Meet the Labbers: Hildreth England — MIT Media Lab

"I am Hildreth England. I’m the program coordinator for the OpenAg initiative, and we’re focused on one particular question, which is … how can we improve the food system by creating an open source hardware, software, and data common that will allow easier access and lower barrier to entry to farming? We’re trying to create the next farmer to feed nine billion people in the world by the year 2050. It’s an ambitious project; it’s a small team with a really big goal. OpenAg is literally a grass roots effort. We are entirely open source, and this is a novel concept right now in agricultural technology and even a little bit in food technology as well. And that’s one of the reasons why I’m excited to be part of it, because when we talk about open source, you’re really kind of levelling up beyond the hardware and the software and the data bases; you’re talking about taking those aspects and making them accessible to anybody. You don’t have to have coded anything in your life; you don’t have to have used open source technology ever. And, I think to be able to bridge the technology across all those different people is going to be really exciting, because you add this super human element to create these new farmers. In the next five years, I see us really engaging with a robust community."