thinking about urban farming

I recently wrote a post about collecting ideas. In that post I listed some reasons why collecting ideas and reviewing them can be a great source of inspiration when you need a creative push.

One of the inspiration techniques I suggested was to combine seemingly unrelated ideas into a new solution. It’s interesting when you see an innovation that has combines several ideas or trends to solve a problem, provide a solution, or approach an existing situation in an innovative way.

The concept of SPIN Farming is a fascinating example of how trends or ideas from unrelated areas have been applied to small scale farming.

I’m not suggesting that the inspiration for SPIN Farming came directly from looking outside of agriculture for new ideas, however it is a good example of trends from other industries combining to enable a whole new approach - in this case applied to farming. SPIN Farming is not a return to the methods of our grandparents, but a total re-think and application of new methods.

So what is SPIN Farming? SPIN stands for S-mall P-lot IN-tensive

SPIN is a non-technical, easy-to-learn and inexpensive-to-implement farming system that makes it possible to earn significant income from land bases under an acre in size. Whether you are new to farming, or want to farm in a new way, SPIN can work for you because:

• Its precise revenue targeting formulas and organic-based techniques make it possible to gross $50,000+ from a half- acre.
• You don’t need to own land. You can affordably rent a small piece of land adequate in size for SPIN-FARMING production.

What trends and ideas do we see applied in the SPIN method? An obvious trend is miniaturization. This directly challenges the large scale corporate farming practices and makes sub-acre sites into profitable enterprises. It even looks fun. Over the last two decades enhancements in technology have taken the power of large enterprise main frame computers down to very portable powerful and affordable laptop and hand held devices.

In recent years micro-financing has been very successfully applied in some of the worlds poorest communities. Again, this is an example of the large “lending beast” being scaled down, made more user friendly and made accessible to people who really need it.

Localization is another trend at work here. Farmers markets and localised produce have become very popular in many heavily urbanised areas. Interestingly there are many parts of the world where weekly local markets have never been out of fashion.

There are also similarities in the SPIN approach to just-in-time manufacturing processes. Conventional farmers sow a large crop at one time, then harvest a large crop at one time. The spin methodology has sequential sowing and sequential harvesting. The harvest is just enough to fulfil the market demand with no loss in productivity.

We can see that the SPIN farming technique combines several ideas that exist in other industries; miniaturization, localisation, and just in time production.

So what can you be inspired to do by looking around, observing, and collecting ideas. What ideas from outside your industry can be sliced and diced, combined, and applied to your business or project. Where will your next innovation come from?

Tags: innovation