Tomatown 2050
The crisis at the center of this work is the projected amplification of global food scarcity as a result of climate change, as experienced in a specific town: Tomatown. The whole project takes place in a post-GMO-debate, society where there are no regulations to creating bioengineered food.
As the name suggests, this town is known for growing tomatoes and for being the first agriculturally self-sufficient city in the world. They grow not just any kind of tomatoes, but genetically modified tomatoes that take the shape, taste, or molecular structure of disappearing foods like banana, and chocolate.
Tomo-Late is the first genetically modified tomato produced in this town. It's a tomato that contains a flesh with a creamy chocolate taste and texture. It has been exported to more than 700 towns, and is the main source of income in Tomatown. The second one was Tomanana, the tomato banana, which is potassium rich, and when processed, can be used in shampoos that benefit the hair and keep it clean for up to a month, saving the water resources of Tomatown.
The town's foundation for progress is collaboration between agriculture and sciences. This is why the scientist-farmers of this town, in partnership with the municipality, host yearly town-hall meetings “Tomato Visions” where they discuss predictions of soon to be extinct foods, and to pick the new tomato that they will start engineering. In these meetings, they also raise regular issues like water scarcity and the harsh frosty winters that might destroy the tomato fields. In these convening, scientists, farmers and residents come together and suggest solutions. In the last town-hall meeting two new ideas were presented; the fluorescent-rice-tomato and the coffee tomato. Both had very reasonable reasons to be produced, but the citizens picked coffee tomato.
This project takes a humorous approach by hero-ing the tomato and making it sacred as the town's emblem. The town takes pride in naming the new tomatoes, mimicking playfully the act of bioengineering two species together, almost like a marriage.
