A garden in my apartment
-
0:01 - 0:03I, like many of you,
-
0:03 - 0:09am one of the two billion people
on Earth who live in cities. -
0:09 - 0:12And there are days --
I don't know about the rest of you -- -
0:12 - 0:16but there are days when I palpably feel
-
0:16 - 0:18how much I rely on other people
-
0:19 - 0:21for pretty much everything in my life.
-
0:21 - 0:24And some days, that can even
be a little scary. -
0:25 - 0:27But what I'm here
to talk to you about today -
0:27 - 0:30is how that same interdependence
-
0:30 - 0:34is actually an extremely
powerful social infrastructure -
0:34 - 0:36that we can actually harness
-
0:36 - 0:41to help heal some
of our deepest civic issues, -
0:41 - 0:44if we apply open-source collaboration.
-
0:45 - 0:46A couple of years ago,
-
0:46 - 0:50I read an article by New York Times
writer Michael Pollan, -
0:50 - 0:54in which he argued that growing
even some of our own food -
0:54 - 0:57is one of the best things
that we can do for the environment. -
0:58 - 1:00Now at the time that I was reading this,
-
1:00 - 1:02it was the middle of the winter
-
1:02 - 1:05and I definitely did not have room
for a lot of dirt -
1:05 - 1:07in my New York City apartment.
-
1:07 - 1:09So I was basically just willing to settle
-
1:09 - 1:11for just reading the next Wired magazine
-
1:11 - 1:14and finding out how the experts
were going to figure out -
1:14 - 1:17how to solve all these problems
for us in the future. -
1:17 - 1:19But that was actually exactly the point
-
1:19 - 1:21that Michael Pollan
was making in this article -- -
1:21 - 1:24it's precisely when we hand over
-
1:24 - 1:27the responsibility
for all these things to specialists -
1:27 - 1:31that we cause the kind of messes
that we see with the food system. -
1:32 - 1:35So, I happen to know
a little bit from my own work -
1:35 - 1:40about how NASA has been using hydroponics
-
1:40 - 1:42to explore growing food in space.
-
1:43 - 1:47And that you can actually
get optimal nutritional yield -
1:47 - 1:53by running a kind of high-quality
liquid soil over plants' root systems. -
1:54 - 1:56Now to a vegetable plant,
-
1:56 - 2:00my apartment has got to be
about as foreign as outer space. -
2:00 - 2:03But I can offer some natural light
-
2:03 - 2:05and year-round climate control.
-
2:05 - 2:07Fast-forward two years later:
-
2:07 - 2:09we now have window farms,
-
2:09 - 2:11which are vertical, hydroponic platforms
-
2:11 - 2:13for food-growing indoors.
-
2:14 - 2:16And the way it works
is that there's a pump at the bottom, -
2:16 - 2:20which periodically sends this liquid
nutrient solution up to the top, -
2:20 - 2:23which then trickles down
through plants' root systems -
2:23 - 2:25that are suspended in clay pellets --
-
2:25 - 2:26so there's no dirt involved.
-
2:27 - 2:32Now light and temperature vary
with each window's microclimate, -
2:32 - 2:36so a window farm requires a farmer,
-
2:36 - 2:37and she must decide
-
2:37 - 2:41what kind of crops she is going
to put in her window farm, -
2:41 - 2:45and whether she is going
to feed her food organically. -
2:45 - 2:46Back at the time,
-
2:46 - 2:49a window farm was no more
than a technically complex idea -
2:49 - 2:52that was going to require
a lot of testing. -
2:52 - 2:55And I really wanted it
to be an open project, -
2:55 - 2:56because hydroponics
-
2:56 - 2:59is one of the fastest
growing areas of patenting -
2:59 - 3:00in the United States right now,
-
3:00 - 3:04and could possibly become
another area like Monsanto, -
3:04 - 3:07where we have a lot of corporate
intellectual property -
3:07 - 3:10in the way of people's food.
-
3:10 - 3:14So I decided that,
instead of creating a product, -
3:14 - 3:15what I was going to do
-
3:15 - 3:18was open this up
to a whole bunch of codevelopers. -
3:19 - 3:22The first few systems that we created,
they kind of worked. -
3:22 - 3:24We were actually able to grow
about a salad a week -
3:25 - 3:27in a typical New York City
apartment window. -
3:27 - 3:29And we were able to grow cherry tomatoes
-
3:29 - 3:31and cucumbers, all kinds of stuff.
-
3:31 - 3:32But the first few systems
-
3:32 - 3:36were these leaky, loud power-guzzlers
-
3:36 - 3:39that Martha Stewart
would definitely never have approved. -
3:39 - 3:41(Laughter)
-
3:41 - 3:43So to bring on more codevelopers,
-
3:43 - 3:46what we did was we created
a social media site -
3:46 - 3:48on which we published the designs,
-
3:48 - 3:50we explained how they worked,
-
3:50 - 3:52and we even went so far
-
3:52 - 3:56as to point out everything
that was wrong with these systems. -
3:56 - 3:58And then we invited people
all over the world -
3:58 - 4:00to build them and experiment with us.
