Food Computers
Can they become the next solution for sustainable farming?
Food waste can be the beginning of the food story by composting, yet in today’s flash and forget culture, we discard our “waste”, positioning ourselves in the lifecycle of food production as plain consumer.
After the WW2, farming in Britain became highly industrialised in order to reduce the cost and beat the hunger of the population. It wasn’t until the 1960’s that people began to realise the implications that the mechanisation of farming was causing damage to our health and to the environment.
Nowadays we have dangerously reduced our natural resources and we have narrowed down biodiversity to near skeleton levels. As a result this has lead us into a great urgency to explore new ways of sustainable farming. More of us should get actively involved in the research, the process of generating food, the greater the risk reduction and potential recovery [1].
V&A and the landmark exhibition of 2019
The considerations of issues about how we farm, trade, eat and dispose of food are currently exhibited at the V&A in the landmark exhibition “FOOD: Bigger than the Plate”. The exhibition is sponsored by BaxterStorey and as shared by its chairman Alastair Storey [2], the relevance of exploring sustainable and innovative food solutions is greater than ever before. From compost to table we are reinventing how we grow, distribute and experience food.
Personal Food Computer 3.0
One of the exhibits that immediately caught my eye was a box that looked like a 3D printer, which contained live small plants of basil under a purple light, the Food Computer™ PFC_EDU, or simply Personal Food Computer 3.0.
This DIY devise costing around $500 to assemble was designed by the MIT Agriculture Initiative, and developed by the OpenAg community. The Open Food Computer is essentially a computer-controlled chamber that monitors and adjust nutrients, climate, energy and consequently plant growth. Amongst the things that are measured are carbon dioxide, temperature, and humidity all or which are linked to the Web for the information to be distributed to a sharing community. In this way each time a user grows and harvest, a contribution is made to a library of environmental conditions recipes that can be used as well as improved by others across the world.
At the moment MIT continues to test each functionality and together with the OpenAg, users have hacked together a number of improvements. Importantly the OpenAg believes that the forerunner of a sustainable food system will be the creation of an open and transparent ecosystem of technologies that promote education and hyper local production. For that reason the founders OpenAg have partnered together with STEM ambassadors to ensure this type of skill can be passed on to the youngest of our society [3–6].
Skeletons in the Closet
This project is great and perhaps a glance into a future of sustainable food systems.
To my surprise while researching this project a number of controversies have started to surface. In an article by ProPublication [7] the Ope Ag initiative, led by Caleb Harper is accused for dumping wastewater underground with Nitrogen levels 20 times above the legal limit. The initiative has also been under fired for overhyping the devise capabilities as some of the promised functioned where not performing as promised.
Cultural Implication & Democratising Agriculture
Our culture has shown us that we have a history of redesigning plants and animals to best suit our needs. Currently rapid technological re-inventions are implemented and researched for everyday farming. Greater than ever before there is a need for innovation and critical thinking in order to find new and improved ways of sustainable farming. The old world is based on materiality and temporality, draining our natural resources. Contemporary values of people, companies and organisations are at a turning point and we are now starting to examine sustainable ways of food production and the democratisation of agriculture. An example closer to the individual is the MIT OpenAg project which allows for the democratisation of agriculture. Can this early example of a new community type of agriculture represent a glimpse of the future, where a network of hyper-local sustainable food farming facilities are available to communities for generating the most optimum and sustainable way of growing food.
In my view we have to become knowledgeable and promote and establish the values and ethos of a truly sustainable planet-centred future.
Disclaimer: This blog post is part of my deliverable for the MA in Design Management at the UAL, London College of Communication.
REFERENCES
[1] V&A Exhibitions (2019). FOOD: bigger than the plate. [online]. (Last updated 20 October 2019). Available at: https://www.vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/food-bigger-than-the-plate [Accessed 20 October 2019].
[2] BaxterStorey (2019). BaxterStorey news. [online]. (Last updated 20 October 2019). Available at: https://baxterstorey.com/news/food/ [Accessed 20 October 2019].
[3] MIT Media Lab (2019). Open Agriculture (openag). (Last updated 20 October 2019). Available at: https://www.media.mit.edu/groups/open-agriculture-openag/overview/ [Accessed 20 October 2019].
[4] MIT Media Lab (2019). Build a personal food computer. [online] (Last updated 20 October 2019). Available at: https://www.media.mit.edu/posts/build-a-food-computer/ [Accessed 20 October 2019].
[5] OpenAg MIT (2019). Contributing to openag. [online]. (Last updated 20 October 2019). Available at: https://wiki.openag.media.mit.edu/contributing/start [Accessed 20 October 2019].
[6] OpenAgMIT. (2019). Personal food computer 3.0 (pfc_edu) [online]. (Last updated 20 October 2019). Available at: https://wiki.openag.media.mit.edu/pfc_edu_3.0 [Accessed 20 October 2019].
[7] PROPUBLICA (2019). Mit media lab kept regulators in the dark, dumped chemicals in excess of legal limit. [online]. (Last updated 20 October 2019). Available at: https://www.propublica.org/article/mit-media-lab-kept-regulators-in-the-dark-dumped-chemicals-in-excess-of-legal-limit [Accessed 20 October 2019].
BIBLIOGRAPHY
govermentCIO (2019). The importance of arts in stem education toward tech literacy [online]. (Last updated 20 October 2019). Available at: https://governmentciomedia.com/importance-arts-stem-education-toward-tech-literacy [Accessed 20 October 2019].
TEDX (2015). This computer will grow your food in the future. [online]. (Last updated 20 October 2019). Available at: https://www.ted.com/talks/caleb_harper_this_computer_will_grow_your_food_in_the_future?language=en#t-942717 [Accessed 20 October 2019].
Untitled (2016) Available at: https://www.cfgn.org.uk/how-we-work/our-members/ [Accessed: 20 October 2019]
Untitled (2019) Available at: https://www.media.mit.edu/groups/open-agriculture-openag/projects/ [Last updated 20 October 2019]
