Ferment Lab: An open-source food research lab about conservation and fermentation techniques
While fermentation techniques are as old as civilization, in just over three generation most of Europe lost these time defying customes. A pitty, because not only do these technique add taste and probiotics to our daily food it can be used to minimize waste, create future circular food products and make us much more self-relient. Ferment Lab wants to be a reproduceable, open source food lab that brings back these lost food techniques to the public, entrepreneurs and governements across Europe!
It refers to a physical transformation of the built environment (hard investment)
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No
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As a representative of an organisation
Name of the organisation(s): Fermenthings SPRL Type of organisation: For-profit company First name of representative: Yannick Last name of representative: Schandené Gender: Male Nationality: Belgium Function: Founder Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Avenue Van Bessen 6 Town: Bruxelles Postal code: 1090 Country: Belgium Direct Tel:+32 474 01 32 18 E-mail:yannick@fermenthings.be Website:https://www.fermenthings.be
Inspired by fermentation & conservation techniques from around the world, The Ferment lab is dedicated to teach, research & inspire companies, citizens and public organizations to build the future of sustainable food.
Our space is centered around three main values that will be used as indicators based on our previous works surrounding circular fermentation & fermen’drêches (spend grains-koji research)
1. Zero Waste: How can a product be truly zero waste, is every type of waste equal, can we implement cradle to cradle principles in its design, what with non-food waste?
2. Low Emission: While designing sustainable products in some way, we forget the global carbon footprint these products can have. We want to take every aspect in the equation and design it until it reaches it's lowest point, sometimes in connection with other products.
3. Technologically reproducible: At the end, this is a citizen-centered project, so if they need a bio-engineer degree to make it work, we are missing the point.
The accommodation we set up will be available for emerging food projects, citizens & organizations. The business model behind is inspired by the fab lab communities and will require you to become a member of the community and share in tasks & improvements while enjoying all the possibilities. On the mid-long term we want to be able to reproduce this model all around europe combining the local habits, resources and terroir with the commun practices around fermentation and conservation from around the world.
sustainability
self-reliance
future of food
reproducibility
zero waste
While the number of fermentation related businesses are slowly growing around europe, not a lot of projects are looking at it from an holistic point of view. At Ferment Lab we inspire to start small production project but to design every aspect of it according our shared values: from the products you choose (terroir), the materials (re-useable), the techniques (low in carbon impact) to the businessmodel (short chain with emphasis on locals)
For companies and citizens we encourage them to question their food habits and teach them how to implement fermentation and conservation related habits.
We think that opening our space to the community, sharing our recipes and findings online, helps to implement food related projects with an impact. We want a sustainable, local and healthy future of food, but can look at it from every angle.
For exemple: we will serve a mostly plant based meals because it showcase how fermentation techniques can enrich these diets but also agree to help research conservation techniques on "unsoldable" pieces of an old variety of dutch pig (menapii) because their values on sustainability, terroir and way of production are congenial to ours and having zero waste is a strong goal for us.
By opening towards different food views (vegan vs meat-based, artisanal vs industry, exotic vs local) without limiting the debate, we can implement ideas of sustainability into every type of environment. We don't believe there is one perfect diet that will solve all our food related conserns, but we are convinced that bringing fermentation and conservation techniques to the table can put us a step forward in the good direction.
Christine Ott wrote the stunning piece called "manger c'est culturel", and that is how we see our Ferment Lab: a place to question our habits, but also stand still by the beauty of it. Certain fermentation techniques are the pure concindence of life: forgetting to close something on the shelf, letting dry produce get in contact with a wet environment. Others are an evolution of centuries of craftmenship and society (geuze, comté AOP, Amsterdams Pickle Culture,...) Through our workshops, lectures, events (online and offline) we want to share these beautiful stories and how to reproduce them in your environment.
But we also engage ourselve in bringing that story to every aspect. We crossover with artists with the same values for our visuals. The last year we worked with the Belgian Photographer Toha de Brant who specialies in Cyanotype which is an ancestor of photography and we developed coloring techniques based on waste of our food production. This evolved in her working on a sustainable darkroom that will use part of our waste to create new pieces. We are often contacted by crossmedia artists that want to use certain of our leftovers and are gladly sharing, making this a wholesome experience.
Our ferment lab is often also a place where cultures meet. Any culture from around the world has specific fermentation techniques and we help them map them, keep the knowledge alive and share (with their consent) their heritage to other people. We received lots of family recipes and we are continuing communicating about the importance of keeping this alive.
