Blog Post < Previous | Next >
commons.widipedia.org
The high tech future of farming and food production
As population grows, urbanization pressures rise, and preservation of our environment becomes more critical, food production as it's presently done will have a difficult time keeping up. This is particularly true with regard to the increasing demand for healthful, fresh, locally grown, highly nutritious, pesticide free food rises.
In the "High Tech Future of Farming," researcher Caleb Harper talks about the OpenAg project at MIT.
CLICK HERE to watch his short video and CLICK HERE to watch his TED talk.
A recent article in the Atlantic, noted that "Over the next 30 years, most Americans will move to cities. Farmers make up a tiny, aging fraction of the U.S. population, and the production of good food in a future urban society will require creativity. Caleb Harper, the lead researcher at MIT’s OpenAg project, and his team are developing open-source hard and software platforms for users to experiment with climates and grow fresh food. In simpler terms, Harper’s OpenAg Food Computers are smart mini-greenhouses for individuals to use in urban settings in the era of global warming. “When we talk about climate change it's often in a very disempowering tone,” Harper says in this interview filmed at the 2016 Aspen Ideas Festival. “We want to create climate democracy at the scale of the person in the production of food.”
Closer to home and toward a more immediate solution Community Venture Partners is developing a state of the art aquaponic, climate controlled greenhouse farming prototype, presently proposed to be constructed at Larkspur Landing. CVP's innovative greenhouse design is controlled by an app-accessed, technology system that integrates and adjusts for weather, available sunlight, temperature, humidity, air pressure and more. The systems run on renewable energy and use less than 10% of the water consumption of best practices, in the ground farming, anywhere in the world.
Yet, not only can the auto-regulating interior environment create ideal growing conditions for local foods in Marin, but its divisible, greenhouse technology design can recreate multiple growing environments from other parts of the country and the world to produce an almost unlimited variety of vegetables at any time of the year.
This prototype project utilizes a unique nonprofit / for profit hybrid financial model to enable it to combine tax deductible donations and grants and for profit investment and loans to create an environmentally, socially, and financially sustainable model that will provide fresh, free food for those most in need in Marin County.
For more about the project, CLICK HERE.
Developing the next generation of natural food production must start now to ensure food security for everyone.