From high-tech rooftop aquaponics farms in Florida through underground farms in Chicago to Will Allen's incredible Growing Power project, aquaponics has the potential to massively increase the areas available for growing high quality food.
Eric Maundu is farming on the contaminated industrial wastelands of West Oakland with his company Kijani Grows. He also designs and builds aquaponic systems for homes, gardens, schools and corporate settings.But what makes Maundu's efforts even more innovative is that he is linking up his gardens to online technologies and social networking opportunities. This from the Fair Companies blurb for the video:
Aquaponics has become popular in recent years among urban gardeners and DIY tinkerers, but Maundu- who is trained in industrial robotics- has taken the agricultural craft one step further and made his gardens smart. Using sensors (to detect water level, pH and temperature), microprocessors (mostly the open-source Arduino microcontroller), relay cards, clouds and social media networks (Twitter and Facebook), Maundu has programmed his gardens to tweet when there's a problem (i.e. not enough water) or when there's news (i.e. an over-abundance of food to share).
We have seen twitter-enabled hydroponics before, but Maundu's gardens do seem like the next step in creating the "internet of food".