlighting and sharing the need for a chief impact officer and for that as a key need over, actually, a role that is just being driven by popularity, the importance of open-source movements, and this notion that the more we grow, the better we grow together. Thank you for sharing that and, Axel, the role that people actually play in our value chain and its significance. This is fantastic for our listeners to hear, so thank you so much. Thank you, Suds, and thank you, Axel.

Sudhanshu: Thank you.

Axel: Thank you.

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