Finally on our packaging and shop we are implementing a strickt "cradle to cradle" principle. From our curration of the producers, the pots we sell to the left over coffee from the shop. Everything can be repurposed and passed on. We see it as one circular movement that becomes a way of life. When hanging around ferment lab you will not look the same way anymore to waste as before!
We have different policies for different aspects of our business.
When people want to follow courses that can go through the regular path and book a workshop at full price, but we often work with cultural centers, public organisations around free workshops. When small organisations or schools ask for a workshop we give them a range of price and say they can pay depending on their budget. We think that people that can afford it should pay the right price, but we want to give access to the knowledge to as many people as possible
All our findings are available online on our wiki and we try to add as much content as possible on a regular basis. For our Ferment Lab membership we give the possibility for starting projects to rent it by the day at really low price so they have the time to set up their business. After three months an intake discussion takes place to regulate the use and asked to pay the fair price (between what they can afford and what is necessary to maintain the space) for their usage.
We also created open lab days where we produce something collectively where we ienforce the accessibility to all genders, ages, nationality, handicaps and social status. Food is the one thing we all have in common, so it should be as universal as possible.
We want to be an open source model, similar to how fab labs and makerspaces are for hardware. That involves creating a model that is open to the public. We want citizens to understand what they can do about their food consumption to make an impact and how they can participate in the future of food.
Citizens can participate in the ferment lab through memberships. This gives them access to the lab, unique products, and invitations to different types of events, workshops, and collective production sessions.
We also try to create as many open moments as possible. When we are on the field or on public squares, we like to participate in missions around the country where we can show the possibilities of these ancient techniques. Our goal is to be an open space that is partly sustained by the community and specific gigs. The citizen is at the center of what we do because we also believe that they need to see the potential of it.
At the same time, we often engage in discussions with policy makers by participating in debates or collective thinking exercises to explain the reality of the field and how policy improvements could open up the possibilities of fermentation. Some of the old techniques are not currently taken into consideration in current regulations, making them "illegal" despite being safe.
On a local level, we work with different types of organizations, including cultural centers, schools, and sustainable businesses that book us for workshops and story-filled lunches, as well as other producers with whom we work to create new products based on our shared values.
On a regional and national level, we work with organizations such as Eatmosphere (Flanders), FoodWin (Brussels & Flanders), and L'arbre qui pousse (Wallonia). We are also partners with Innoviris, Good Food, and Coduco in Brussels, where we try to implement our working model in other projects and places to increase the impact of the ferment lab.
On a European level, we work with many organizations in other countries that are in the same line of work as us, such as Smaakpark, Miso Institute, La Meute, BFM, and Carnivale Brettanomysis. We engage in fermentation and preservation techniques while searching for new business models. We create events with these organizations, give workshops around Europe, and spread the word about fermentation.
Our space wants to be a crossroad for different actors involved with or researching fermentation and conservation techniques. Here are a few examples:
Urban Farming: We work with organizations like Community Sustained Agriculture Courjette to teach their 280 members how to preserve the most out of what they farm and can't use immediately. We also have a researcher/baker who works with old grains and the reactivation of these varieties in the Brussels surroundings. Finally, we work with a watercress producer to find new products using their overproduction.
Health Research: We have had multiple discussions with AZ VUB concerning the health benefits of fermentation and are planning to work with them on cancer research in 2023.
Industrial Food Production: We are working on multiple products for other producers, such as spent grain miso for a brewery, lacto-fermented green tomato chutney for a tomato farmer, and leftover fruit spreads for a social manufacturer.
Craftsmanship: In our lab, we give starting producers the opportunity to learn their craft without the need to set up a full-grown business, allowing them to concentrate their energy on the product and how to make it sustainable. Currently, we have a meadery, a bakers cooperative, a coffee specialist in our midst, and we are talking with a kefir producer, a sauce maker, and two catering/sustainable food event organizers to join the lab.
Sustainable Art: We don't limit our thinking process to just food. For over a year, we have been working with a couple of artists looking at our leftovers and certain products to use as texture in their artwork. We made an exhibit at CSA Courjette about using scraps as a coloring effect for the Cyanomose project, for example. Through these exercises, we show even more the possibility of circular integration in every aspect of our food.
Food entrepreneurship and innovation have always had a purely capitalistic outcome. From the techniques used in high-end cuisines to the secrecy of the market in not sharing knowledge, know-how, and resources, it is with that in mind that we want to be disruptors in the field. We want to give the possibility to work with food, create food for the community from an ecological perspective, and build local businesses without the need to be secretive or stressed by competition.
