Your Own Food

MakerGrower Manifesto

MakerGrower is a project providing alternatives to relying on global food industries by growing your own food - at home, supported by open research and technology.

Industrial food production issues

One of the last sightings of the Javan tiger which became extinct in the 1970s because its habitat had been turned into farmland.

Today, the massive centralized food economy has led to a plethora of severe issues for humankind and our planet. Health hazards are not just seen in the meat and dairy industry but are also in industrial vegetable production. The widespread and increasingly sophisticated application of pesticides may end deadly and has led to the rise of superweeds that are harder to contain every season. This is not just annoying or risking human health: Industrial agriculture commonly leads to soil degradation and significantly reduced biodiversity. The detrimental environmental impact of the food industry on the planet will remain visible on the planet for millennia to come due to abundant use of plastic packaging. Despite the awareness that plastic waste leads to e.g. growth of the impressive Great Pacific garbage patch, recent analysis shows that the behavior of global food chains is not improving. In addition, 40% of all food is wasted or lost, mainly at the production and retail stages before it even reaches consumers. Trying to find solutions we might need a radical shift away from industrial food: how about food that does not have to reach consumers because it is already there?

Hyperlocal food production in perspective

In the 1940s parks such as here in Manhattan were turned into victory gardens, providing additional food during war times.

With MakerGrower we want to improve health, environment and economic issues by growing food hyperlocally — at home. This is not a new hipster movement, urban agriculture was in fact already present in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and South America. In the early 19th century allotment gardens were introduced in Germany to fight poverty. The victory garden movement in the US/UK/Canada/Australia produced significant amounts of vegetable and fruits during war times, utilizing private and public gardens. Locally produced and ripe-picked fruits and vegetables are not just practical but also significantly more nutritious and flavor-rich. In addition, locally grown food can be more CO2 efficient by reducing transportation and waste generated in transport chains. The fact that plants consume CO2 and thus act as carbon sinks is especially important in cities. So called carbon domes significantly increase CO2 concentrations over cities. While hyperlocal food production sounds like a nice idea, how do we really and sustainably get there?

Everyone should be able to make their own food!

MakerGrower builds on concepts from free and open source software and open research to enable significant growth of hyperlocal food. Even today some might still think that excessive IP protections in form of patents, copyright and secrecy are the only way for developing value. At MakerGrower on the contrary, we believe in the demonstrated value of openness: The progress in modern software development in general and web technologies specifically was for the first time primarily empowered by open source — standing on the shoulders of giants. The rise of the internet was characterized by massively popular open source products: Many websites were built on the completely open source LAMP technology stack comprising the Linux operating system, Apache web server, MySQL database and PHP programming language. The open source Apache HTTP server server remains one of the most common web servers to date. Even today’s startups driving the web2.0 are commonly relying on the open source MEAN stack. But the open source movement is not limited to software, the hardware electronics world has also made moves in the direction of open source, albeit not as omnipresent as on the web. Examples are the open source Arduino microcontroller platform and open source hardware companies such as Adafruit and SparkFun. MakerGrower expands innovation and development in the domain of urban agriculture in a free and open way.

Let us build the foundations for communities of independent makers and growers, for all the hearts, brains and stomachs of this planet and beyond. Visit MakerGrower.space or follow us on social media @MakerGrower to learn more.