I got caught up in this train. After watching the TED talk I saw an opportunity to leverage my product design/engineering consultancy to sell Food Computer kits and pre-assembled circuit boards. I built a website (www.openagriculturesupply.com) and embarked on building a supply chain, having PCBs and fully assembled PCBAs made and stocking kits.
After lots of investment in both time and capital I was never able to get one to work. The software stack was unsupported and after talking with everyone I could I was unable to find anyone who was able to get the software working outside of the walls of MiT.
I then worked on a related product, growcomputer (www.growcomputer.com) but ultimately there just isn't enough value in these kinds of products. As others have posted here and in previous HN posts on this topic, the A&E schools and plant scientists have long ago figured all this out, one can already purchase plant growth chambers, all manner of hydroponic and aeroponic systems, nutrients, controllers, climate controlled greenhouses, etc.
Ultimately it comes down to the economy of powering plant growth with electric lights. It just does't add up except in specific applications like mushroom farming, and very high end "foodie" niche markets. The value proposition just isn't there.
In the Netherlands our main way of growing food is in greenhouses. It causes a lot of light pollution and I actually found it a quite disturbing sight when I flew over one of the greenhouse areas by night once (there are columns of light in the sky). We export lots of tomatoes, bell peppers, etc. I guess if you have space and a sunny climate the value proposition isn't there, but if you have a cooler climate, a high population density (land is very expensive), and a high-tech agriculture sector it seems to work out differently.
> It just does't add up except in specific applications like mushroom farming
If you want to make money growing food though, mushroom farming seems like the best bet. Right now there are several edible mushroom species where, if you were to start growing them commercially, you would literally be the only person in the country offering them for sale. And some of them solve serious culinary or food science problems. E.g. right now impossible burger has been able to do a pretty good job imitating the texture of protein in ground beef, but they haven't yet been able to do a great job at imitating the texture of the fat components.
Further prohibiting weed could be good for driving prices on that market then.
But I agree. I looked at this as a hobbyist (no, not for weed) and thought it could be helpful since senors and hardware are currently as cheap as they are. But industrial agriculture has complete different set of problems.
Aside from that plants in general seem to be quite resilient and don't require perfectly balanced control loops. One might think so, but your room plants constantly dying is probably just due to not watering them for months.
So in the end having a few seeds and a bit of water probably beats the food truck full of tech on all levels of efficiency.
Still an interesting topic to create these environments. But perhaps not the correct approach to solve food shortages or help with problems large scale agriculture faces.
What if you could pipe enough direct sunlight from outside, into the chamber? And be able to control the intensity of the delivered sunlight? Would there still be a novelty product there to have a big enough market with a decent price point?
I agree. Why pay for the energy to grow food when you can get the enegy for free by putting it out in the sun? This is an example that some scientifically minded people forget an important aspect in the world: economics. Can your New Way of Doing It^{TM} do it cheaper than existing solutions? If not, it most likely does not have a future.
>Plants tested included cucumbers, basil, and baby lettuces.
Not the best plants to grow especially in a tight space. Cucumbers will take over everything especially close together. The bush varieties are good for container gardens but the tendrils will attach to other plants. I have to keep them off of other plants or provide a trellis to grow. Last year I got an infestation of cucumber beetles. Tomatoes grow like weeds and don't latch on to neighboring plants. Both grow from seed like wild fire.
Lettuce and basil do not provide enough nutrition for this kind of setup. Enough said. Arugula is more profitable than most but will bolt with heat.
>But despite all this money and brainpower, things soon went awry in Jordan. Schroeder, in a phone interview, told Spectrum that the conditions at the NCARE site were harsh, with a very dry desert climate and high indoor temperatures. The power frequently failed, which shut down the building’s air conditioning and the food computers’ LEDs. When the air conditioning conked out, it sometimes reached 45 °C (113 °F) inside the lab.
>Worse, the Wi-Fi was unreliable. A Wi-Fi connection was necessary to remotely monitor some of the parameters inside the grow chambers, which were equipped with cameras and sensors that measured temperature, humidity, and pH levels.
I am in the Deep South and that temperature is not going to work at all. Temps in the 90s will stop my plants from growing, cause flower drop and stop fruiting but humidity here is also a factor, not a factor in Jordan.
