3D Print Farm Launches in Texas to Mass Produce Innovations for Worldwide Grassroots Food Production

Additive manufacturing, better known as 3D printing, promises to make waves in virtually every major industry in the world. The ability to bring the power of a manufacturing facility into one’s home or office for a reasonable price may eventually lead to self sufficiencies which we could have only dreamt of a few short years ago.

When we mention self sufficiency and 3D printing, most of you probably immediately imagine downloading and printing out almost any hardware you could ever need for living your life. Food probably isn’t what comes to mind. With that said, one popular science-based natural health advocacy organization, Natural News, aims to utilize 3D printing for just that, making us all self sufficient when it comes to the stuff we put into our bodies.

Natural News has a main mission to “empower consumers with factual information about the synthetic chemicals, heavy metals, hormone disruptors and other chemicals found in foods, medicines, personal care products, children’s toys and other items.” What’s more empowering than growing one’s own food?

Targeted for the end of February, Natural News will be launching FoodRising.org, which is a non-profit initiative for the Consumer Wellness Center, and could transform the availability, safety and production methods of food and medicine across the globe. Food Rising asks the following in a bit of a teaser video:

Mass producing components on a 3D printer

“What if there existed a grassroots, decentralized, open sourced solution that gave people a breakthrough technology to produce their own food, medicine, and mineral supplements at extremely low costs and with very little effort? What if that solution used no electricity, no motors, no pumps, no soil, and was universally practical everywhere in the world, from third-world nations with no power grid to inner city apartments in America? What if people everywhere around the world could use this breakthrough low-tech technology to produce better-than-organic food, powerful plant-based medicine, and laboratory-validated mineral supplements right in their own homes and apartments using just 1/20th of the water of conventional agriculture but delivering over 500% higher nutritional value than store-bought foods? […] Finally, what if many of the parts required for all this could be freely downloaded and printed with your own 3D printer anywhere in the world, and then openly shared with other people in the spirit of promoting ideas that empower humanity?”

Although complete details have yet to emerge on just what Food Rising’s complete plan will be, Natural News has provided enough information to at least get us a little bit excited about what February will have in store. The organization has announced that they are currently in the process of setting up a 3D print farm in their home state of Texas, where they plan to mass produce affordable components for a system they hope will spread across the globe. The system will hopefully we able to provide all of the mentioned benefits quoted above from their teaser video.

To start, their 3D print farm will consist of a Type A Machines Printer, FlashForge, Ultimaker 2, and LulzBot Mini. From there, they plan to dissect which machine performs the best for the mass production they will be undertaking, and then scale up the farm with that particular machine only.

There is an entire list of benefits the organization has listed that they believe this new 3D printable system will enable. This includes the following:

• Grow food for pennies on the dollar when compared to store-bought foods.
• Produce over 200% more food in the same space with over 500% higher mineral nutrition than food bought at the store.
• Produce natural medicines including anti-cancer medicine, right at home, for almost nothing
• Produce high-potency plant-based mineral supplements
• Farm high-calorie-producing vegetables, including potatoes, carrots and beets, using variations of this system.
• Remove all toxic of the heavy metals from your water.
• Works in third-world countries lacking power.

Not every component of the system will be 3D printable, but a majority of it will be. The parts that can’t be printed will be affordable and readily available almost anywhere, and include things like paper clips and pencil erasers. For those who own their own 3D printer, the design files for the self sufficient 3D printable components that Food Rising will be unveiling will be made available for free download so that they can 3D print the parts from home.

“My fear is that we won’t be able to ramp up fast enough to meet consumer demand for these parts, so I’m really hoping more people will download the parts and print their own,” writes Mike Adams, the man behind this initiative. “After all, this is all about the revolution of self-reliance and home-based production, which means I want YOU to produce your own parts!”

3D printing is absolutely changing the way we view the world around us, the markets which make up the economy, and the power of the individual. If this open source initiative is a success, perhaps numerous problems ranging from over-farming, to hunger, to environmental degradation can be solved. I am eagerly waiting for further details to emerge over the coming month ahead about this incredible initiative. Let’s hear your thoughts on all of this in the Natural News, Food Rising forum thread on 3DPB.com. Check out the Food Rising teaser video below: