3FOOD

Third Industrial Revolution Consulting Group
Cooperatives focused on creating wealth in and among the community (in sharp contrast to
some so-called sharing activities that are actually wealth extracting from the community) are
integral parts of promoting the Sharing Economy. As noted by transaction attorney Janelle Orsi,
Co-founder and Executive Director of the Sustainable Economies Law Center,
“The world’s economic and ecological meltdowns demand that we now redesign our
livelihoods, our enterprises, our communities, our organizations, our food system, our
housing, and much more. This glorious reinvention has already begun, and many refer to
it as the ‘sharing economy,’ the ‘relationship economy,’ the ‘cooperative economy,’ the
‘grassroots economy,’ or just the ‘new economy.’” 138
Smart Farming & Internet of AgriFood Value Chain
As noted above, establishing a sustainable source of revenues for farmers through onsite wind
and solar power systems provides them with the flexibility and resilience to adopt ICT-based
smart farming and precision agriculture technologies. The Food Working Group makes argues
for greater use of the myriad smart farming tools and intelligent agriculture technologies that
have emerged. The current market is roughly €3 billion and projected to double within the next
five years. 139 The proliferation of wireless smart sensor networks, telematics, geoinformatics,
computational visualization, Big Data analytics, drones, robotics, and other automated tools,
apps, and smart algorithms, are being combined for tracking data throughout the entire
farming operation - soil, plant, and animal conditions – and transporting products from “field to
fork,” while giving this information on-demand in real-time to farmers via their smart phones or
computers. These are labor-saving, resource-conserving, cost-minimizing, and value-adding
opportunities.
138 Orsi, Janelle (2012) Practicing Law in the Sharing Economy: Helping People Build Cooperatives, Social Enterprise,
and Local Sustainable Economies. American Bar Association.
139 Roland Berger (2015) Precision farming: Global market volume for smart agriculture applications to grow 12
percent per year through 2020, August 2015, http://www.rolandberger.com/press_releases/515-
press_archive2015_sc_content/market_for_smart_agriculture_applications_growing.html.
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