Is the ‘Internet of Food’ turning over agriculture?

By , 16 April 2015 at 17:30
Is the ‘Internet of Food’ turning over agriculture?
Future Trends

Is the ‘Internet of Food’ turning over agriculture?

By , 16 April 2015 at 17:30

Smart Famrs will be the key for solution food problems.

Tags:

Oakland, California is known for a lot of things. When you mention its name, hippie protests in the 1960s, its proximity to Silicon Valley in the 1990s, or it being the third most violent American city today, all come to mind. It’s even been named one of the top five most “hipster” U.S. cities.

What you don’t think of when you talk about this city of about half-a-million people is farming. Maybe that’s because the nearest farms are more than a hundred miles away. But this hasn’t stopped Eric Maundu (watch below) who is innovating using aquaponics – the mix of the aquatic animals of aquaculture and hydroponics’ growing of plants in water – to farm under freeways and next to overflowing parking lots.

Eric’s technique, though odd-sounding and not hipster-vegan friendly, is actually being dubbed “the future of farming” as it uses about one-tenth the water as traditional farming. Add to that the lack of need for pesticides without the threat of soil-based insects and the fact that it symbiotically, simultaneously cultivates substenance by way of both plants and fish, Maundu’s urban farming becomes an exciting and innovative way to feed an exploding world population.

I’ll concede that this isn’t your average American farmer – Eric is a robotics engineer originally from Kenya! However, the technology he uses – ranging from sensors measuring crop behavoir, pH balance, insect and animal life, and temperature sensors to the plants tweeting when they need a drink – are becoming common practice in agricultural communities around the world. And it’s becoming more and more affordable as companies like Maundu’s Kijani Grows, experiment with implementing their technology across inexpensive tools like the under-$100 Raspberry Pi.

Agriculture

Can a small town farm be dubbed a smart city? And can smart farming come to crowded cities?

There is such a buzz around the smart city – generally defined as a city that incorporates technology into improving the lives of its citizens. But what about the rural communities of the world? While we like to pigeonhole them as low-tech and disconnected from the digital world we breathe, some of the best innovation is taking up residency on Main Street U.S.A. and Corn Row. Indeed, a small town or even farm can also be a smart city. And likewise, with 70 percent of the world living in cities by 2050, it’s just as important that we find ways to bring smart farming to the city.

With the world population multiplying faster than ever, topping eight billion by 2025, innovating how the world eats may be the smartest thing of all. Whether you agree with what’s causing it, there’s no doubt that climate change is happening, which leads to longer droughts like those plaguing the Western U.S., more intense storms that drown out crops, and extended heat waves. Essentially, it’s becoming harder to produce food, just when we have more mouths than ever to feed.  The Internet of Things in the farming world becomes an incredibly important solution to food scarcity and water scarcity.

Climate change agriculturePrecision architecture – also called smart farming or the Internet of Food by us layfolk – innovates on the 12,000-year-old way we eat by adding ICT-based digital support systems and Software as a Service (SaaS) with a lot of digital sensors and even more real-time data. It also adds computer-based imaging, agricultural drones, climate forecasting and even robots into the mix.

Smart farming isn’t just about feeding the world, but other life-essential things (protecting our crops, maintaining grain health and monitoring humidity levels). It may not sound terribly exciting but given the existing scarcity of resources globally and population pressure on land, this is an area that could impact the quality and quantity of many of our food essentials.

Images from | Wikipedia and Flickr

previous article

Sooner or later we will all need accessibility and inclusion features from our digital devices

Sooner or later we will all need accessibility and inclusion features from our digital devices
next article

This sector will outperform all others on UK job creation by 2020

This sector will outperform all others on UK job creation by 2020