Designing Investable Infrastructures for Controlled Environment Agriculture

The 20th-century agricultural systems are not equipped for the challenges of the 21st century. To explore how the forces of decentralization, digitization, and decarbonization will impact food infrastructures in the future, we used prototyping. We analyzed the prototypes and distilled seven design principles: promote justice, ensure transparency, decentralize food production, foster resilience, expand stakeholder networks, create value from overlooked resources, and shift mindsets around food. We selected two prototypes that embodied these values and created service blueprints, marketing campaigns, and physical assets to communicate the ideas. The two prototypes are a CEA-based infrastructure for sustainable protein production and a global network of CEAs for farmer emergency services.