Imagine a future, where local demand is fulfilled daily by a supply of locally grown, sustainable and nutritious fruits and vegetables. A personal need, for instance triggered by health issues, is automatically translated into the autonomous growing environment, tailoring the growing conditions to the crop, the season and the resources. In this way, every day the exactly required amount, quality and nutritional value of vegetables and fruits will be produced locally. Products are delivered to the consumer through smart logistic solutions combining small batches in order to prevent traffic congestions. Consumers are the owner of their own data so they fully trust the system and are happy to feed it with additional health, exercise and fitness data through apps, wearables and IoT devices. Entrepreneurs and start-ups also find their business case in this system as there is full transparency about commodity flows, true costs and production risks thereby enabling them to develop a sustainable business.

The aim of the programme is to develop the next-generation food system by linking local consumer wishes in a smart way with local production of fruits and vegetables in protected environments thereby increasing appeal, robustness, variety, and continuity.

The 4TU-cooperation brings together the capacity to develop a ‘total solution’, i.e. a complete system which can be tuned to each city. Moreover, the cooperation with 9 HBOs enables to do this together with a large group of students really representing the next generation. Furthermore, closely involved advisory board members ensure that what we design is also feasible in practice.