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TEDx Talks
Published: 2016-06-16
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVmbWjs7yBw
C. I'm a farmer not here but here at the MIT media lab I work at the open agriculture initiatives on a team of pretty unconventional farmers where farmers but we're also architects programmers electrical engineers flavor chemists writers and I'm a mechanical engineer and we're all using these seemingly unrelated disciplines to research and develop what may become the future of agriculture we're building open source tool kits
to empower a community of new unconventional farmers made up of chefs artist kids as much as engineers and traditional farmers %HESITATION toolkits our for controlled environment agriculture a lot of people believe can help us see the nine billion people of two thousand and fifty if we can get it just right so plans and people were not so different we both have DNA which has a lot
to do with how it turned out but a lot of what makes us us also has to do with our environment it's nature versus nurture hadn't biology terms that loosely translates to feed them and genome not open eyed were focused on the nurture the female instead of modifying the genes of plants were modifying the environments that see how different temperature humidity levels change of plans physical
traits and the better you can control a farming environment the better you can control of food that comes out of it and not have to do with physical traits like nutritional density and yield and even flavor so characterizing the few gnome of lettuce for example as complex there are so many parts of environment to measure so many plant treats to evaluate but let's imagine for a
second that we have a dashboard of environmental controls and you managed to tune your environment to create a water stress that creates sweeter lettuce maybe you tune humidity and light levels and you create higher nutrient density or higher fresh weight per energy into your farm eventually using your perfectly tuned recipes you'll be able to consistently grow more nutritious more resource effective and even taste your food
than you could outside so we're calling these climate recipes your set point but the finer environment what inputs into your system it takes to create that environment and how that environment affects your crop so I imagine that collectively we found the perfect climate recipes for tomatoes eggplants sweet let spicy Basil and anyone could just plug in that environment from an open database to grow whatever they
wanted no matter their location other season what if we could create save share climate we could democratize climate and in doing so democratize food because no matter where you could be you could grow strawberries in the climate of Mexico grow grapes in the climate of California so what is this tool kit we're working on systems for implementing climate recipes and I did my mechanical engineering thesis
at open lag developing that's the first food computer a dustup controlled environment agriculture platform and this first version had control loops for air and water temperature and we did experiments on Basil and we saw that a two degree different routes own temperature had drastically different effects on the two samples and the crop response in this case with fresh Wakefield so we know temperature matters but these
climate recipes where the first of what could be thousands or millions that together can characterize the freedom of Basil so imagine these platforms all around the world people during Basil at home restaurants school lab and all of their data according to one place create a climate bank just like seed banks we could story useful climates for use now or in the future this is the open
few known projects a database that could grow to make access to climate possible and to characterize the freedoms of all kinds of crops a network of food computation so we kept working on the food computer and got to this version which we open sourced on our website hardware software bills of materials build manuals so what is the food computer you have a growth chamber with an
insulating jacket isolated from the environment this pink glow it's from an LED panel with red and blue light which or the photosynthetic Lee active parts of light to plants then there's the plant support system a foam tray that holds the plants above a hydroponic irrigation system where the roots are suspended and that's nutrient rich water and this can actually result in two to five times faster
growth than conventional soil agriculture and was invented to save water for farming and extreme environments then there that censors and the hydroponic water temperature PH electrical conductivity which tells us fertilizer content and the air carbon dioxide light intensity temperature and humidity and so in a climate recipe each of these sensors are given set points and in the brains of the food computer we're telling these actuators
went to turn on and off in order to maintain those set points and although the sensor and actuator firmware is not a microcontroller and the control loops are in this tiny onboard computer that's also Sunday all of the sensor data and images the images of your plans to an online at we can see what's in your system upload your climate recipes read your sensor data and
download your climate history and a good computer as modifiable we want people to change it and then share it back to an online community of suit computer users like Adrian who's building a food computer at home and blogging about the process %HESITATION Richard who heads coded a new sensor readout interface and RD upload it it's code online and the students who are modifying their food computer
to build taller crops in a larger growth chamber and we have food computers and sex Boston schools and teachers and students are learning how to operate and grow in food computers these are good by middle schoolers in three weeks I or modifying the food computer internally at open eyed as well this in turn is working on a robotic arm harvest their and this one is researching
what foods from home immigrant populations in Boston can't grow and is finding that climate recipe that food computers we're comparing the microbial communities of food computers using hydroponic irrigation versus soil a new enclosure that's easier to build and a flat packable for shipping and a printed circuit board that will make electronics prototyping even easier a tiny it refrigeration system to cool the air and water loops
people are getting to experience the ultimate freshness about just picked bok choy and getting obsessed with how cool roots are and reconnecting with fresh healthy food planting seeds they've never even seen in the grocery store and most importantly being exposed to what the future of farming tools and technology will look like unless of enabling a next generation of farmers and also a next generation of consumers
who have grown up their own food and could make more informed choices about their food and it's by enabling these next farmers and consumers that we can't attack food security issues head on we need more nutritious food more farmers and for me it's hard I because the infamous drought of twenty thirteen in this prototype of ours and I could have used a community of support and
an online knowledge base to help me and that's we're gonna have to create to provide our farmers with the tools to successfully feed the nine billion of two thousand and fifty that's two billion more people mostly living in cities far from where food is grown now controlled environment agriculture is a way to control our food production the more resource effective use less pesticides and be more
space effective so that we can grow inside cities and provide access to nutritious food to as many people as possible our food system is incredible and complex our food is trucked ships and flown all around the globe which results in nutrient attenuation and the huge carbon footprint of our food what is our food system looked a little more like this with each of these notes being
food computers instead of sending physical food transmitting knowledge about your food climate recipes useful modifications to make to improve resource effectiveness now a food computer is only a tool for research education and awareness it's part of a bigger solution to a huge problem that a lot of people are working on but it is a tool that can help us gather the people and the data necessary
to make large scale controlled environment agriculture operations feasible and that's why we're working on the food server and food datacenter skills as well all three with the same core operating system so imagine those notes food computers servers and data centers gradually upgraded fresh local nutritious food that you can trust because you can be a part of at any scale because apply my recipe that you create
in a food computer can transfer to a larger of food datacenter and that's how a kid farming in the classroom or a CD tuning Basil flavor is at home can learn explore have fun well actually also having an impact on their food system what if your climate recipes help feed your city fresh produce in the winter what if you're quite recipes are sent to food data