Stable power and wifi in a refugee camp? Keep dreaming. This part should be automated with sensors and a solar battery (or backup batter in case of power loss).
I am planning a couple projects with my Raspberry Pi's to collect data and do some automation for my plants. Once I have something going I will submit a few things to HN.
Let me know if anyone wants to know more or has any questions.
Growing herbs like Basil is a great way of getting started however. Not because it actually provides nutrients, but because tiny amounts of basil (just a few leaves) can grossly change the flavor-profile of your food. A small amount of Basil goes a long way in cooking.
Basil is also very easy to grow, so its a great beginner plant.
I am really having trouble understanding this project... how would this be a good way to feed people? It has so much technology to produce so little food, and requires consistent power and internet... can anyone explain why this would be a good idea?
As a recent twitter rant against the Media Lab food computers went[1] - massive indoor farming operations basically already work this way and have in fact ironed out most of the bugs. There just happens to not be so much cross-pollination between traditional A&M schools and the Media Lab.
It should be noted that land grant schools were solely set up all over the country a hundred and fifty years ago to tackle exactly this domain of problems and not without some irony that MIT is one.
My impression is that it wasn't exactly pitched as a substitute for food aid, but more as a recreational project to provide moral support for the refugees, and perhaps some micronutrients on the side. Overall it's not too bad for a concept but the execution clearly prioritised asethetics over utility.
It does tick all the boxes for an attractive startup though:
- Disruptive tech
- Charismatic (?) founder
- Peer-reviewed research
- Open source
- Internet of things
- Benefits the environment
- Contributes to world peace
- $insert_random_progressive_agenda_here
As impractical as it is, nobody should be surprised by the fact that it got so much traction over the years. Even more far fetched projects such as roads paved with solar panels[0] and various kinds of atmospheric water harvesters[1] are still being actively funded and developed as we speak, despite overwhelming evidence that they are never going to be economically viable.
It's a great idea, if you do it right, and scale it up, which is what industry had been doing for decades. The problem with the MIT version is it was a toy, that also didn't work, and was developed by people who had no grasp of the problem space.
If you look at a Hasbro Easy-Bake Oven, it would be easy to discount "ovens" as a good way of cooking food. They're too small, and the incandescent bulbs don't produce enough heat. How could anyone thing this was a good idea?
It is...unfortunate...that the MIT name was attached to a group of people trying to pass off shoddy malfunctioning knockoffs of toys as new innovation.
The premise of this project was that it would allow farmers to run parallel experiments to discover optimal growing conditions. The "food computers" were meant to inform large-scale production, not replace it.
The problem is this sort of matter is of course already studied by agricultural departments around the world, with a lot more competency. There is already a ton of research into, e.g. the effects of soil pH on potato production. Media Lab's food computer seems like a case of NIH, and probably wouldn't have happened if MIT had an agricultural department.
Same, I just don't see a viable ROI. I'm not a farmer but it looks like their "food computer" could produce the calorie equivalent of one meal per month at most?
I'm starting to get the feeling that a large number of industry (Tech & VC, let's say) names with which I'm familiar are just scamming, at least among the "announcement -> vaporware -> incredible journey" publicity pipeline participants. If this is true it would really undergird the possibility that the top of the industry is just a bunch of guys who went to the same kinds of schools, universities, and fraternities, and just keep recycling each other over and over. It's not failing-up, it's the glass-floor.
In industry you _eventually_ need to show result and earn money, it never get to that part in academia.
beginloop
People publish papers that are practically useless but can be cited by other people in the same position, which then improves their standings
endloop
>If this is true it would really undergird the possibility that the top of the industry is just a bunch of guys who went to the same kinds of schools, universities, and fraternities, and just keep recycling each other over and over. It's not failing-up, it's the glass-floor.
This is true for every major industry and the political class and has been true for decades.
I wonder whether the Media Lab is going to be shut down after the recent revelations, or the MIT administration is going to pretend that nothing happened.
TED Talks lost their luster long ago when they turned into regional self-hosted events with less and less quality checks and more speakers doing sales and promotions.
I feel like they've been that way for over a decade at the very least. While I may be ignorant of such, I know of no outcomes of TED talks that led to new developments or progress or breakthroughs. The astronomical cost of attendance allows some wealthy people to intellectually slum when --given their resources-- they could already be involved in remarkable efforts.
