Tokyo Tool Kit

The material on Africa projects is informative, powerful and clearly demonstrates that free, informed and critical thinking can overcome material shortage and social issues. Many of the ideas will become important tools for the Tokyo Evoke project.

Japan is a leading industrialized nation. The entire infrastructure of their industry is potentially available to solve the Evoke problem. At the least the resources within Tokyo are more substantial than those of most nations to which the ideas of the Africa websites apply more directly. This is implied by the statement from Alchemy that the Evoke team will fix Tokyo and Tokyo will fix the rest of the cities in trouble.

So I propose that we get started on the Evoke issues and information already before us with the food shortage question in Tokyo. There is a lot of material that will become off-the-shelf resources for the challenge. At the moment I think that much of this will be important and necessary for the Tokyo challenge but not the critical core.

To begin take a look at

http://wpt2.org/npa/IW818willallenupdate.cfm

http://www.growingpower.org/

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=aquaponics&aq=f&aqi=g10&...

The first two are going on within the US city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The Google material will take you to associated projects that have grown up on their own or are offshoots of the Growing Power projects in Milwaukee or other similar projects elsewhere. Also see

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=urban+food+movement&aq=f&...

for information about the Urban Food Movement. The Google sites should be mined for applicable ideas.

Aquaponics is not classic fish farming which uses outdoor ponds and either slows down significantly or stops in cold conditions. Tokyo, like Milwaukee, is a middle latitude city and it gets cold. Aquaponic production cannot slow down because of that. The “heat island” reference in the introduction to the Evoke points in the direction of using that excess temperature situation as a possibly temporary benefit for accelerated food production in enclosed structures. One long term possibility is to use the heat production of large buildings to keep food production going on a more sustainable basis. As far as I know, most large buildings generate so much internal heat that they require year-round cooling. Currently the practice is to dump the heat generated from the cooling process to the atmosphere around the buildings which is a major contributor to the heat island condition. Capturing that heat for food production generates a double benefit.

Japan is a world leader in food production under sheltered conditions such as greenhouses and other methods which implies that it is not the mechanics of localized urban production that is the problem. Information on this can be found at

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source=hp&q=japan+greenhouses&...

Some hints in the Evoke introduction should be addressed.

How did Tokyo and the other cities in Japan get to a condition where they are one month away from a self-described famine? A growing season failure? Contamination of stored food?

The shortage looks like one of those things governments try to keep to themselves in the hopes of finding a solution before the political repercussions get out of hand. A hint here is the reference to Citizen X and the leaked government doc**ents. Alchemy criticizes one of the agents for paying attention to Citizen X. Why?

Alchemy has a CubeSat in place when the Evoke is issued which implies that some attention was being paid during the run-up to the public crisis. Or is it that there are CubeSats stockpiled in orbit waiting for someone to hire one for some mission?

There is a time delay between Evoke request and its answer. None of the agents are in Tokyo when Alchemy is called but they are all there when Alchemy answers Tokyo. Is this significant?

Is the problem a rice shortage which would be significant within Japanese culture, a calorie shortage or a protein shortage? It does not take a lot of protein of the right kind to supplement carbohydrate staples to produce a minimally nutritious diet but there are significant requirements on the quality of that protein or it could do more harm than good. Look at

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=%22protein+requirements&aq=f...

for some information on that. A description of a specific case where the use of protein supplements caused a serious problem can be found at

http://www.westonaprice.org/The-Socio-Cultural-Syndrome-of-Milk.html

Fresh fruits and vegetables are necessary for long term health but the problem appears to be to get through the immediate shortages to a long-term arrangement that works better. The hint for this is there in the comment that when the team finishes Tokyo will have a year-round supply of fruits and vegetables presumably from local urban sources.

That looks a lot like the Milwaukee projects and projects from the Urban Food sites with an emphasis on nutrient dense foods but why have existing specialized Japanese food productions methods not been expanded as the crisis developed?

The note about decline in Pacific fishery production may play a role. That decline is doc**ented for Atlantic fishing but the Pacific situation is in dispute. See:

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=Pacific+fisheries+decline&aq... and

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=Atlantic+fisheries+decline&a...

My current feeling is that we will need to address harnessing the temporary heat island to accelerate roof and street gardens and protein production in the form of fish and fowl. Insects may be a part of the solution but might have cultural barriers. They have the advantage of rapid production. Yeasts and bacteria pickling procedures are well established in Japan. All of these add nutrients and are preservative processes but they require something to start with. See:

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&nfpr=1&ei=pp2QS5rnLYbiNYbM9fUM...

The biggest issue may be the timeline. The food shortage is described as being one month away from famine. What is there that will generate enough calories and proteins in a month? That may be the central issue or it may be a distraction. Yeasts have the potential to meet the time constraints but something to grow them on may be a problem. There are not that many references on yeasts used as a primary food and there are problems in doing that. See:

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=%22yeasts+for+food%22+-spoilage&... and

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=%22yeasts+as+food%22+-spoilage&a...

There is duplication between these two searches as well as between some of the others above.

This is the path I want to be on now and not wait for the unveiling of the next steps.

If you want to form a group to look at this please start by looking at my profile page and sending me an email or just add a comment to this.

I am interested in the ideas that may develop in addressing the Evoke challenges and in the development of groups focused on problem solving.