The Solution to Food Deserts is in Open Source Solutions

A Food Desert is a location that has limited access to healthy and affordable food. About 23.5 million people in the United States live in food deserts according to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). These areas are usually in low-income areas especially. Furthermore, Food Deserts negatively impact the health of the populations that live in those areas. For example, those living in Food Deserts are 55% less likely to have as healthy of a diet compared to those who do not live there. Many residents are forced to eat processed foods and fast foods due to the lack of access of groceries and fresh produce. I strongly urge everyone exploring this issue to also explore the USDA’s Food Access Atlas. It shows you a breakdown of the amount of areas in the United States without proper food access.

Several Nonprofit organizations have developed to help mitigate this issue. Many take a mobility approach to help provide fresh produce. Fresh Express and Twin Cities Mobile Market are both Nonprofit organizations that put a grocery store in a bus and drive to communities that do not have access. While these non-profits are doing amazing for communities, it can be hard to scale. I believe the solution to these problems is in local agriculture and hydroponics is at the forefront of it. Hydroponics is method of growing plants on water rather than on soil. In an article by Issie Lapowsky, she does a great job of highlighting how these systems can bring fresh produce to Food Deserts. Hydroponics in general also have many benefits compared to soil grown crops. For example, it is more efficient in water consumption and can produce 3 to 10 times more crop in a given space.

This is a tremendously powerful technology that could do wonders for these communities. However, I believe that this technology should be open source to give those in Food Deserts the ability to innovate and use this technology locally. Similar to how Arduino has helped engineers prototype so many solutions, I believe this space needs an open source approach. One company called HydroBot is taking this approach and made an open source hydroponic system that anyone could use. However, they still have a ways to go to build a community and infrastructure as strong as Arduino.