The premise of this project was that it would allow farmers to run parallel experiments to discover optimal growing conditions. The "food computers" were meant to inform large-scale production, not replace it.
The problem is this sort of matter is of course already studied by agricultural departments around the world, with a lot more competency. There is already a ton of research into, e.g. the effects of soil pH on potato production. Media Lab's food computer seems like a case of NIH, and probably wouldn't have happened if MIT had an agricultural department.
Your words are a bit incendiary but the gist is right. This guy thinks he’s redeeming himself and is a good man because he came up with a cockamamie idea that on first blush could seem altruistic, but, my word, you have to be worse than tone deaf to propose something as impractical as this as some kind of actual solution. Incredible! Usually people on LSD might conjure up something like this but come back to reality when it wears off.
The problem is this sort of matter is of course already studied by agricultural departments around the world, with a lot more competency. There is already a ton of research into, e.g. the effects of soil pH on potato production. Media Lab's food computer seems like a case of NIH, and probably wouldn't have happened if MIT had an agricultural department.