Grow Bots in Local Agriculture; do we really want robots planting our gardens?

What Grow Bots students at Georgia Tech are aiming to identify is how can technology and robotics be developed to intersect the movement towards backyard and local community gardening. Evidently their sponsors are scrambling to capitalize on this movement. What they hope to find is that maybe techies and sponsors can come up with 'solutions' that will make gardening easier for Americans.

So you think having a "Grow-Bot" running your local garden is a smarter way to go?
We are currently in a world where the obesity rate is obscene, where our children are becoming lazy addicts who get no closer to the earth than with a video game called Farm Ville. We have reached a place where most US citizens are consumed with the quick and easy. And now we want to take this a step further by cutting out a portion of our culture that encourages activity, family, community and self sustainability? Encouraging gardeners to do their watering and fertilizing from a computer monitored sensor device? How is this a step in the right direction?

Lets focus on what's wrong with the technologies and the state of our industrialized farming methods and get back to basics. For crying out loud, most Americans don't know the difference between a strawberry and a tomato plant. How will robots help with our learning curve?

What we urgently need low tech solutions for is to reduce our dependency on petroleum, fertilizers and electricity. Help local farmer simplify their lives, get their produce to market, connect consumers with growers. Create an affordable biogas device to convert our toilet and compost waste to methane gas for heating our greenhouses. Give us passive solar and thermal water heat and cooling. Build software that creates active minds, teach integrative gardening, networks organic seed producers with microgreens farms, learn us about what plants make good companions, give us natural solutions to plant diseases and garden pests.

But keep the agriculture giants like Monsanto and John Deer out of our communities cause what will happen once they get their fingers in the pie is that their community growbots will turn into the same monsters that have destroyed the small farms across the country. Next thing you'll see is they'll be monitoring our every movement, radio-tagging our animals, forcing us to use their GMO seeds and fertilizers while building dependencies that undermine our movement away from the blight they have wreaked on our earth.

Aquaponics for Haiti

The Farm in a Box is simply an example of sustainable food production systems. That they are getting so much press attention is not because the models created are so remarkable. They represent a concept of gardening that heralds the greatest farming revolution since the diesel tractor. Only instead of creating machine and petrol dependency, aquaponics creates opportunity for intensive farming that is applicable to smaller rural and urban food production settings.

What makes aquaponics ideal is that it requires no input of fertilizer, it conserves water (90% less than conventional in-ground), fish food can be raised through vermiculture or recycled chicken waste, etc, it produces edible fish, and is low labor, intensive food production that everyone enjoys, including children.

In a disaster setting as in Haiti, a low cost, non-electric aquaponic system may be installed and in full production microgreens within 7-10 days. Arugula, kale, collards and other greens within 3-5 weeks. Tomatoes, melons, broccoli, strawberries, okra, eggplant, peppers, legumes and etc within in 6-12 weeks.

In Haiti where wood, gas and electricity for boiling water are a problem, systems may be designed that require no sunlight and will germinate grains and legumes into high quality digestible protein in the form of sprouts within days.

As a company seeking real solutions, low input, high output farming is top of the list of priorities.

As part of Earth Solutions on-going interest in green energy technology, we are focusing on an alternative energy source more affordable and less reliant on weather conditions than wind and solar powered sources: Anaerobic Biogas (methane) Digesters.

Biogas - an affordable alternative in the energy landscape

In recent history we have come to realize the effects on the planet due to inefficient usage of natural resources. Costs of carbon based fuels are rising, incurring financial hardships in many poorer areas of the world. Alternative energy options have been developed to counteract global warming effects. Solar cookers are one such option but are limited to only sunny days. An alternative energy apparatus is the anaerobic biogas digester.

What is an anaerobic biogas (methane) digester?

The anaerobic biogas digester is an apparatus formed by a double polyethylene bag, an exit valve and safety valve. Inside the bag excrements are fermented, giving as a result the production of a natural gas called biogas. This biogas can be used to heat and cook food, to create light, to heat farm animals, and generally, as an extra energy source. The fermented excrements that exit the biogas (methane) digester can be used as an organic fertilizer. In the production of biogas, you can use manure from cows, pigs, horses, goats, or even human feces. Installing a homemade anaerobic biogas (methane) digester is not very costly. Nevertheless, you will have to invest at least $120 in the cost of materials and installation. The amount of materials is directly related to the size of the anaerobic methane digester, whose length can vary from 5 meters to 50 meters.

In order to install a methane digester with 13 meters in length, you should get:

• 34 meters of 8-caliber transparent tubular polyethylene plastic with 4 meters of circumference

• 8 plastic 10-liter buckets

• 2 meters of a 1 1/4-inch plastic transparent hose

• A PVC "T" 1" thick

• A male PVC adapter, 1"

• A female PVC adapter, 1"

• 2 PVC elbows (90°), 1"

• 1 meter of PVC tubing, 1"

• A PVC plug to fit 1" PVC tubing

• Two rigid plastic washers with a hole in the center equal to 1"

• A two-liter bottle of soda or other equivalent container

• 3 car tire inner tubes, cut into two pieces equal in shape and size to the plastic washer, and the rest to set aside as tying materials are needed later in construction

• 8 empty fertilizer sacks

• A 1/2" metal tube

• A used garden hose

• A tube of PVC cement

Case Study/ Success Story

In many parts of the world energy is not only costly but also difficult to receive. The cost of carbon fuel had reached $15 per tank of gas in Santa Fe, Costa Rica, a price native families simply weren't able to afford. For a short period fire wood was used as primary source for cooking and heating. Utilizing an open fire in their homes, however, ended up producing more of a health hazard and environmental decline rather than providing safe and sustainable energy. A group of Costa Rican women took initiative to find a solution for the looming energy supply shortage in their community. In 2006, the UN Women's Group in Vienna provided aid in form of donations and along with the technical assistance of the Agriculture ministry office in Guatuso, the town of Santa Fe, Costa Rica, was able to build 16 bio-digesters. Bio-digesters provide an excellent and affordable energy source. The apparatus not only took care of the environmental and health threat from the burning of the firewood but simultaneously solved the problem of animal waste for the dairy producing town. The group of women continues to help other communities in their area to use bio-digesters as a viable energy resource.