I actually think this sounds like a dope project and I would love for it to succeed.
BUT, come on folks, refugees are not your fucking PR opportunity. I can't imagine how insulting it must be to need food, shelter, and a source of income, and some clueless techbro from across the globe sends you a malfunctioning Raspberry Pi grow tent. How disconnected from reality does one have to be to think this is a good idea.
These people have no ethics, if it furthers their narrative they will spin any tangentially relevant story.
Unlike Engineering, there is no Board of Engineers to hold you (or your company) to account for lying about the capabilities of your core product or whether its actually working for the vulnerable people used in a company's marketing :c
The object is a good idea. The PR and selling around it isn't. Everything in the story belies the main claims of the article, and that's the only problem I see - the difference between hustle and reality.
This is exactly the ethos of move fast and break things that will make the right things happen. They shipped to real customers in real environments. They used technology to address problems. They iterated on the design. All just like you're supposed to do for any successful product.
Where they screwed up is claiming to "make the world a better place" before they really did it. They're still in product-market fit phase, not techbros save the world phase.
I hate that this is called a "food computer." I know what they are now from reading the article, but it's totally non-intuitive. Why are publications using this in headlines? They're mini grow labs. Pretty straightforward.
I was around when they built the first one (I was taking an IAP class on bio-entrepeneurship) and the big idea was that the computer would (1) make the food more nutritious (2) "democratize" agrifood commodities regardless of geography and (3) be fully automatic.
Sounded like a cool idea... too bad Caleb is a scammer.
I find it amazing how people think that "farming box machines" (which in my book includes hydroponics) are somehow better than just ploughing a furrow, watering it, planting and then proceeding to water and fertilise as needed. Hydroponics does make sense if you grow cannabis.
There is also a misconception about "shade plants". All of the major plant crops that I know of want full sun. Sunburn in avacodos (for example) is due to pruning or exposed stem/bark and the reason why paint (er, sunblock) is applied is an efficiency measure; the exposed stem also stimulates fruit formation so you don't want too many leaves (which naturally would prevent sunburn).
Back when I was at MIT, the shiny Media Lab building was right across the street from my room. We told a lot of stories about it, usually starting with some variant of "as you all know, the Media Lab is the coolest place in the world". That was its reputation, but I always thought there was something off about the place, and avoided anything associated with it.
The fake it till you make it mantra looks like has gone too far in this case. Screwing with people's food supply, especially refugees who're in no position to push back, is just beyond merely questionable.
There is obviously some attempt to invoke anger here but it's hard for me to understand exactly at what.
Another title could have been: Nonprofit sends food growing technology to refugee camp. That's a pretty generous use of the word "used".
Should they have intentionally kept silent about the fact that they were actively working with refugee camps until they had peer reviewed proof that it worked?
No one here did anything wrong. The technology failed. They will either iterate or decide the idea isn't worth pursuing. No outrage necessary.
At some point it seems like MIT as an institution is going to have to start cutting their losses and save face somehow to retain their academic reputation. The Media Lab seems like a logical first choice for a lab to be axed.
It's disappointing seeing such behavior from individuals from what I've always considered one of the most respectable institutions in the U.S. There'd be no surprise from me if this sort of thing came from any one of the other myriad startups scattered around the company selling empty promises and snake oil. But scummy scam-like behavior? From MIT?? I was shocked when I came across the claims saying that researchers were made to use outside plants with the PFC during demonstrations.
It amazes me how things were easy to get moving in 1993.
Imagine that applied to today.
Well, today, it would be a start up claiming to have secured telnet, with a webapp, carry over session between mobile and desktop, and gathering telemetry between each connection.
(apologies, this has turned into my yearly rant of "make protocols, not apps!")
[+] [-] iancmceachern|6 years ago|reply
After lots of investment in both time and capital I was never able to get one to work. The software stack was unsupported and after talking with everyone I could I was unable to find anyone who was able to get the software working outside of the walls of MiT.
I then worked on a related product, growcomputer (www.growcomputer.com) but ultimately there just isn't enough value in these kinds of products. As others have posted here and in previous HN posts on this topic, the A&E schools and plant scientists have long ago figured all this out, one can already purchase plant growth chambers, all manner of hydroponic and aeroponic systems, nutrients, controllers, climate controlled greenhouses, etc.
