Decentralized Agriculture: A Higher Vision of the Future

As I begin writing this on April 1, 2024, it is easy for people in America to assume that our food supply chain is resilient and secure. Sure, there are food deserts that struggle with access to fresh produce, but rarely, if ever, will you hear about someone dying of hunger. In the middle of downtown Chicago, where I live, there are Whole Foods within walking distance of Trader Joe’s within walking distance of Targets, all chocked full of fresh produce, prepared hot foods, salad bars, and an abundance of other groceries. Even our pharmacies have multiple aisles of shelf-stable, ready-to-eat food products and coolers with drinks and frozen foods.

With so much of our basic needs seemingly taken care of, and the idea of basic survival far from our consciousness, it is easy for us to sit in air-conditioned skyscrapers and pontificate on the future of finance, arbitraging vaporous financial instruments, shitcoins, and NFTs in zero-sum games as the Federal Reserve pumps liquidity into markets. Free from the constraints of the daily struggle of keeping ourselves alive, our creative expression expands to push new boundaries, even creating entirely new modes of expression. At times this abundance can be detrimental, as we search for problems to solve that either don’t really exist, misattribute their source to be our fellow citizens, or blow their severity massively out of proportion by the lack of contrast experiencing what our ancestors faced.

There’s a dark truth underlying all of this: all of this food is being delivered to the city daily by hundreds if not thousands of trucks, from an average of 1,500 miles away. If something were ever to cause major disruption to our transportation infrastructure, we’d largely run out of food within 72 hours. Assuming nothing ever happens and our food keeps being delivered as intended, the labor force that grows and processes our food is primarily foreign or migrant workers, (who may or not be legally eligible to work in the United States,) being paid less than a livable wage, working long hours outdoors, often to be physically or sexually abused by the person employing them. It’s a twisted system with broken incentives that leave us all vulnerable.

It doesn’t have to be this way. No, I’m not suggesting we all grow our own food in our yards - though I’d certainly recommend everyone at least give it a go. Outside of nuclear holocaust, it seems highly unlikely and impractical that we will ever return to an agrarian society. What I’m suggesting is that we take the principles of the blockchain and apply them to agriculture. Through decentralization, localization, and permissionless open-source knowledge sharing, we can refactor our food supply chain from the bottom up to maintain the high quality of life of our most advantaged and significantly raise the quality of life for our least advantaged.

Decentralized agriculture has many forms, depending on the local needs. Industrial scale monocrop agriculture in rural areas that relies on synthetic fertilizers most certainly will not have a role to play. This is a positive development, as this form of agriculture is not only a major contributor of the runoff pollution that has created the Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico, it is also the primary source for the raw ingredients of the processed foods contributing to America’s worsening obesity and health crisis. Long-distance shipping of fresh produce, picked while unripe and lacking nutritional value, will also cease to exist outside of some exotic specialties.

In rural and exurban areas, rather than grow proprietary seeds owned by multinational corporations, fertilized by petroleum and subsidized through billions of tax dollars annually, or raise animals owned by multinational corporations in hellish conditions and pumped full of antibiotics and antidepressants, regenerative agriculture and adaptive grazing provide a means to remediate the damage done by monocropping and factory farming animals.

Given it is highly unlikely that urban agriculture will be able to wholly supply the needs of our cities, rural and exurban communities can continue to support their economic base through agriculture while restoring their air, soil, and water quality. White Oak Pastures in the southern state of Georgia is already implementing this model and proving that animal protein can be produced at scale in a manner that sequesters carbon while improving the microbial health and rainwater retention of their farm’s soil and contributing to the economic vitality of their region. In urban and suburban areas, agriculture can serve as a holistic solution to multiple problems. Urban food deserts deal with cyclical patterns of low-access to economic opportunity exacerbated by government misincentives that ultimately encourage criminality and disinvestment from those communities. Unfortunately, contemporary popular culture glorifies the same activities that worsen the circumstances of these communities. With career prospects stunted by poor education and criminal records early in life, plus little to no examples of alternative paths, the cycle continues again into the next generation.

Urban agriculture can shape youth’s understanding of the world and what is possible from a young age. Primary school gardening programs teach children about the power of responsibility and diligent care, giving them pride in themselves and their ability to nurture productive outcomes for their community by producing food. As children mature into young adults, urban ag programs can be used to teach them in-depth the technical skills to produce food at scale. At the same time, workforce development programs can also teach these skills to individuals with criminal records who desire to participate in society as productive, contributing citizens.

Public agricultural R&D investment in the US has fallen by a third since 2002. Creating a resilient food system and growing food in cities will require that we buck this trend and rapidly accelerate the development of agritech. Solutions like fogponics and passive, physics based greenhouse technologies, are on the cusp of being market-ready to disrupt entrenched multinational corporations. With concerted efforts to R&D agritech with the purpose of creating resilient, equitable food systems, we can activate vacant, blighted land and skyscrapers in our cities for productive means and support well-paying, rewarding careers for our citizens.

Our food system and quality of life does not have to come at the expense of our fellow human’s livelihood, the destruction of our environment, and our public health. By shifting our priorities and incentive structures and leaning into the principles of Bitcoin, we can rapidly decentralize our food production and uplift the whole of humanity in the process.