We studied how open source software became a business, and we think there are multiple possibilities within food to follow that path. By shifting the perspective towards content sharing, new possibilities will arise. While we are innovative in the products we create, it is equally important for us to reinvent the way we work with food and keep that discussion alive.
Fermentation and conservation techniques are in many ways low-tech and recuire small tool investments. Through our five year of existence we created what we call the blueprint of circular fermentation: A toolset of knowledge, skills, materials to create any type of fermentation with as much things that are available in your environment.
Our philopophy is to recreate this blueprint in as many itterations as possible in as many places as possible. We work with farmers to research ways of repurposing leftovers, we work with culinary schools to showcase the versatility of ferments in the kitchen, we work with researchers to look into the benefits and future of natural ferments and we work with writers and historians to preserve this knowledge and make it available to as many as possible.
All these fields are connected then to a real tangible places where you can come see, feel, smell and taste all these processes. We think that ferment labs spread over europe could help many inspiring food producers, citizens and governemental organisations to dive deeper in how food is percieved.
At the moment we have all the knowledge and skill in house to replicate these labs in other cities, but also are connected with like-minded projects around Europe (Smaakpark in Ede where we yearly take part, Miso Institute from Denmark where we are part of the organisation, Ferment Festival in Switserland where we are currator, Carnivale Bretanomysis where we provide the Food Lectures,...) We believe that this type of award will showcase the importance of the idea and will invite more projects to think about implementing a ferment lab. We will then gladely share our finding!
Before i was the founder of Fermenthings and its Ferment Lab i worked for and with multiple Makerspaces / Fablabs / Toollibraries and i base my work at Ferment Lab on what i learned there:
- Creating an easy system for the people to use by documenting everything in the space (protocols of machines, tools, cleaning) and providing a transparant work environment for every member
- Spending much time on building a trustfull community that understands the core values of the space: open-source, sharing, inclusive, zero waste and low carbon impact.
- Having transparant accounting: showing the true cost of all aspect of the space to affect them between the users of the space in a fair way
While implementing these principles we try to create as much opportunities for collaborations as possible. When we see that there is a possibility to use fermentation for a new product we go towards these producers and share the opportunity to learn together and make it happen.
Food is on a global scale going towards dangerous hominization that makes us realiable on a small number of crops (70% of our food consumption is based directly or indirectly on 10 types of crops) while having more then 6000 available edible species. Part of the problem is standardization of food habits and missing knowledge of what is locally available.
With our ferment labs we want to create spaces where it is possible to find local solution to food using ancient techniques and available knowledge by bringing the people closer to what they eat. Have a couple of apples to much, well make a vinegar out of it, or a cheong sirop that only uses time to be made. The exemples are many, to knowledge not yet enough widely spread. We think that having multiple spaces around europe open to the public and organization will help show the diversity of what grows around us and make us value our waste, left overs even more.
At the moment we have one ferment lab running in Brussels thanks to the "prove your social innovation" grant from the Brussels Region, in the next year we are looking into maintaining the place and make it economically sustainable. We welcome 3 small food research projects and will welcome 2 more in the beginning of 2023.
While consolidating our space in Brussels we are in discussion with a co-living farm in Wallonia to implement our principles and the ferment lab in their kitchen / small restaurant that will optimalize the production of their 6 ha farm. We also are involved in a research around green tomatoes transformation for a farm in West-Flanders and were approached by the cancer department of the VUB to conduct fermentation related research with them in the next year.
Within our field of expertise we are at the front of innovation and continue bringing the community based approach to the fermentation and conservation industry. We see it as knowledge that needs to be available to every citizen so they can become more self-sufficient and understand the challenges of our food supply while giving great taste and good bacteria. We are often invited around europe to come talk and showcase these principles. In 2023 we have already booked 6 of these venues in countries as France, Germany, Switserland and the Netherlands.
In 2022 we hosted more then 100 events over 4 countries in Europe. While some of them where direct learning opportunities (for schools, offices, public organisations) others where in the format of dinners where we always implement our research. Our dinners are designed to showcase new opportunities in sustainable food (zero waste salts, techniques from around the world implemented on the local terroir) and tentalize the envy to do it yourself. Thanks to our fermentation wiki we can provide the needed background knowledge fast and easy so you can start immidiatly. For us every event is an opportunity to talk about food sustainability and co-designing the future of food. Over the years we have heard of multiple food projects that where set up, inspired by our workshops and events.
