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Whether we like it or not , applied science is quickly evolving and continue to be an intact part of our everyday life . This leaves us with a choice : we can either allow ourselves to be overtop by this unexampled technology , or we can harness its potential and use it to understand and improve our shared environment . In the interest of rein this potential , Farm Hack was born . Farm Hack is a residential area of someone interested in build up and communion tools for open - source USDA . Not only does this collaboration make land easier , but it has the electric potential to drastically amend our surroundings and the earth we live in .
Unless otherwise observe , all exposure right of first publication © 2023 by Dorn Cox .
The following is an selection fromThe gravid RegenerationbyDorn Coxwith Courtney White . It has been adapted for the web .
A Public Lab balloon is prepared to carry a camera over research plots, enabling us to elevate our perspective as part of a new public observatory.
Open-Source Agriculture: Farm Hack’s Beginnings
The early assembly of Farm Hack , convened through the MIT D - science laboratory ( the D is for Development ) in Cambridge , Massachusetts , bourgeon from the simple observation that managing our environment is a public science and a shared human effort that want enceinte - scale coaction . My joining with Farm Hack started with conversations with Severine Fleming and with the newly formed National Young Farmers Coalition ( NYFC ) , a nonprofit organization founded in 2010 in New York . Inspired by the lack of tools to serve the needs of an egress vernal farmer movement , we want to certify and test what an “ Open - Source Community for a Resilient Agriculture ” might look like . In 2011 , the approximation evolved from initial plan academic session at MIT that brought together Farmer , software engineer , roboticists , designers , artists , and food - system leaders into an on-line chopine with the destination of documenting , communion , improving , and fabricate farm tools . Little did we know at the time , the deep history of agrarian development theory that we were tapping into had been artfully articulated more than sixty years earlier by renowned Indian economist , including Samar Ranjan Sen ( who in all probability also pep up E. F. Schumacher ’s Small Is Beautiful ) .
The present-day update of these concepts was actuate by the successful growth of other undefended - generator software communities such as Drupal , which were beginning to dominate sealed types of connection publishing . The community then began building on the capabilities of these existing assailable platforms to generate crabby - referenced wiki - type articles and “ how - to ” info involving designs from around the world . The first set of pecker to be document represent the interests and needs of the users and included a blanket stove of small - graduated table manufacturing tools , small axial - menses combine reaper from India and China , freshly designed pedal - power source washers , manufacture blueprints for pocket-size - shell cereal - hull machine , nursery automation systems , grunge - carbon paper measurement devices , and low - cost balloon - mounted camera setups .
“Hacking” the Farming Industry
When I first connected with Farm Hack , I had just been introduce to receptive - source hardware through the online biodiesel community and was partway through document a ego - contained mobile biodiesel processor that I was fabricating . I was actively imagine through how I might proficient document and share the effect and collaborate with a blanket community of interests . The biodiesel processor became the first dick I documented , and this undertaking found me into a young short letter of thinking about sharing and abundance , which also link up me to worldwide postcolonial development efforts that aimed to create agrarian prosperity without dependance or debt . These idea harkened back to my childhood bookshelf and dinner table conversations in New England and were now manifesting themselves in new and exciting ways . Farm Hack issue as a central drive part of my identicalness from that point ahead .
The word hack come from the technical school communities at the prison term and predates its current , more ubiquitous consumption . We employ it as a kind of subversive repurposing , with the finish of take control of one ’s fate . A hack writer is an unusual assemblage of available components . A element or module is a distinct lot of a creature that has a special function . Components can be assembled in different combinations to produce machine politician or tools . The enceinte the depository library of component , the more “ genetic ” diversity to choose from when make new tool or hacks to handle a special challenge . A hack is an item-by-item effort and creates an isolated workable root . It is the basis for empowerment and innovation using spherical cognition and local production . A tool is any workable hack that has been test and double over time and by other party . A instrument can be a strong-arm objective , method , or model that can be document ( software , for model ) . And a hackathon is a sustained effort to produce them .
Connecting Through Creativity
A Public Lab balloon is prepared to carry a camera over enquiry plots , enable us to elevate our perspective as part of a new public observatory .
Soon after its founding , theFarm Hack community grew chop-chop and start mother a flurry of originative solutions through dozens of hackathons hosted in farm , grange halls , and makerspaces across the United States . These try built on the muscularity and heat of young James Leonard Farmer connected conversationally through group like the Greenhorns and the National Young Farmers Coalition , as well as through open - source technology net- works sparked by the initial MIT outcome . Even from the first event , there were connections to other related outside projection such as the Gallic effort called L’Atelier Paysan , which tie back to FAO farming development theory and focus on noesis and small - scale technology as a path to independence for the developing world . Now these mix efforts de - eloping local technology and manufacturing capacity were being implement to further local food economies in the highly-developed world , too .
