Jiaqi Wang

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Liv/fe Transition

to a healthy agriculture sector with livestock as an integral part of life

This is a strategic planning project for South-Holland Province I finished in my third quarter study at TU Delft together with my four other teammates.

INTRODUCTION

Confronted by both the urgent climate pressure and the growing dairy farmers’ protest events, the agrifood sectors in the South-Holland Province need to be reimagined towards a more sustainable and inclusive future. In our proposed strategy, the livestock farming sector would embrace three types of transition: Diet transition, Attitude Transition and Technical Transition. In this way, it can gradually shift away from being an export-based business towards a more local-oriented, circular and innovative sector, which will re-enter this region’s citizens’ everyday life in a sustainable manner.

CONCEPTUALISATION

Why Livestock Farming Matters?

Our Concept: Value Change

At the core of the project is our proposed concept of “value change”. This value change is driven by the circular economy model and is further based upon the three pillars of sustainability: social, environmental and economic. Through this value change, we want to reshape the relationship between producers and consumers and to achieve justice, both spatial and social.

STRATEGY

Relinking the Consumers and Producers

The current chains in the agrifood sectors remain linear. However, there is a large potential for closing the loop, especially if cooperation with the energy sector and waste management sector as well as a collaboration within the agri-food sector is considered. A shorten in the supply chain is also essential, where urban farming and on-site consumption can play a role in further circularity.

The Toolbox

Based on the circular economy concept, a toolbox is developed, which offers multiple interventions under five key principles that aim at relinking the consumers and producers.

The Territorial Strategy

Along with the interventions above, three rings of transition are proposed territorially to accommodate more sustainable ways of consumption and production:

(Note: You can click to see the full images.)

This happens in rural areas where spatial landscapes are gradually shaped by a more green diet.

How meat and dairy are produced become more accessible to urban dwellers.

From port to the greenhouses production base, Dutch industrial sites would shift from an exporter of goods to an exporter of knowledge while supplying it with clean energy, creating a better South Holland while benefiting other countries.

These three rings will further synergize with each other and lead to new production-consumption clusters:

(Note: You can move the cursor over the images to see the flows.)

VISION

The vision map shows how the previous three rings of transition can happen across the South-Holland Province and interact with each other, which potentially would leverage a value change among the consumers and producers and help the agrifood sector to transit towards a sustainable and circular future in the whole region.

TRANSITION TIMELINE

To reach the vision is not easy, and it requires effort throughout a long time period and engagement with multiple sectors. The followings are the proposed transition timeline and steps needed from different actors:

Acknowledgement

The visualizations presented in this work are the creation of the authors and are sourced from the report published in the TU Delft Repository. For more detailed information regarding the report, please refer to the repository.