goat milk?
“Oats and O.A.Ts”
I/O is an Oats company. I/O is an Open Access Technologies company. We are entrepreneurs, innovators, designers, scientists, engineers, and farmers all focused on bringing high-yield oats to the Missouri River Valley. We believe oats are key to our food future. That’s why we are working with synthetic biologists to develop a high-yield oat variety: resistant to drought, pests, and cold-snaps. Oats can be transformative in a farmer’s crop rotation, increasing soil fertility, and decreasing fertilizer, pesticides, and herbicide use. Our collaboration with local farmers marries their land with our technology to field test implementable strains of oats at scale, and record feedback. We are working with designers to bring this synthesis to market and at scale, rolling out fleets of products to consumers in America’s heartland.
Our name references both our products and our location. Proudly located in the interior of the country, we are MidAmerica, we are Midwest. The I/O in the logo refers to “input/output,” the basis for which technology communicates with the outside world, either with us or another machine. Our means of bleeding edge production technologies accelerate the utilization of Bio/AgTech in the space of existing chemical/mechanical agriculture. We utilize the tools of genetic sequencing and editing, automation, remote sensing, and digitalization. The I/O also resembles “1,0” – binary code – further grounding our embedded approach in technological utilization, optimization, and acceleration. The “/” refers to digital encoding as well as an oblique approach – a non-standard approach to broaching contemporary issues.
“I/O exists in a mediated
physical / digital
landscape”
Situated at the nexus of landscape architecture, agriculture, synthetic biology, and technology, Interior Oats (I/O) was created in 2019 by Rory Thibault in his terminal landscape architecture thesis studio at Washington University in St. Louis. This prospective future experiment is located in the Missouri River Valley, working with local research centers, Washington University, University of Missouri, and distributed local farmers to create a platform for experimental agriculture, marketing and distribution, and new co-ownership structures. I/O exists in a mediated physical/digital landscape, with sited farming and processing networks and digital (remote) sensing, computing, and distribution infrastructures.