The first participant of Farm Hack events were not only farmers but people with vulgar interests who had start to make the link that ameliorate agriculture is a shared human attempt . The participant continue to find common ground between engineers , roboticists , designers , architects , fabricators , fiddler , programmers , and hackers , as well as every- one participating in the wider food organization . The work of Farm Hack was based on the estimate that agricultural interests are a collective effort ; that if we could provide a home to form and central , then the ideas , inspiration , and reciprocity would flow from there . From the beginning , it was never a prerequisite for player to have a farm or specialized accomplishment to join the assembly or advert an result . Farm Hack is a participatory and cumulative task that is only as potent as the exchange of approximation that flow from interaction , online or offline . And unattackable it is because , as we will see , Farm Hack formed the foot of later , big - scale sweat such as OpenTEAM .
The 9 Principles of Farm Hack
Nine principles emerged from the early Farm Hack issue that have continue to be utilize to agricultural questions and excogitation principle :
Contributing to the Community
Wolfe ’s Neck Center for Agriculture and the Environment creates a carbon copy foot - path , an experiential learning landscape that span human management of natural systems .
By send a design on Farm Hack , users are able to gain the experience of committing and chip in to candid - source knowledge licensing . This mean that a user ’s tool Page are approachable and editable by any other member of the community and can be freely work up upon and shared by default using the Creative Commons license . This open glide slope is a direct contrast with the way the immense bulk of commercial-grade agricultural tools were being built at the time in 2011 . Most often companies indue money in research and evolution and license their pattern in a way that does not allow others to duplicate it , or even screw how it is made . In line , Farm Hack was an former open - germ community that tested what a cognitive process might appear like where everyone benefits from freely sharing knowledge .
From the source , Farm Hack run as a biotic community , a civically informed and self-governing people working together toward the common goodness . What could generate more independency than the ability to understand and better our agroecosystems so as to feed and fire ourselves without reliance on proprietary interests?Farm Hack , at its heart and soul , was based on an idea about how communities can translate and share questions and noesis through both conversations online and in person . It was a test of the gist belief that we all become better farmers and better citizen when we function together . The government of the tools create by Farm Hack focus on persona of the proficient ecosystem that can be distributed , create , and man- age topically rather than on the things want to be purchase to achieve more independence .
Farm Hack: Fighting for Our Future
In organizing the first Farm Hack upshot , it became clear that the collaborative , rather than the militant , approach is not a engagement that can be won but an on-going attempt of continual improvement . It is a process that is accelerated through generations of accumulated knowledge and continual improvement , first in our understanding of the environment and then in our power to produce regenerative outcomes . A key from the beginning of Farm Hack ’s geographic expedition was the idea that community of interests was created both online and in soul , and that to surmount residential area we must each be able to extend and share conversations beyond the local deep brown shop .
Farm Hack direct to test the mind that to nurture the development , documentation , and manufacture of farm tools for lively agriculture it would be important to also build a community of quislingism with like - minded organizations . Farm Hack struck the light for a self - governing biotic community that build up its own capability and content , rather than follow a traditional cycle of raise money to fund top - down knowledge generation and guide- book writing . As exciting as it was for me to have find the community I had been looking for , it was also clear that we were still in a nascent stage of growing in our orbit and complexity . In other parole , Farm Hack was a prototype for a particular kind of knowledge utility . It illustrate the notion that keen knowledge share-out will lead to better pecker , skills , and systems to build successful , resilient farms . It was a reassertion of the agrarian estimation that open - source seeds , breed , and technology is the fastest way of life to accel- erate conception and adaptation as well as to insure an equitable , diverse agricultural landscape painting .
Farm Hack illustrate that people can be prompt and inspired by documenting , sharing , and better farm tools . It was clear that there was office in the idea that together we can better the productivity and viability of sustainable land and local manufacturing , particularly when we share the destination of healthy land , abundant nutrient , successful farm business , and invigorated local economies .
Recommended Reads
Open - Source Systems : How Communities Can help oneself Promote Regenerative Agriculture
A Community Food Forest : Planning and Managing
The Great Regeneration
Ecological Agriculture , Open - Source Technology , and a Radical Vision of Hope
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