In 2011, Caleb Harper found himself in Japan shortly after the nuclear disaster at Fukushima as part of a "motley crew" sent by MIT's Media Lab who were tasked with finding creative solutions to problems created by the disaster. One of the things that became immediately clear to Harper was that the disaster had created a food crisis in the region.

Not only was Japan already importing about 70 percent of its foodstuffs, but the rest of the world had stopped buying rice and other Japanese agricultural products out of fear of radiation contamination. To make matters worse, it was unclear whether it would be physically possible to continue growing food in the area around Fukushima due to salt deposits from the tsunami and the possibility of radiation contamination.

"When I got to Fukushima, I realized that that part of the country is like the breadbasket of Japan, but it was a post-apocalyptic version," Harper, the director of MIT's Open Agriculture Initiative, told Motherboard. "So I thought if you don't have a climate that you need, couldn't you just build another climate? That led to the idea of a plant data center which would combine food and data."

Harper's idea for a plant data center eventually became the Open Agricultural Initiative, where the goal is to create more farmers and code the future of food production. To this end, Harper and his colleagues have developed the Food Computer, an open source hardware and software platform for controlled-environment agriculture.

In essence, the food computer is a high tech greenhouse. It has computerized climate control systems, such as grow lights and humidifiers, and sensors to monitor oxygen levels, temperature and other climate variables. The plants in the food computer aren't grown in soil, but are instead placed in a hydroponic or aeroponic system. In the former case, the plants' roots are directly placed in water and in the latter, the roots are exposed to the air and misted several times a day to encourage more rapid growth.