Food
Deserts
Practice of sustainability
The Circular Harvest is a sustainability design initiative that transforms real-world challenges in food access into opportunities for change. Rooted in the belief that sustainable practices belong not in theory but in action, it demonstrates how thoughtful design can cultivate lasting impact—where innovation meets necessity, and every cycle feeds both people and the planet.
But the relationship I have with food is not everyone’s reality. For many people, food is not comfort or connection—it is conflict. Food is political. Food is power. Growing up in Cleveland, Ohio, I saw firsthand how access to food shapes the relationship communities have with it. Like many places across the Midwest and the South, your personal connection to food is often determined by what you can physically reach. In much of Northeast Ohio, access to fresh, quality food is limited. This is especially true in East Cleveland, the first suburb of greater Cleveland and once the summer estate of the Rockefeller family.
Our food moves through a web of transportation networks, labor systems, logistics chains, and geopolitical decisions before it ever arrives on our tables. Most of us never see this system, but it quietly shapes what we eat and who can eat. And for millions of people, the system fails them everyday.
Yet you don’t need statistics to know something feels wrong. You’ve tasted it in produce that looks perfect but carries zero flavor. You’ve felt it in grocery bills that climb higher with or without tariff while the food itself feels less nourishing. We’re told this is simply how the world works, but what we are experiencing is the slow erosion of something that once grounded all of us.
Two to five people people can't push back against the national food system. But five to fifteen people, that’s a different story. That’s a community. And community has always been the foundation of change. Out of this belief, I developed a design framework called Farmation
At the heart of this system are two essential ingredients: community and land. Community is more than participation; it is connection, empathy, and shared responsibility. Helen Keller once said, “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” Community engagement is not simply attending meetings or signing petitions. It is about reclaiming agency, mobilizing neighbors, and shaping the future of the places we live. It means recognizing the knowledge already present within our neighborhoods—the gardeners, cooks, elders, and innovators whose wisdom often goes unnoticed but holds immense value.
The second ingredient is land. In East Cleveland alone, there are more than three thousand vacant lots scattered throughout the city, according to estimates from the Cuyahoga County Planning Commission. To many, these empty parcels symbolize decline and abandonment.
redesign the system
- Based on a medium-yield projection of 25,000 lbs of vegetables per acre, this decentralized system would produce 7,500,000 lbs of fresh produce annually.
- This output would meet the nutritional requirements of 18,750 to 21,428 adults every year.
If deployed across the city, these small units form a diverse interconnected, resilient agricultural network, embedding food production within the area