Principal Investigator Caleb Harper
Project Website http://openag.media.mit.edu/open-source/
We live in the age of the network economy. Information, products, and services are created, shared, and economized through social networks that operate on both the local and global scales. The chassis of this new economy consists of massive computational infrastructures, the application of which has enhanced nearly every industry from medicine and real estate to retail and automobiles.
In stark contrast, agricultural production is still constrained by industrial-era economics. Information remains opaque, practices and metrics of production are largely unobtainable, and the ownership of physical and intellectual property is typically restricted to a minute percentage of the population.
We are committed to driving a paradigm shift from the industrial to the networked age of agricultural production—giving rise to computationally-based food systems revolution that will account for the ecological, environmental, economic, and societal implications of producing food. The keywords for this revolution will be: accessibility, diversity, and community.
The accessibility of data, hardware, software—and most importantly, the accessibility of food and nutrition for the 9 billion people of 2050—hinges on fostering a creative forum of thinkers and doers on collaborative platforms. Diverse users will find unique ways to experiment, hack, modify, and grow using Food Computers of all shapes and sizes. All platforms will be connected via an online forum, through which data, digital plant recipes, and improvements to hardware and software are shared openly.