Description

Corn project summary:

In order to operationalize the multi-scale integration plan, we will run a practical experiment which takes place while the actual specification for this project is being written up. We hope that this practical experiment can help inform the specification, by having some initial ideas around (un)feasibility of certain aspects around scaling. While this experiment will be small-scale, it allows us to get our feet wet and no doubt will shed some light on things we hadn't thought of before.

This experiment, called the corn project, will look at a few number of crops and participants in this experiment will collect information and data to unpack flows (and stocks) of this crop for their city (and region). We will try to a) get a solid understand how this crop is being used in and around the city, b) obtain data for city-level imports, exports, consumption, processing, and waste flows, as well as any stocks c) obtain the same data at a higher (or lower) level, and d) unpack the relationship between the different scales and to understand what kinds of downscaling opportunities and challenges exist in this experiment, and e) see what kinds of tricks and operations can be applied to any city, and what things are city-, region- or country-specific.

This task:

To kick off our project, we will start with introduction presentations. These introduction presentations should be made through doing desktop research on your city of choice. For your city, you should obtain as much information as you can that will help understand the different flows and stocks for your city. This is a scoping exercise, so getting a broad but shallow understanding is better than a very narrow deeper understanding of a single part. Try and find information at city and/or regional level on your crop of choice (as discussed this could be corn, rice, wheat, or soy --- as you see fit):

• Agricultural production
• Imports
• Exports
• Consumption
• Food processing
• Stocks

Try to understand how your crop flows through the city, and which (food or other) products and sectors most heavily engage with your crop of choice. Try to understand the link with the hinterland: does your crop come from or go to a specific region/country?

The end result of your work should be a presentation of 5-10 minutes in which you present the highlights. You are encouraged to keep notes in a separate documents with all the relevant datasets, links, etc. that you used for your research, so that we can use that afterwards to take things forward.

NOTE: presentations will be presented on our upcoming sprint. Make sure to register!

General instructions