Ultimately it comes down to the economy of powering plant growth with electric lights. It just does't add up except in specific applications like mushroom farming, and very high end "foodie" niche markets. The value proposition just isn't there.
edited - formatting
[+] [-] samvher|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Alex3917|6 years ago|reply
If you want to make money growing food though, mushroom farming seems like the best bet. Right now there are several edible mushroom species where, if you were to start growing them commercially, you would literally be the only person in the country offering them for sale. And some of them solve serious culinary or food science problems. E.g. right now impossible burger has been able to do a pretty good job imitating the texture of protein in ground beef, but they haven't yet been able to do a great job at imitating the texture of the fat components.
[+] [-] raxxorrax|6 years ago|reply
But I agree. I looked at this as a hobbyist (no, not for weed) and thought it could be helpful since senors and hardware are currently as cheap as they are. But industrial agriculture has complete different set of problems.
Aside from that plants in general seem to be quite resilient and don't require perfectly balanced control loops. One might think so, but your room plants constantly dying is probably just due to not watering them for months.
So in the end having a few seeds and a bit of water probably beats the food truck full of tech on all levels of efficiency.
Still an interesting topic to create these environments. But perhaps not the correct approach to solve food shortages or help with problems large scale agriculture faces.
[+] [-] iamleppert|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sword_smith|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wil421|6 years ago|reply
Not the best plants to grow especially in a tight space. Cucumbers will take over everything especially close together. The bush varieties are good for container gardens but the tendrils will attach to other plants. I have to keep them off of other plants or provide a trellis to grow. Last year I got an infestation of cucumber beetles. Tomatoes grow like weeds and don't latch on to neighboring plants. Both grow from seed like wild fire.
Lettuce and basil do not provide enough nutrition for this kind of setup. Enough said. Arugula is more profitable than most but will bolt with heat.
>But despite all this money and brainpower, things soon went awry in Jordan. Schroeder, in a phone interview, told Spectrum that the conditions at the NCARE site were harsh, with a very dry desert climate and high indoor temperatures. The power frequently failed, which shut down the building’s air conditioning and the food computers’ LEDs. When the air conditioning conked out, it sometimes reached 45 °C (113 °F) inside the lab.
>Worse, the Wi-Fi was unreliable. A Wi-Fi connection was necessary to remotely monitor some of the parameters inside the grow chambers, which were equipped with cameras and sensors that measured temperature, humidity, and pH levels.
I am in the Deep South and that temperature is not going to work at all. Temps in the 90s will stop my plants from growing, cause flower drop and stop fruiting but humidity here is also a factor, not a factor in Jordan.
Stable power and wifi in a refugee camp? Keep dreaming. This part should be automated with sensors and a solar battery (or backup batter in case of power loss).
I am planning a couple projects with my Raspberry Pi's to collect data and do some automation for my plants. Once I have something going I will submit a few things to HN.
Let me know if anyone wants to know more or has any questions.
[+] [-] dragontamer|6 years ago|reply
Basil is also very easy to grow, so its a great beginner plant.
[+] [-] adammenges|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cortesoft|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paulgerhardt|6 years ago|reply
It should be noted that land grant schools were solely set up all over the country a hundred and fifty years ago to tackle exactly this domain of problems and not without some irony that MIT is one.
[1] https://twitter.com/sarahtaber_bww/status/117189565787294105...
[+] [-] Laforet|6 years ago|reply
It does tick all the boxes for an attractive startup though:
- Disruptive tech
- Charismatic (?) founder
- Peer-reviewed research
- Open source
- Internet of things
- Benefits the environment
- Contributes to world peace
- $insert_random_progressive_agenda_here
As impractical as it is, nobody should be surprised by the fact that it got so much traction over the years. Even more far fetched projects such as roads paved with solar panels[0] and various kinds of atmospheric water harvesters[1] are still being actively funded and developed as we speak, despite overwhelming evidence that they are never going to be economically viable.
