System for Rice Intensification
= "international network of farmers who practice a kind of open-source agronomy for rice cultivation". ?
URL = http://?www.sririce.org ?
Description
David Bollier:
"Another potent eco-digital commons is the international network of farmers who practice a kind of open-source agronomy for rice cultivation. The System for Rice Intensification, or SRI, is a vast network of thousands of farmers in Cuba, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and dozens of other countries who share their ideas for improving the yield of rice without the use of GMO seeds, pesticides or herbicides.
With the help of Cornell University, farmers collaborate through an online platform, www.sririce.org, on which they share lectures, seminars, emails, publications and other materials, on an international scale. It is a bottom-up driven process without the sponsorship of government ministries or corporations. Even though SRI methodologies must be locally adapted, they are easy to understand and implement – and the impacts impressive. Crop yields are 20% to 50% more than conventional rice farming while using less seed, water and fewer chemical inputs. SRI is an example of how open-source collaborations, when applied to agricultural challenges, can yield practical, ecologically benign answers that do not even occur to commercial vendors and state authorities – perhaps because SRI is a commons-based system that is not profit-driven or hierarchically governed.
SRI is but one of many examples of Agricultural Crowdsourcing. Using network platforms to aggregate data and interpret them, farmers in diverse localities around the world can apply their own best judgment in selecting the most adaptive crops as the atmosphere becomes warmer. A similar idea animates the Open Ag Data Alliance, which is trying to help farmers access and control the data about the crop yields, open source style, instead of agribusiness vendors owning and controlling that data through their own proprietary, non-interoperable platforms.
A data ?commons is a highly effective way for farmers to assess and improve their agricultural practices. It helps to put these fledgling models into perspective: An estimated 2 billion people around the world depend upon commons of forests, fisheries, farmland, water, wild game and other natural resources for their everyday subsistence, according to the Alliance for Land. Such types of resource-governance are far more ecologically minded than global corporations whose “rip and run” extractivism is the norm. Yet introductory economics textbooks all but ignore these commons because they are for householding or subsistence, not market exchange, and thus are not regarded as interesting enough. If digital networks can empower local natural resource commons, and help them mutually support each other, as SRI and Farm Hack do, it would help elevate this “invisible commons sector” into great prominence." (https://www.foe.co.uk/sites/default/files/downloads/transnational-republics-commoning-reinventing-governance-through-emergent.pdf)?