Feeding the world has been an ongoing struggle, especially in developing countries. Currently, more than 700 million people do not have enough food (chronically undernourished). The population is expected to grow and move to urban areas which is influencing the food patterns (more variety and quality). Food production are resulting in  deforestation and increase of greenhouse emissions. The negative impact on climate change will become even bigger when in the future food production will change towards more, better and more variety of food. This could lead to a food crises as not enough food will be produced and food will become more expensive. Wageningen MFC wants to avoid future food crises and ensure that everyone has sufficient food to eat of high quality and variety. 

Within Wageningen Metropolitan Food Clusters (WMFC) we intend to meet the challenges of sustainable food production for urbanization societies through vertical and horizontal integration of value chains. In order to facilitate the connection between the supply and demand on both ends of the chain, various new key nodes may be suggested in the network. 

The Core characteristics of Metropolitan Food Clusters are:

• Resource use efficiency: including modern quality and efficiency oriented solutions in food production, processing and storage.
• Vertical integration: linking agricultural production, logistics, processing and trade to arrive at market-oriented production systems
• Cross-chain horizontal integration: develop cost-effective and eco-sustainable solutions beyond the focus of individual chains, enabling the application of industrial ecology.
• Intelligent agro-logistics: effectively serving the market through adequate planning throughout the production chain and intelligent buffering and cross-docking solutions in the distribution chain.
• Integrated design of hardware, software and orgware: including knowledge development and education.
• Space pump: resource use efficient agriculture is consuming less space making land available for other functions, such as forest, water and biodiversity conservation.

For more in-depth information it is possible to read the Phd work from Dr. Peter Smeets, named:
Expedition agroparks : research by design into sustainable development and agriculture in network society 

By working together with Governments, high technology providers and Universities, we can ensure more and better food with fewer resources for everyone.

By cooperating with Universities and research institutes, businesses, governance and non-governmental organisations, an integrative solution to provide sustainable food for everyone can be developed. By connecting all partners with practical experience and theoretical knowledge the best solution can be designed. 

Do you also have the same mission?  Join our Network, as only together we can achieve it!