Metropolitan Food Clusters an introduction

10th World Forum on Agrofood, Aguascalientes, Mexico

Peter Smeets, Mirte Cofino, Jim Groot, Steef Buijs, Arjen

Simons, Olga Arciniegas, Olga Vazquez, Olga van der Valk,

Renze van Och

Stichting Onderzoek Wereldvoedselvoorziening van de Vrije Universiteit

5

25

50

100

500

2500

5000

Population Density

Inh./km2

The world is urbanizing

9

8

7

6

5

4

3

2

1

1950 1975 2000 2025

Po

pu

latio

n (

bln

)

Growing disparity between urban-rural results in gap between

production capacity and demand: rural collapse

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

1961

1965

1970

1975

1980

1985

1990

1995

2000

2005

2010

2015

2020

2025

2030

2035

2040

2045

2050

Po

pu

lati

on

in

millio

ns

Urban population

Rural population

1961 2013 2050

(projection)

In 2050, a projected 88% of the Mexican

population will live in cities

Source: FAO (2009)

Urban consumers have different food demands

Africa (Sub-

Sahara)

India, China, SE Asia

Latin America

Eastern Europe

N. America, Japan, W.Europe,

Australia

Diet/Functional/

Organic Foods

Convenience

Foods, Snacks

Prepared Meals

Dairy, Meat, Fish,

Diversified fruits

and vegetables,

Fresh Fruit Juices,

Carbohydrate

Staples

Surviving Mass

Market

Convenience

Food Service

Snacking

Quality

Hygiene

High

Technology

What does this mean for the agrosector?

Meeting these demands requires

Producing more and at better quality with less resources

Producing different products according to the market

Making sure that the product arrives in the city in the right form with the required quality

To do so, traditional agriculture has to be adapted and new forms of agroproduction have to be introduced

Our approach: Metropolitan Food Clusters

Metropolitan Food Clusters organize the agrosector as a

network with the growing urban areas as their core focus

The network requires a system approach

Law of the minimum factor:

The overall result is as good as the weakest link

Law of integrated system development

Improvements have a better end result if other factors are also improved

Metropolitan Food Cluster

RTC’s are satellites in rural areas where the inputs from land dependent production for the whole network are collected and/or processed. RTCs provide training and education to capacitate farmers to increase their productivity.

Key spatial element of MFC 1: Rural Transformation Centre (RTC)

Agroparks are spatial cluster of high-productive plant and animal production and processing units in industrial mode combined with the input of high levels of knowledge and technology. The application of industrial ecology reduces costs and environmental emissions

Key spatial element of MFC 2: Agropark

In consolidation centers, products, both raw and processed, coming from the rural environment or from specialized agroparks, are combined with import flows, if necessary be processed further, and then recombined and distributed into the metropole

Key spatial element of MFC 3: Consolidation Centre

How to establish an MFC?

The formation of Metropolitan Food Clusters is guided by five key principles

Resource use efficiency

Vertical integration

Horizontal integration

Agrologistics

Parallel development of hardware, orgware and software

Key innovation 1: Resource use efficiency

Objectives

● Increasing productivity & efficiency

● Adjusting production quality to market demand

Methods

● Technological improvement / corresponding upscaling

● Training/education

Achieving resource use efficiency is the key objective of RTCs and agroparks

Resource use efficiency: land- and water use in closed-system greenhouse production

Various types of tomato production in Mexico

Example: La Huerta (Aguascalientes)

Prime business: freezing and processing of fresh vegetable and fruit products

Main problem: low quality inputs

Primary production

Processing Logistics Market

Capacity building of suppliers Stimulates shift to greenhouse production

Key innovation 2: Vertical integration

Integration of primary production, processing and packaging in

a single company leads to increased revenues

Less veterinary risk because of transport reduction

Large scale allows for innovations enabling jump investment

RTCs arrange scale and can provide basic processing to keep

revenues in the rural areas

Example: Alpera (Nayarit)

Feed production

Chicken production

(confidential)

Slaughtering Waste

treatment Packaging

(confidential)

Key innovation 3: Horizontal integration

Integration of animal and vegetable production and processing chains enables industrial ecology through the exchange of rest- and by products

● Decrease of waste & omissions

● Additional profit from rest- and by-products

Commercially viable exchange requires physical proximity: agroparks arrange such space

Innovations are expensive require large scale for profitable implementation

Technologies secure sustainable large-scale production of the future: water efficiency, climate mitigation & adaptation

Example: combined production of

fodder/livestock

High-productive

corn

Cow feed Manure fertilizer

Agropark Suikerunie: advanced integration

07 October 2013

24

Greenhouses

Digester

Sugar Factory

Water Sanitation

Land dependent agriculture

Co-digester

Melasse storage

30 ha eggplant greenhouse

Key innovation 4: Agrologistics

Agrologistics, from the farm gate until the supermarket, is key in delivering a high quality product

Agrologistics is the key to economic performance in the agrosector

The Netherlands, with just 2.2M Ha of agricultural land use, is 2nd largest exporter of agroproducts worldwide

Example: consolidation centre Fresh Park

Venlo (the Netherlands)

Example: regional agrologistic planning

Key innovation 5: development of

hardware, orgware and software

MFC Projects in Mexico: Aguascalientes,

Nayarit & Chiapas

Wageningen UR is collaborating with FOCIR, local governments, entrepreneurs, educational institutes and NGOs to re-organize the agrofood sector

The basic approach is co-design: the actual formation of the cluster is done based on investments, initiatives and ambitions of Mexicans

Aguascalientes will be establishing the first Metropolitan Food Cluster of Mexico