The concept is simple: grow food where people live and grow it more sustainably. For Lufa, that means using recycled water (i.e. rainwater), biological controls (i.e. ladybugs rather than pesticides, herbicides or fungicides) and eliminating the need for clear-cutting for land, energy-consuming refrigeration or long-distance shipping. By harvesting in the morning, complementing baskets with “treasures” from local farms and artisans, and delivering to pick-up points around the city by afternoon, the food gets from farm to plate in a few hours, with nothing wasted. Offering pre-paid ‘subscriptions’ along with pay-as-you-go baskets, Lufa provides simple, customizable and convenient plans for receiving their “fresh food grown with love.”
Not only does this redesign of the agricultural economy—where production and consumption is simultaneously intimate and large-scale, intelligent and simple—provide an alternative to high-footprint, low-transparency agricultural production that is becoming increasingly political, but the online market offered by Lufa Farms, in partnership with farms, sustains livelihoods for local growers, connecting them to a burgeoning group of thoughtful consumers.