INSTITUTE FOR SUSTAINABLE FOOD
R E S E A R C H IN FOCUS 12 YOUR UNIVERSITY | 2020/2021
Resilient City: the RC2 project If we’re going to survive, we need to become more resilient.
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oil, the non-renewable resource we rely on for all of our crops, is degrading at a rate of 24 billion tonnes a year due to the intensification of farming and use of fertilisers. Low-impact agriculture in urban spaces can help alleviate the pressure on soil. A new project from the Institute for Sustainable Food and Resilient Campus, Resilient City (RC2), aims to build minifarms in old shipping containers, with a prototype opening in 2020. The mini-farm relies on aquaponics, a technique for growing plants in water that replaces fertilisers with fish. The fish provide nitrogen-rich waste which is broken down by bacteria and then used by the plants for growth. It’s one of the greenest ways to grow food; the only energy required is electrical and can be produced using any number of renewable resources, and the fish food can be created sustainably from food waste. A major benefit of the mini-farm is that it provides food on a local scale and the concept can be easily adopted by anyone with an interest in farming. Researchers at the Institute for Sustainable Food have developed open-source software and Internet of Things electronics to balance the ecosystem within the farm, controlling water flow, heating and
lighting. Information is then available online to anyone who wants to develop their own mini-farm. “The point is to show other people how they can do it themselves,” explained Hamish Cunningham, Professor of Internet Computing at the University of Sheffield. It’s a system that can be scaled up to community level or scaled down to desktop size. This alternative food system is at the heart of the Institute for Sustainable Food. “The Institute is about changing food systems – our current systems are broken so we’re changing that by growing local food using soil-free and open methods.”
Main: An abandoned school in Tinsley has been transformed with the installation of groundbreaking hydroponics systems. Above: An illustration of an aquaponics site installation in Sheffield.
Flagship Research Institutes: The key issues facing humanity are embedded within complex systems that cross the boundaries of academic disciplines. Our four research flagships, the Energy Institute, the Healthy Lifespan Institute, the Neuroscience Institute and the Institute for Sustainable Food, each focus on an era-defining challenge to change the world for the better. Find out more: sheffield.ac.uk/research/flagship-institutes
