The Reason MIT Is Shutting its 'Food Computer' Project

Well intentioned, but overhyped, perhaps fraudulently. JL

Noam Cohen reports in the New York Times:

Once-celebrated M.I.T. Media Lab micro-greenhouses were supposed to grow food under any conditions. In the end, they worked under almost none. The OpenAg project focused on designing and deploying food computers, small high-tech greenhouses to allow crops to thrive in thin air, without soil or sunlight, under controlled conditions.(But) the food computers could not independently control the conditions within their boxes, changing the amount of light would raise the temperature. Data collected would therefore have little scientific significance.The project has been accused of misleading sponsors and the public by exaggerating results.

The once-celebrated M.I.T. Media Lab micro-greenhouses were supposed to grow food under virtually any conditions. In the end, they worked under almost none. And now, M.I.T. has turned off the lights, possibly for good.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology confirmed Thursday that it had mostly closed the Open Agricultural Initiative, known as OpenAg. The project has been accused of misleading sponsors and the public by exaggerating results, while the Media Lab has been under scrutiny for its financial ties to the convicted sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein.

OpenAg received millions of dollars in corporate sponsorships and was promoted in glowing news features, including a “60 Minutes” segment about the Media Lab called “The Future Factory.” M.I.T. shut down the project late last week after a sweeping assessment, according to a statement.

The project was a favorite of Joichi Ito, who was the Media Lab’s director until September, when he resigned under pressure after his efforts to conceal his financial connections to Mr. Epstein were disclosed. The financier killed himself in jail in August after being indicted on federal sex-trafficking charges.

The OpenAg project focused on designing and deploying so-called food computers, small high-tech greenhouses meant to allow crops to thrive in thin air, without soil or sunlight and under precisely controlled conditions. The project also operated larger “food servers,” which are housed in shipping containers about 15 miles north of the M.I.T. campus in Middleton, Mass.

According to the M.I.T. statement, the university’s vice president for research, Maria Zuber, “halted OpenAg activities, pending completion of ongoing assessments.” Dr. Zuber consulted with other members of the executive committee running the Media Lab and agreed to permit some documentation and design work to resume. M.I.T. provided no timetable for finishing those assessments.

Throughout the tumult at the OpenAg project, its leader, Caleb Harper, had been posting to Instagram photos and a video of what looked like experiments. Mr. Harper did not respond to requests for comment this week.

Mr. Harper, an architect without any scientific training, has described food computers as integral to a “fourth agricultural revolution.” In a TED Talk from 2015, which has more than 1.8 million views, Mr. Harper laid out his vision: Food computer owners would share their data on optimal growing conditions — what OpenAg calls “climate recipes” — with fellow food producers around the world, who would use that information to improve yields from their own food computers.

According to former researchers at the project, however, Mr. Harper made exaggerated or false claims to the project’s corporate sponsors as well as in talks and interviews with the news media. They said plants bought in stores had been inserted into the food computers so visitors would think they had been grown there.

More broadly, the researchers said, the food computers could not independently control the conditions within their boxes — changing the amount of light would raise the temperature, and so on. Whatever data was collected by the food computers would therefore have little scientific significance. Nonetheless, the lab produced a paper for a peer-reviewed journal that claimed to have used machine learning to discover the ideal combination of light, nutrients, temperature and water to grow the most flavorful basil.

The independent news organization ProPublica and the Boston radio station WBUR reported last month that the larger food servers in Middleton were dumping wastewater with 20 times the legal limit of nitrogen underground, an apparent violation of state regulations. M.I.T. halted the research at Middleton and said it was evaluating how the water had been disposed there. The nitrogen levels were not an immediate danger to the public, the town administrator, Andy Sheehan, said in an interview, but could lead to overgrowth of plants that can threaten local wildlife.

On Thursday, IEEE Spectrum, the publication of the one of the world’s largest professional organizations devoted to engineering and applied sciences, released a lengthy investigation on OpenAg. The investigation examined OpenAg’s plan to deliver personal food computers to a Syrian refugee camp in Jordan through the United Nations World Food Program.

According to the investigation, Mr. Harper, in talks to sponsors and the public, described his pride in giving the refugees the means to grow their own food inside the camp.

As the IEEE Spectrum article noted, the food computers never made it to the camp itself, but were kept in a Jordanian research lab where they faltered because of hot, dry conditions and technical failures.