Will open-source farming topple agribusiness giants?

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It's arrived late, but agriculture is finally joining the networked economy. All we need now is to open-source sensor data and crop-growth strategies if we're going to feed tomorrow's urban populations, argues Caleb Harper of the MIT Media Lab

Agriculture is the backbone of human civilisation, but it's about to snap under our weight. The world is on the brink of a food crisis in which our current industrial models of agriculture will not support the projected population of nine billion by the year 2050. Our best hope for farming in the future lies with advances in technology: sensors, big data and networks. These advances will move us into an agricultural revolution that will feed more people, feed them more effectively and feed them sustainably.

In our current system of food production, an apple that you pick up at your local supermarket could be six months old and have travelled more than 18,500km to get from a New Zealand farm to your fruit bowl. Although preservation methods keep the apple from spoiling, it is likely to lose many of its vitamins and nutrients and close to all of its antioxidants. The cost of the apple is inflated in order to pay the many links in the supply chain, and the compounded energy needed to grow, store and package it contribute to the food system's one-third share of human-caused greenhouse-gas emissions, according to reports published by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research.

Even worse than the standards for fresh produce are those for processed foods that are high in caloric content but so low in nutritional value that, according to the US National Center for Biotechnology Information, they contribute to malnourishment and obesity. These foods are served up in schools and only compound the problem. The UK Health and Social Care Information Centre reports that 20 per cent of children in year six are obese.

So how can we feed the growing world population but make better, fresher, more nutritious food widely available? The answer lies in recognising agriculture for the science that it actually is.

For millennia, farmers have been manipulating land and plants under natural climate conditions in order to produce high volumes of desirable crops. The world relies on large, single-crop farms that are wherever the climate is best for a specific product. Often, best practices are defined by farms that produce the most saleable food at the lowest cost, with minimal concern for the environment, sustainability or nutrition.