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Photo by Joanna Vestey
‘We are on the cusp of the deepest, fastest, most consequential disruption in food and agricultural production since the first domestication of plants and animals ten thousand years ago…’
Metamorphosis has grown out of Joanna Vestey’s interests in transformational systemic change and stewardship. For this work she has photographed innovators at the intersection of agriculture and technology and seen first-hand the radical, pioneering approaches they are harnessing in re-imagining our food and agriculture systems.
In the making this series, Joanna considers the urgent and extensive nature of the seismic global challenges we are facing, and which are now affecting each one of us directly in unprecedented ways.
We have been witnessing soil degradation, species loss, climate change and population growth for some time, but these issues have been dramatically compounded by Covid-19, Brexit and, most recently, the war against Ukraine, all of which have further destabilised already vulnerable systems, fracturing supply chains, exacerbating food shortages, raising food prices and reducing access to fertilisers and pesticides.
As our knowledge evolves, extraordinary technological breakthroughs and transformations are addressing these areas. The UK is at the leading edge of many of these developments, the speed and scale of which are exceeding anything witnessed by previous generations.
Joanna has witnessed first-hand how farmers, scientists and innovators are radically re-imagining how we grow our food and sustain our land – visiting projects as wild and diverse as insect farming, advanced protein fermentation, city farming underground, robotic farm machinery, laser weeders, algae cultivation, regenerative and biodynamic farming, agroforestry, biodiversity, habitat expansion and carbon restoring projects.
What will come next; what is important; what has gone unseen and what are we yet to discover?
