Local grown, organic foods are packed with flavor and nutrients that genetically modified organisms cannot compete with.
Traditional farming practices take abundant amounts of space to grow, cultivate and harvest produce that urban environments don’t have the luxury of utilizing. Lucky for us, a ‘future living lab’ supported by Ikea has created The Growroom.
The Growroom is a spherical, 9-foot living furniture structure made from 17 sheets of plywood and created to grow plants, vegetables and herbs. Although the actual structure cannot be bought, Ikea has released the open source design with thorough instructions on how to make your own.
This design promotes a vision of the future in which locally grown food, which has benefits that imported food cannot match, can become the primary source of our diets. This concept reduces food miles, or the distance that food items are produced, and doesn’t require early harvesting, which yields more flavored crops. The Growroom has the ability to revolutionize the way we eat and shop.
Cities that don’t have room for traditional farming practices can now utilize vacant lots and locations with room to build Growrooms, and the benefits are endless.
“We could produce food of the highest quality that tastes better, is much more nutritional, fresh, organic and healthy,” said Simon Caspersen, Director of Communications at Space10, Ikea’s innovation lab, according to a DailyMail.com article.
Growrooms can help educate children on where food comes from, the principles of agriculture and the importance of hard work.
In areas with little community involvement, it would be beneficial to construct a Growroom to promote interaction among residents. It would be a great opportunity for the city to implement youth and other programs for people in the community who want to get involved with a healthy lifestyle.
Grocery stores that sell produce out of state could switch to local produce from the Growroom, which is much safer and healthier for consumers. The produce that many uneducated consumers are used to eating is infested with GMOs and pesticides that make our food unhealthy for consumption. Local food sources would allow for markets to have the appropriate knowledge of exactly what they are selling to their consumers.
The origins of our food are getting farther from our homes, and our food is becoming cheap, bulk produce from large cooperation farms located across the country that attract our local markets and grocery stores. The Growroom is an affordable solution to the anti-monopolization of the produce industry and the health of communities.
Casey Pimentel is an 18-year-old mass communication freshman from The Woodlands, Texas.