Abstract
Agriculture and food production play essential roles in defining the identity of a territory. While agrarian products are value generators for a region, the waste produced in the process is a mere byproduct with no or low value. However, in nature, the concept of waste does not exist since the residue of an organism is the nourishment for another. Being inspired by nature, the concept of ‘small is beautiful’ (Schumacher in Small is beautiful. Economics as if peoplemattered. Blond and 7 Briggs, London, UK [4]) can be reached not only through focusing on local production but also radically changing the scale, considering microorganisms as alternative production systems. As such, biotechnological developments can bring us to a new concept—‘micro is beautiful’—which aims at converting outputs of food-related production into inputs for new production possibilities through the aid of microbial activity. Today, we witness emerging design initiatives working on living matter, such as fungi, bacteria or algae, aiming to create new sustainable materials and production models. Working on this new field of design, we present the research project InnoCell, as an example of a possible micro/macro production system based in South Tyrol in Northern Italy, which valorises a local resource (agricultural food waste) through microbial intervention and aims at creating (g)local resilient production processes. It is an interdisciplinary project focusing on the potential of locally grown microbial cellulose and its diverse ‘co-products’. This microbial upcycling of local resources would provide 0 km production alternatives for various materials produced far away, enhancing territorial values, and spreading the knowledge to other localities through an open-source production system.