Ramping up for 2019 RFC Food/Soil survey

Spring means… Ice Cream!

But also… we start the Food/Soil Survey!

We spent the winter making things more accurate, faster, and cheaper, so we could do 5 times the number of samples at 33% of the per-sample cost on 7 types of produce (lettuce, kale, spinach, grapes, cherry tomatoes, and carrots) from all across the continental US.

We’re working with Francis (optical engineer) and Jon (electrical engineer), as well as several commercial manufacturers of spectroscopy components to build a diverse set of benchtop specs with a very broad range (350nm – 2100nm).  This will dramatically improve our ability to build relationships between lab data and spectral data.

Apply to be a Data Partner (link)!

The Data Partners program is is about the start – emails will be sent in the next day or two.  We hope to get 40 -50 individuals collecting samples from grocery stores, farmers markets, and farms from across the US – this group will submit another ~ 2500 – 3500 samples!

The Farm Partners program is closed at around 35 participants.  These are farms submitting weekly management data, along with a combined ~1000 samples, so we can get better granularity to connect farm practice to food quality.

Other interesting collaborations in 2019

• Collaborating with Leandro Mastrantonio and Fernando Castro from Argentina, we will attempt to use machine learning to predict soil quality measures using soil chromatography.
• We are working with the Foundation for Food and Agriculture and other partners in the Open Ag Tech community to build better surveys, collect more data (including historical weather data from sampled points), improve data consistency (via a new Plant Data Service), extend data comparability across a wide range of projects (General Mills, MSU, USDA, and many others).  This may sound mundane, but these are the nuts and bolts that make large projects like the RFC possible and cost-effective.
• Farm Partners are not only using the RFC data collection platform, but are also using farmOS, an open source farm management program.  Thanks to Farmier (a farmOS hosting service), their weekly management data is automagically getting entered into their own farmOS instance so that by the end of the year, they will have a fully populated and functional farm data system that they control!
• EcoCycle of Boulder CO is working with 20+ gardeners to compare various biological and other amendments on Kale to see the impact on soil and food quality, and collecting 100s of soil samples to expand comparability of soil collected within the RFC.
• We’re working with BFA members like Faith Reeves to add sub-surveys to the main survey, allowing BFA members to utilize the survey to answer their questions and engage their topics of interest.
• We’re initiating discussions with other soil and food quality groups like nitrates.com (soil/water nitrates, total N, phosphorous) and Open Flexure (low-cost, high quality microscope for soil microbial analysis), to expand the in-field measurement we can collect.  It’s still early, but we’re hopeful we can take advantage of being open source by making collaboration fast, efficient, and useful to BFA members and the world.
• YOU YOU AND YOU!  We are always interested in finding new collaborators!  Please contact us with ideas, ways to utilize our data stream or to add unique soil / food measurements, a new experiment you want to design, or come for a residency in the lab.  Contact us and let’s see what we can do together!

An Expanded Team

We’ve added some staff in the lab, including new interns from Michigan State University, past interns who are now full timers, a lab manager, and someone to manage the production of Bionutrient Meters as well as future devices.

Here’s to an error-free 2019 season…

… well, probably not, this is science after all :).  But hopefully our preparation, the unbelievable engagement from the BFA community and new partners, the huge support and fundraising efforts of the BFA staff, and a little luck will make this a year full of productive learning.  Together we can move food nutrition and its root causes to a more central place in the public consciousness.