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| '''= a network for sharing open source know-how amongst DIY agricultural tech innovators''' ; " a farmer-driven community to develop, document and build tools for resilient agriculture"
| | #REDIRECT [[Farm Hack]] |
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| URL = http://farmhack.net/
| | [[Category:Sustainable Manufacturing]] |
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| =Description=
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| "FarmHack is a network for sharing open source know-how amongst the distributed fringe of DIY agricultural tech aficionados and innovators.
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| In the same vein as Appropedia or Open Source Ecology, a collaborative digital knowledge-base facilitates the harvest of crowd wisdom to address challenges and inefficiencies in modern ecological (and economical) farm operation.
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| It is a project of Young Farmers Coalition and somewhat angled to the exuberant and tech-savvy eco-preneurial demographic, but inclusive and supportive of all open earthy inhabitants.
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| A primary focus of the organization is toward intensive development meet-ups, teach-ins, and hackathons, in person, on the farm."
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| (http://www.shareable.net/blog/farmhack-collaboratively-retooling-agriculture)
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| 2. Dorn Cox:
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| "In 2011, a community of farmers, designers, developers, engineers, architects,
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| roboticists, and open source thinkers came together in Boston, Massachusetts to explore
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| a simple yet radical idea – that great improvements in agriculture could be achieved
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| by reducing barriers to knowledge exchange. They were convinced that transforming
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| agricultural technology into a commons would result in a more adaptive, open and resilient
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| food system, one that would reflect the values not just of the grower but of the larger
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| community as well. The path toward a more distributed and just agricultural and economic
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| system, this gathering of people concluded, would come into being through the collective
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| development of new working prototypes and universal access to a constantly improving
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| repository of best ideas and practices.
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| Thus began Farm Hack, an ambitious volunteer project that brought together
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| the seemingly disparate cultures of technologists and agrarians. The start of Farm Hack
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| came with an offer from M.I.T. to host a teaching event that could connect engineers with
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| farmers’ needs. The National Young Farmers Coalition had just started a blog called “Farm
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| Hack” and launched the first program, followed closely by more events held in partnership
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| with GreenStart and Greenhorns agrarian networks and joined by maker/hacker networks.
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| The Farm Hack community quickly expanded through online and in-person social
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| networks across the east and west coasts of North America. Within three years, it became
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| a user-driven, collaborative community of ideas and tools with many thousands of active
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| participants. Hundreds of thousands of visitors from every continent in the world were
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| soon contributing tens of thousands of hours to the platform. Farm Hack has become
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| a rapidly growing repository of agricultural knowledge, containing scores of open source
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| designs and documentation for farming technologies and practices. In effect, Farm Hack is
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| an emergent, networked culture of collaborative problem-solving.
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| Hacking has been defined as the art of coming up with clever solutions to tricky
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| problems by modifying something in extraordinary ways to make it more useful. Hacking
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| also means rejecting the norms of consumer culture, and imagining ways to modify,
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| improvise, and create new, accessible, custom solutions for particular problems. Not
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| surprisingly, both hacker and maker culture are a natural fit for the sustainable agricultural
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| movement. Both cultures formed in response to ongoing, hegemonic attempts to control
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| users’ access to basic technologies and other resources. Both arose from a realization that
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| open access to knowledge is the best strategy to counter dominant industry interests. This
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| has long been an inherent part of agriculture in general, and a critical part of sustainable
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| agriculture in particular. On most farms, identifying a problem, thinking of a solution, testing
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| that solution and assessing its efficacy while thinking of the next iteration, is a daily practice.
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| Within its first year, the Farm Hack website featured documentation for over 100
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| innovative agricultural tools. They ranged from manufacturing instructions for newly created
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| farm-built hardware such as garlic planters, to the remanufacturing of an “extinct” farm-scale
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| oat huller. The community contributed designs for greenhouse automation and sensor networks
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| and business models for organic egg enterprises.
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| The power of open source exchange is illustrated by the quick pace and diversity of
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| modifications and improvements made to tools on Farm Hack. One of the first greenhouse
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| monitoring projects was turned into an electric-fence alert system, which quickly evolved into
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| an automation and data logging system, which then spun into businesses selling kits. An organic
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| no-till roller made open source by the Rodale Institute in Pennsylvania was quickly modified in
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| New Hampshire, then Quebec, and then France and Germany; the latest versions being built in
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| New York State are based on German and French improvements made six months earlier. In
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| this production model, inventors increasingly may not be able to predict the ultimate use of
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| their tools, as the ultimate use will be collaborative and emergent.
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| Despite being an all-volunteer organization, operating without a budget until 2014, Farm
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| Hack partnered with dozens of organizations, universities, open source and maker communities
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| in the US and Europe to expand the network. In addition to providing an online forum and
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| repository for the community’s knowledge and tools, Farm Hack has hosted in-person and
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| online events to document and improve tools, foster sharing and build skills. In these events,
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| the group carries on the agrarian club tradition of mixing participatory education with lots of
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| good eating, drinking and socializing.
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| With growth of the community came greater financial burdens of hosting and guiding
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| the conversations and idea exchanges. The community also needed to evolve in its role from
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| organizing and planning, to facilitating, guiding and recruiting new contributors. Initially funding
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| to support these needs came indirectly through the founding partner organization budgets
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| supplemented by contributions from community volunteers. It was three years before the first
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| general grant support was secured. A university extension program wrote a grant on behalf
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| of Farm Hack to document, measure and extend the reach of USDA Sustainable Agriculture
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| Research and Education (SARE) funded projects.
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| To manage the challenges of growth and expansion in its third year, the Farm Hack
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| network adopted a set of ten principles; participants wanted to maintain the representative
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| open agrarian values of the network as they interacted with established power structures.
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| The collaborative and flexible structure of the organization, and rapidly evolving tools for
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| remote collaboration, became important ways for the organization to evolve while remaining
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| representative and emergent. For example, a collaborative tool currently in development, by
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| the community and for the community, is a best practices template for open source project
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| contracting to help navigate the tension of having paid and volunteer efforts working side by
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| side. The template is exploring the awarding of bounties and other rewards for commercial
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| contracts, special recognition to volunteer efforts, and pooled payments or retainers on a
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| project-by-project basis for participants."
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| (Source: Article: Farm Hack: A Commons for Agricultural Innovation. By Dorn Cox)
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| =Discussion=
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| Outcomes of a first workshop:
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| 'Some outcomes: SMS-enabled Arduino greenhouse monitor, mechanical improvements to the root vegetable washer based on cumulative user feedback, scoping for a Zigbee mesh GPS tracking system on farm assets, and notes on effective workspace setup. Following wrap up presentations, emphasis was again placed on documenting to the wiki and continuing the conversation online and in-lab. What was the highest value of this co-location and face-time? Bonding for future collaboration and mutual resourcing...harnessing the greater-sum motivation of teams...meshing diverse work styles and perspectives...seeing and hearing success stories from ag-improv veterans...evaluation of proposals and results by trusted peers...enjoying excellent complementary repast...feeling at home and at one in “serious play” on the farm."
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| (http://www.shareable.net/blog/farmhack-collaboratively-retooling-agriculture)
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| =More Information=
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| * Video: http://vimeo.com/73504647
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| [[Category:Agrifood]]
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| [[Category:Design]]
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| [[Category:Manufacturing]] | |