Connecting the Digital and the Ecological Transitions

The OpenAg process begins with the production of controlled environment agriculture systems. These personal food computers are set to provide specific controlled environments that can be modified, manipulated, upgraded, and hacked as users experiment to find the perfect growing recipes for their favorite fresh foods. Users from diverse backgrounds will innovate and optimize in unique ways as they find solutions to each challenge they face. Nutrition and flavor can be maximized, water and energy use can be minimized, and preferences can be customized to suit every individual set of needs.

The food computers developed by Harper and his colleagues collect an enormous amount of data on the plants being grown—about 3.5 million data points per plant each grow cycle. The data from all the food computers on the network is then aggregated in an open database and a special machine learning algorithm filters through this data to create “climate recipes” for growing plants optimized for phenotypic traits—such as color and size—or input variables like energy or chemical use. These climate recipes can then be downloaded by other users and run as a program for a food computer, effectively “turning the everyday person into a master gardener.”
Source : Motherboard.vice.com

Source : TED