Farming and R&D-I-Y

Farming and R&D-I-Y

Today global warming, climate change and sustainability are some of the main topics in a lot of people’s minds. These values are frequently used in advertising and marketing to convince the public. Many people feel involved with these issues and want to contribute to make a better environment. Not only businesses but also non-profit organisations can use this idea. Windowfarms is an example of innovative co-creation that started as an experiment and became way bigger thanks to social media.

Windowfarms is a social enterprise that wants to help people grow their own fresh food indoors in the big cities. The basic ideas are vertical indoor food gardens that run through the whole year. You can use these bottle-like structures to grow greens, herbs and small vegetables. The community of growers are trying to revive agricultural biodiversity and want to produce sustainable food for a better future.

The idea started in 2009 with founder Britta Riley who built the first windowfarm with friends in her apartment window in Brooklyn. She collaborated to the development of a home hydroponic garden system for apartments. And started a social media-sharing site around the instructions for making the gardens. She used simple water bottles and plumbing supplies to build a decent grow system. The site has now nearly 40 000 registered members who have actually built a windowfarm and used it to grow food from all over the world.

This online platform is used by windowfarmers and staff members to communicate about their own experiences and problems. New members can get advice from the more experienced growers and others can get new ideas for modifications from farmers who have used solar power for example.

The most interesting thing about this company is his way of equilibrating the development. A lot of ideas come from the online community and the plans are made together with the enterprise. Windowfarms uses an open development system where ordinary people can bring innovative green ideas and popularize them in a very short period of time. This type of development will be used more frequently and consumers will be part of the innovation and creation of many products. 

The company sees this as a mass collaboration and called it R&D-I-Y (research and develop it yourself). This collaborating is the main reason of the existence of this company and they try to update as much as possible.

So by combining our knowledge and the power of the internet we can communicate around the whole world and try to think of innovating ways to make city life more beautiful, sustainable and healthy. Windowfarms is just one of the many examples of consumers working together to build a better product.

Xenia Demeester 2MA01

http://www.windowfarms.com/

http://my.windowfarms.com/