Open-sourced food production – the future of urban diets?

Scientists are developing open-source technologies that reward locally grown foods, cutting down on shipping and improving nutrition

As much as 40% of the urban diet could eventually be produced in specialized domestic grow-boxes, an agricultural scientist has explained, cutting down on unnecessary shipping and also providing fresher, more nutritional food.

Caleb Harper, director of the Open Agriculture Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is developing sustainable food systems, including boxes that create controlled environments to grow specific types of food. Certain combinations of temperature, humidity and soil can be optimised for certain crops, such as tomatoes, and that "recipe" can be shared through the lab's open source work to recreate it anywhere in the world.