""It's essentially a grow box with some sensors for collecting data," Cerqueira, a dietitian who worked as a project manager at the Open Agriculture Initiative for two years [...] The boxes were not air-tight, so staff couldn't control variables like the levels of carbon dioxide and even basic environmental factors like temperature and humidity, Cerqueira and the other person said. "
Looking at https://www.media.mit.edu/groups/open-agriculture-openag/pro... it looks like the food computer project was just one among several, though it might've been the more prioritized 'audacious goal' among them considering it's prominence on the main open ag site: https://www.media.mit.edu/groups/open-agriculture-openag/
The last paper I saw (2018-10-20) ( https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-030-02683-... ) on food computer version 2 is more about the building process of it, not so much on results yet. https://wiki.openag.media.mit.edu/faq discusses the version differences.
Finally, Caleb comments on the BI article here: https://forum.openag.media.mit.edu/t/can-we-get-a-comment/51...
(sidebar: the food computer thing weirdly reminds me of reddit.com/r/spacebuckets )