Our Challenge

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in major disruptions in our food system, exacerbating issues of food access around the world. 

Baltimore is a national leader in food system resiliency with established emergency response plans ready for disaster. However, economic disruptions and COVID-19-specific public health mandates have resulted in unique challenges for traditional emergency food assistance programs. 

Within the first month of the pandemic, Baltimore emergency response coordinators reported almost one-third of the city were relying on food assistance-a significant increase from pre-COVID-19 times. This number is expected to rise with further economic uncertainty.

Problem Definition

During the pandemic, grassroots efforts joined in an attempt to bridge the gap between hyper-local food needs, especially of those not covered by funded programs, and increased wasted food from shuttered restaurants and producers without access to supply chains. Additionally, the capacity of existing local producers to meet immediate food demand fell short of those in need. The sheer volume of emerging assistance requests and siloed production and distributions efforts-all while maintaining social distancing protocols-have resulted in uncoordinated and inequitable resource distribution. Beyond intensifying existing barriers for communities experiencing food insecurity, these circumstances highlight systemic issues of food access.

Design Challenge

Understanding this context, we formulated functional questions to ask nature.

1. How does nature manage disturbances in a community?

2. How does nature depend on each other for resources?

3. How does nature create connections across networks?

Research

With a close partnership with the Baltimore Office of Sustainability(BOS), we researched the problems of wasted food in Baltimore. We used various methods to conduct research. We started by listening to vendors of the Northeast Market, restaurant staff members, a director of food waste management company, and other experts and researchers in the city.

As we research current issues with the perspective of biomimicry, we visited the Museum of Natural History in D.C. and the National Aquarium in Baltimore to learn and get insights on dealing with food waste in nature.

We also attended the Baltimore City Sustainability Commission Meeting to share our design challenge while engaging with the city.

After the pandemic, we pivoted our design challenge to cultivating a more connected and responsive food system network to address Baltimore's current situation better. We conducted a research workshop with BOS staff members and experts through Zoom to share our design challenge and learned the causes and effects of food systems disruptions.

The researchers in biology, mycology, and anthropology shared their knowledge and provided us with a variety of natural inspiration—specifically, the mycorrhizal relationship.

Biological Inspiration

Looking to nature’s unifying patterns, it was evident that reciprocity was the common thread of the biological strategies we discovered. Found in our own backyard of the Chesapeake forest, we were especially inspired by the local symbiotic relationship between native white oak tree and ectomycorrhizal fungi.

Ideation

We hold a brainstorming session with MICA social design graduate students to generate ideas. By grouping ideas into common themes, we formulated design opportunities. After presenting the first round of our design concept to experts and staff members of BOS, we could test the desirability and feasibility of the design. We also had another session of brainstorming with the experts to refine ideas.

Design Principles

We created a Life-Centered Design principles, which guides us throughout the design process. These principles served foundational markers to frame and constrain all future ideas and procedures.

Design Concept Overview

We translated the natural inspiration to design a symbiotic and interconnected food distribution infrastructure, like that between trees and the mycorrhizal network. 

MyOak Public Market exists primarily as a reciprocal online platform to increase food access to vulnerable populations and the economic potential of local food producers.

Vendors are provided a low-risk platform to an expanded customer base. Reciprocally, customers can access a variety of products regardless of physical proximity, income, or telecommunication capability.

By cultivating new connections and aggregating valuable user data, MyOak Public Market simultaneously strengthens the resiliency of the Baltimore food system to face any crisis.

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