This computer will grow your food in the future | Caleb Harper

What if we could grow delicious, nutrient-dense food, indoors anywhere in the world? Caleb Harper, director of the Open Agriculture Initiative at the MIT Media Lab, wants to change the food system by connecting growers with technology. Get to know Harper’s “food computers” and catch a glimpse of what the future of farming might look like.

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Comment (41)

  1. Removing soil and sunlight from food production systems will not lead to human well being. This is why even the world's best hydroponic systems, which produce humongous tomatoes plants, have very little flavor. This is like the soylent approach to vegetables, engineers keep thinking if they can get the right blend of protein, carbohydrates, lipids, and micronutrients together they will have cracked the code to making the perfect food but they fail to understand the human system and its needs in the first place. Your own system will become similar in quality to what you put into it and I don't know if any of you have played with hydroponic fertilizer solutions but those chemicals are harsh and typically derived from synthetic sources. Those LED lights will not bring the same qualities to your cells as natural sunlight does and you can tell just by eating it. There is much more happening in a healthy root ball than just water, minerals, and oxygen as he says. Our bodies are made of soil and it is not wise to move away from soil-biology and how nature as grown plants for nearly 500 million years. I think being closer to our food is inspiring and should be encouraged especially with our children at school but doing so with dim LED lighting and artificial nutrient solutions is not the way. Creating small scale outdoor farms at our schools and neighborhoods will bring strength to our children and and teach them about biology and climate in a much more powerful way. I say no thank you to the "food computer."

  2. this is an awesome way of growing found. Technology is becoming a whole new thing of the future. after wacthing that video it made me want to grow a garden. the technolgy they used seems to be working for the developement of their vegetables, I really want to know iif it's safe to eat!

  3. current status: 1.5M ha of arable land vs 20k ha of greenhouses…
    If this 10 m2 high tech greenhouse costs $10k/m2, that's a total of about 150 trillion dollars to deploy globally, or about 2 years of GWP (the world's GDP).
    Therefore, this is fine for low volume productions, but not for grain & high-volume foods. Think of it this way: how do you fit an apple tree in this tiny greenhouse?

  4. This whole idea somehow makes me feel so "uncomfortable." I'm health-conscious but no scientist. According to what I've read, there's something called electromagnetic pollution near power lines, electric blanket, things like that generated by the electromagnetic fields. Some health experts even said we should not keep cellphone or pc in our bedroom. But this speaker is saying they actually grow produce in computer. It simply grossed me out with the electromagnetic field issue in mind. Also, in this video, he did not seem to describe how EXACTLY they grew those produce except kept showing those nice-looking pictures with vibrant-looking green leaves and smiling happy young faces. But still no showing of the exact process of growing those veggies. Did they actually plant seeds? Where and how? How did they provide nutrients to plants? How did they do the weather thing he's talking about, Did the veggie just grow out of nowhere inside the computer with all the innovative magical things they've invented? etc etc He did not seem to ever give the detals of the whole process. I kept waiting for those details but it was never shown. The whole thing looks more like he was there to promote / publicize his oprganization / project. Not trying to be cynical here. I'd love to see anything that can be as magical as this to solve all the food problems we're having now, including world hunger. But this presentation really looks like more of a publicity than the real thing to me personally. Besides, there's something to be said for food grown in nature. The anti-oxidants and the "whole package" only available from mother nature is one and only. Even the good old fashion hydroponics is more "natural" than this computer-grown food. It's kind of like vitamin pill (computer-grown food) vs real food (naturally grown or using hydroponics). And the health benefits of vitamin, as we all know, can still be controversial up to this day.

  5. Oh my goodness, we're gonna save the world…No artificial environments can provide the necessary nutrition to plants. Interns on our organic farm visited similar facility and were disgusted with the quality and taste of their produce. You can't cheat nature. We need healthy soil.

  6. This is retarded. Instead of having a garden that works on sunlight and rain, we will build a 100 000$ labs to eat electricity through lightbulbs and water pumps, and giving us a few square meters of production space in return.

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