In the early days of personal computers one of the selling points was the idea of keeping recipes on file, stored on the PC or a floppy disc. Ordered, retrievable, easily cross-referenced by ingredients, making it easy to make a shopping list and to follow the directions. No more tattered papers, no more lost recipes folded or stored in a book somewhere.
That never really took off. Yet cooking websites abound, cooking videos of all types and ethnicities, professional and amateur can be found. But recipe software, recipe programs, even recipe apps for phones and tablets never caught on with the intensity early PC promotion would have indicated.
So, you might wonder, what’s cooking?
How about computer-generated food? Maker fairs or computer labs are using 3D printers to create edibles.
Seems bizarre? Consider this: by the year 2050, estimates are the world population will reach nine billion. How we will this future population be fed? Do the resources exist? Can digital strategies address the needs to prepare for those sustenance needs? The answer may well be found in food technology.
By now you may have heard of 3-D printers. If you haven’t heard of them, here’s how a NY Times OpEd piece described them in 2013: “a 3-D printer is sort of like a hot-glue gun attached to a robotic arm. But instead of squeezing out glue, the tube extrudes plastic.” That OpEd was a light-hearted look at creating an entire meal, including the silverware and plates, using a 3-D printer. The 3-D printing has advanced considerably since 2013. Digital years make dog years seem slow.
Cornell and Columbia Universities have been working on 3-D printing of food. Digital development of food via natural products, stored for use in this form of “printing.” Think of printing as a euphemism for manufacturing. At Columbia, Professor of Mechanical Engineering Hod Lipson, has studied 3-D printing for the better part of two decades. He’s 3-D printed metals, plastics, and biomaterials. He came to realize 3D food printing was possible while researching printing complete 3D robots that could, in theory, “walk off the printer.” This required simultaneous use of many materials. At that same time Lipson noticed his students had begun to use food as test material in the labs.
This prompted Lipson to take a deeper look at what they could do with food. He narrowed it down to two basic approaches to 3D food printing. One involves powders, bound together during the printing process with liquid (usually water) during the process. The other, used by Lipson in his lab, is extrusion based. That means it uses syringes to deposit gels or pastes on specific locations as determined by the software’s recipe (so to speak). The early experimentation used various materials with varying levels of success. The materials were what the students tended have around: eggs, cookie dough, cheese, jam, pesto, flour. Perhaps his most interesting observation: “Cream cheese is something students like to work with a lot.”
Lipson and his students have developed 3D food printers, and are well on their way to creation of specialized 3D printed food products. The applications are infinite. Gauging input of calories, of sugars, or responding to medical or health needs by printing meals or snacks or match body chemistry.
Another approach to feeding a more populous planet is in creating ways to grow more food as efficiently as possible. Using digital strategy plus historical methodology, technologists have begun companies taking the initiative to feed the planet in abundance.
Freight Farms, a company in Boston with its roots in Clark University in nearby Worcester, is doing what’s been called Agronomy for a New Age. It’s based on Hydroponics.
Hydroponics goes back to a book by Francis Bacon published in 1627. It rose to cult status in use as a secret indoor marijuana growing method in the 1960s and early 70s. Other uses of hydroponics included indoor gardening in apartments and other closed areas.
What Freight Farms came up with, quite successfully, is new hydroponics farming, commercially known as the Leafy Green Machine. The concept is sustainability as bottom line, not a temporary solution. Freight Farms repurposes 40-foot shipping containers into Leafy Green Machines (“LGM”). The containers are retrofit to grow herbs and vegetables, no matter what the climate. They can be used 12 months a year. This removes the shipping and timing issues of fresh greens. To make a Freight Farm LGM work, seeds are planted in peat moss “grow plugs” in the machine. When they bud they get transplanted into a recycled plastic mesh. Next, the mesh is inserted into growing towers that are hung from hooks. Inside is a system continually recirculating nutrient-rich water. High-efficiency blue and red LED lighting system mimics sunlight.
Freight Farms adds even more digital strategy to the system. Environmental sensors balance temperature, humidity and carbon dioxide levels. With connectivity the container’s owners can monitor their operation anywhere in the world via computer. An iOS app enables remote adjustments to all the farm’s environmental components.
A Freight Farm trailer, aka a Leafy Green Machine, can grow as many as 7,500 plants in the 320 square feet of space it occupies. The company says a Leafy Green Machine will produce the equivalent yield of an acre of farmland while using 90 percent less water and no pesticides.
These containers are sold to clients worldwide. Google has one at its headquarters in Mountain View, CA, to produce greens for its employees’ meals. Restaurant groups and grocery suppliers have bought Leafy Green Machines. Similarly, Square Roots in Brooklyn a company started by entrepreneurs Tobias Peggs and Kimbal Musk (yes, Elon Musk’s brother) is gaining a great deal of attention. It’s Freight Farms’ largest customer, boasting a full parking lot full of LGMs. It has a mighty vision. The Square Roots parking lot full of LGM units is populated by resident local growers and entrepreneurs, enrolled in the Square Roots Urban Farming curriculum. A 13 month program, the Resident Entrepreneurs, as it says on the website, “take part in a curriculum of skill-based training, professional development plans, and experiential learning in the four pillars of Farming, Business, Community, and Leadership. The coursework spans classes, workshops, coaching and training sessions, and practical experiences empowering each Resident Entrepreneur to run their farming businesses and get connected with the real food community.”
The LGMs are self-contained, and thus they can program the simulated daytime hours inside the farms to run at night when energy costs are lower. This is efficient, ecologically sound, and it's a sustainable system that has legs. Musk’s vision for Square Roots is to expand the containers beyond Brooklyn and into cities across the country, far and wide. In an interview with Popular Mechanics, Musk was quoted as saying, "My hope is that we are in every metro area in America as fast as we can get there."
Be it metro areas in the US or North America, or water-challenged areas in Africa, hydroponic agronomy for the New Age or 3D Printing of edibles both represent ways of dealing with feeding an ever-growing population. Digital strategy and technology plus creative innovation and science all coalesce to address sustainability, and to prevent or cure famine. These are positive leaps forward for the benefit of mankind.
Dean Landsman is a NYC-based Digital Strategist who writes a monthly column for PR for People “The Connector.”
