By Laurene Williams, HoneyColony Original
MIT Media Lab master’s candidate Jennifer Broutin Farah wants to empower us via her novel approach to putting food on the dinner plate. Farah has invented a food production system that lets city dwellers become farmers while foregoing the need for land and soil.
Her in-home, soil-free, aeroponic gardening concept, which is controlled by a mobile app, mists plants with water, supplies oxygen to roots, and produces yields, according to Broutin Farah, that far exceed their counterparts grown in soil—by a factor of six.
SproutsIO organizes the roots into pods and can grow a range of produce including carrots, potatoes, tomatoes, beans, peas, and leafy greens.
By being able to regulate food production at home, consumers can eliminate the amount of waste in their refrigerators.
In effect, Broutin Farah’s approach is part of a larger ethos that’s shifting the production model of the Industrial Revolution away from giant profits-over-people corporations and into the hands of the individual consumer.
Like 3D printing, SproutsIO has the power to decentralize a highly profitable monolithic industry that is becoming increasingly contentious as consumers continue to educate themselves about pesticide use, GMOs, Colony Collapse Disorder, fast food, junk food , and the ongoing scientific debate about whether or not Big Agra actually cares about our health and well-being.
With SproutsIO, Farah offers a bright promise for all us to be able to grow our own food organically while supporting a sustainable solution for our overburdened environment. And perhaps we would no longer need to spend the necessary time lobbying so vociferously against corporations for the fundamental right to know when a genetically modified organism pops up in our local grocery store. Each of us could band together—on a substantial scale—to control the production of the foods we eat. Now that’s power.
Check out Jennifer Broukhim Farah’s site here.
Laurene Williams is the Senior Editor at HoneyColony.
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