-
4:01 - 4:04So actually now on this website,
-
4:04 - 4:06we have 18,000 people.
-
4:06 - 4:10And we have window farms
all over the world. -
4:10 - 4:14What we're doing
is what NASA or a large corporation -
4:14 - 4:18would call R&D,
or research and development. -
4:18 - 4:21But what we call it is R&D-I-Y,
-
4:21 - 4:23or "research and develop it yourself."
-
4:23 - 4:25(Laughter)
-
4:25 - 4:27So, for example, Jackson came along
-
4:27 - 4:31and suggested that we use air pumps
instead of water pumps. -
4:31 - 4:33It took building a whole bunch
of systems to get it right, -
4:33 - 4:37but once we did, we were able to cut
our carbon footprint nearly in half. -
4:38 - 4:41Tony in Chicago has been taking on
growing experiments, -
4:41 - 4:43like lots of other window farmers,
-
4:43 - 4:46and he's been able to get
his strawberries to fruit -
4:46 - 4:48for nine months of the year
in low-light conditions -
4:48 - 4:51by simply changing out
the organic nutrients. -
4:52 - 4:57And window farmers in Finland
have been customizing their window farms -
4:57 - 4:59for the dark days of the Finnish winters
-
4:59 - 5:01by outfitting them with LED grow lights
-
5:01 - 5:04that they're now making
open source and part of the project. -
5:04 - 5:07So window farms have been evolving
-
5:07 - 5:10through a rapid versioning process
similar to software. -
5:11 - 5:13And with every open source project,
-
5:13 - 5:15the real benefit is the interplay
-
5:15 - 5:20between the specific concerns
of people customizing their systems -
5:20 - 5:21for their own particular concerns,
-
5:21 - 5:23and the universal concerns.
-
5:23 - 5:25So my core team and I
-
5:25 - 5:28are able to concentrate
on the improvements -
5:28 - 5:30that really benefit everyone.
-
5:30 - 5:33And we're able to look out
for the needs of newcomers. -
5:33 - 5:35So for do-it-yourselfers,
-
5:35 - 5:39we provide free,
very well-tested instructions -
5:39 - 5:41so that anyone, anywhere around the world,
-
5:42 - 5:44can build one of these systems for free.
-
5:44 - 5:46And there's a patent pending
on these systems as well -
5:46 - 5:48that's held by the community.
-
5:48 - 5:50And to fund the project,
-
5:50 - 5:52we partner to create products
-
5:52 - 5:55that we then sell
to schools and to individuals -
5:55 - 5:58who don't have time
to build their own systems. -
5:59 - 6:02Now within our community,
a certain culture has appeared. -
6:02 - 6:05In our culture,
it is better to be a tester -
6:05 - 6:07who supports someone else's idea
-
6:07 - 6:10than it is to be just the idea guy.
-
6:10 - 6:15What we get out of this project
is support for our own work, -
6:15 - 6:19as well as an experience
of actually contributing -
6:19 - 6:21to the environmental movement
-
6:21 - 6:24in a way other than just
screwing in new light bulbs. -
6:24 - 6:27But I think that Eleen expresses best
-
6:27 - 6:28what we really get out of this,
-
6:28 - 6:31which is the actual joy of collaboration.
-
6:32 - 6:34So she expresses here what it's like
-
6:34 - 6:36to see someone halfway across the world
-
6:37 - 6:39having taken your idea, built upon it
-
6:39 - 6:41and then acknowledging
you for contributing. -
6:42 - 6:45If we really want to see
the kind of wide consumer behavior change -
6:45 - 6:49that we're all talking about
as environmentalists and food people, -
6:49 - 6:52maybe we just need
to ditch the term "consumer" -
6:52 - 6:54and get behind the people
who are doing stuff. -
6:55 - 6:59Open source projects
tend to have a momentum of their own. -
6:59 - 7:01And what we're seeing is that R&D-I-Y
-
7:01 - 7:04has moved beyond
just window farms and LEDs -
7:04 - 7:08into solar panels and aquaponic systems.
-
7:09 - 7:13And we're building upon innovations
of generations who went before us. -
7:13 - 7:14And we're looking ahead at generations
-
7:14 - 7:17who really need us
to retool our lives now. -
7:18 - 7:20So we ask that you join us
-
7:20 - 7:25in rediscovering the value
of citizens united, -
7:25 - 7:28and to declare
that we are all still pioneers. -
7:29 - 7:32(Applause)
- Title:
- A garden in my apartment
- Speaker:
- Britta Riley
- Description:
-
Britta Riley wanted to grow her own food (in her tiny apartment). So she and her friends developed a system for growing plants in discarded plastic bottles -- researching, testing and tweaking the system using social media, trying many variations at once and quickly arriving at the optimal system. Call it distributed DIY. And the results? Delicious.
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 07:32
Krystian Aparta commented on English subtitles for A garden in my apartment | ||
Krystian Aparta edited English subtitles for A garden in my apartment | ||
Krystian Aparta edited English subtitles for A garden in my apartment | ||
TED edited English subtitles for A garden in my apartment | ||
TED added a translation |
Krystian Aparta
The English transcript was updated on 10/19/2016.