[0]:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Roadways
[1]:https://m.phys.org/news/2017-04-device-air-powered-sun.html
[+] [-] Lazare|6 years ago|reply
If you look at a Hasbro Easy-Bake Oven, it would be easy to discount "ovens" as a good way of cooking food. They're too small, and the incandescent bulbs don't produce enough heat. How could anyone thing this was a good idea?
It is...unfortunate...that the MIT name was attached to a group of people trying to pass off shoddy malfunctioning knockoffs of toys as new innovation.
[+] [-] catalogia|6 years ago|reply
The problem is this sort of matter is of course already studied by agricultural departments around the world, with a lot more competency. There is already a ton of research into, e.g. the effects of soil pH on potato production. Media Lab's food computer seems like a case of NIH, and probably wouldn't have happened if MIT had an agricultural department.
[+] [-] olalonde|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rhizome|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Aperocky|6 years ago|reply
In industry you _eventually_ need to show result and earn money, it never get to that part in academia.
beginloop People publish papers that are practically useless but can be cited by other people in the same position, which then improves their standings endloop
[+] [-] minikites|6 years ago|reply
This is true for every major industry and the political class and has been true for decades.
[+] [-] kkarakk|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mepian|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fouc|6 years ago|reply
Eric Drexler, the "Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology" author, got his PhD at the MIT Media Lab.
>His Ph.D. work was the first doctoral degree on the topic of molecular nanotechnology
[+] [-] TTPrograms|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mattnewport|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] manigandham|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wavefunction|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] knzhou|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nostromo|6 years ago|reply
BUT, come on folks, refugees are not your fucking PR opportunity. I can't imagine how insulting it must be to need food, shelter, and a source of income, and some clueless techbro from across the globe sends you a malfunctioning Raspberry Pi grow tent. How disconnected from reality does one have to be to think this is a good idea.
[+] [-] kbrosnan|6 years ago|reply
https://twitter.com/SarahTaber_bww/status/117189568344985600... https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=industrial%20growth%20...
[+] [-] StudentStuff|6 years ago|reply
Unlike Engineering, there is no Board of Engineers to hold you (or your company) to account for lying about the capabilities of your core product or whether its actually working for the vulnerable people used in a company's marketing :c
[+] [-] whymauri|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] web007|6 years ago|reply
This is exactly the ethos of move fast and break things that will make the right things happen. They shipped to real customers in real environments. They used technology to address problems. They iterated on the design. All just like you're supposed to do for any successful product.
Where they screwed up is claiming to "make the world a better place" before they really did it. They're still in product-market fit phase, not techbros save the world phase.
[+] [-] jrochkind1|6 years ago|reply
It's absolutely disgusting to make a living for yourself by pretending to help refugees and lying about it.
[+] [-] madengr|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] snagglegaggle|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] turdnagel|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whymauri|6 years ago|reply
Sounded like a cool idea... too bad Caleb is a scammer.
[+] [-] DonHopkins|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikorym|6 years ago|reply
There is also a misconception about "shade plants". All of the major plant crops that I know of want full sun. Sunburn in avacodos (for example) is due to pruning or exposed stem/bark and the reason why paint (er, sunblock) is applied is an efficiency measure; the exposed stem also stimulates fruit formation so you don't want too many leaves (which naturally would prevent sunburn).
[+] [-] RachelF|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] knzhou|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ww520|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PeterStuer|6 years ago|reply
Next time these cons will sell 'save the planet with geo-engineering' to another gullable audience and we'll all be screwed big-time.
[+] [-] anm89|6 years ago|reply
Another title could have been: Nonprofit sends food growing technology to refugee camp. That's a pretty generous use of the word "used".
Should they have intentionally kept silent about the fact that they were actively working with refugee camps until they had peer reviewed proof that it worked?
No one here did anything wrong. The technology failed. They will either iterate or decide the idea isn't worth pursuing. No outrage necessary.
[+] [-] tony_cannistra|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] t_mann|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] algaeontoast|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lixtra|6 years ago|reply
I’m very happy to read that some science teachers in the US get it right.
[+] [-] atsushin|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pts_|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] keyle|6 years ago|reply
Imagine that applied to today.
Well, today, it would be a start up claiming to have secured telnet, with a webapp, carry over session between mobile and desktop, and gathering telemetry between each connection.
(apologies, this has turned into my yearly rant of "make protocols, not apps!")