The leitmotif of this year’s LUMEN Conference was the practical aspects of the implementation of Law 2.0, including change management at universities. The debate featured the main stakeholders of the science and higher education system, including the representatives of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education (MNiSW) and other government institutions, university and academic association authorities, academic staff, management practitioners, as well as outstanding representatives of the academic community from Poland and abroad.

The Conference ended with a special session during which the nominees and winners of the 3rd edition of the Leaders in University Management Competition LUMEN 2019 and review good management practices at Polish universities based on materials submitted for the Competition was presented.

Polish OD&M Training called “Open Design & Manufacturing through event bades learning” was presented as a good practise with 5 other projects in Special prize section for projects which are exceeding main categories. Those projects include three main aspects – Management, Development and Cooperation.

Video presenting thePolish OD&M Training:  https://drive.google.com/open?id=1mR7KYo48ksed1zmOveTmRNdE58X8mOMu

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If the fourth industrial revolution brings with it radically new models of production and consumption, how do you design new products, services and experiences? What does it mean to make open and collaborative innovation in the age of complexity? And how do you train to enable sustainable change?

Next 4.0 is an international workshop dedicated to the design and training of designers in the 4.0 paradigm. One morning with experts, universities, businesses and makers to find out how the skills of those who design the small and big things around us evolve.

Find out more here.

The post Next 4.0: Formative Scenarios for the 4.0 Revolution appeared first on P2P Foundation.

• Design Driven Strategies for Manufacture 4.0 and Social Innovation. Florence (Italy)
• Open Design and Manufacturing through event-based learning. Dabrowa Gornicza and Lodz (Poland)
• Citizens Centered Innovation and Design for Open and Distributed Manufacture. London (UK)
• Prototyping Artisan – A Designer who makes. Bilbao (Spain)

Introduction to the workshops

The report contains a presentation of the four training activities implemented by the OD&M Alliance between October 2018 and June 2019, respectively in Italy, UK, Spain and Poland.

The trainings have been developed, in the first instance, on the basis of the insights gathered through the exploratory study implemented by the Alliance over the course of 2017 . The study was aimed at achieving in depth understanding of the types of collaborations that Universities, communities of makers and firms across Europe and China are currently developing around the making culture and, by extension, open design and manufacturing. Besides, the study was aimed at gathering insights about possible innovations in higher education – including curricula and teaching and learning methods – that would lead to better and increased cross-sectoral synergies in the emerging OD&M field.

The training projects have been further advanced through a round of co-design implemented first at the international level (see London Co-design workshop Report available at www.odmplatform.eu), and then at the local levels of the four EU nodes, with the involvement of local stakeholders and external experts.

These co-design activities, which included workshops, desk research and stakeholder consultation, have led to the identification of key characteristics of each training, in terms of strategic positioning, target-group(s), types of learning challenges, learning outcomes and assessment and validation of competencies. More broadly, the trainings have been operating as testbeds for prototyping possible innovations within the higher education institutions involved, in order to explore the application of open design & manufacturing as a means to drive new cross-sectoral alliances, as well as to boost new knowledge and skills via new teaching and learning methods.

The document contains a summary of the activities implemented, methodology applied, learning challenges explored in each node and prototypes realized. More qualitative results and outcomes stemming from the training are instead documented in the final impact report (D5.3).

OD&M Team, June 2019

Download the report here: OD&M Training and Activities

Lead image: WeMake Open Design by wemake_cc

The post Industry, Design, Makers: Open Design and Manufacturing trainings appeared first on P2P Foundation.

There is much hype around circular and collaborative economies over the past few years. From Davos to the European Union, everyone is eager to grab a piece of the new mode of industrial development. But what lies beneath these grand narratives?

In this 3-part short series we attempt to critically review the current discussion on the circular and collaborative economy and provide insights from some alternative trajectories.

This short series based on a workshop on circular, collaborative and distributed production designed and facilitated by Chris Giotitsas and Alex Pazaitis on the occasion of the participation of OD&M project at the 83rd Florence International Handycraft Fair, on April 24, 2019 in Florence.

Part 1: On the circular economy.

The most widely known and basic definition for a circular economy (accepted even by the European Union) entails cycles of production, ranging from repair, to maintenance, to re-use, refurbishment, and last to recycling. For this conceptualization to work, products need to be designed to fit these cycles. Meaning that we need to rethink how we design and make things. For instance, a phone may be designed so that it can be more durable, easier to repair and easier to recycle. So far so good.

However, considering the production and distribution networks today, that would presumably take place on a global scale. A product would be produced in one place, then purchased on the other side of the planet, then repaired or refurbished and resold somewhere else entirely. Until ultimately it is recycled for material and entering the cycle all over again. The question here, then, is: who would do the repair/ refurbishment/ recycling on that scale? As it is currently conceptualized, it is the service provider or the manufacturer that does it. How? Would manufacturers have processing facilities all over the planet, or would the products be sent to their locations thus increasing energy consumption and pollution? Doesn’t this reverse the whole point of circularity related to sustainability?  

Furthermore, how would manufacturers and service providers keep track of all these products? Apparently, it is with the help of the “Internet of Things”, by making products smart and trackable. But if we’re talking about a circular system of this complexity then this means that the “manufacturer” would need to have massive operational capacities and resources as well as tracking (or surveilling really) data to an alarming degree.

From a different perspective, if one looks at the EU reports on the issue of circular economies they will find assessments based on collected data and while there is plenty available on a state and municipal level (regarding, for instance, recycling) there is next to none when it comes to industry. That is hardly surprising. It is costs money to track and collect information and when there is no clear profit foreseen, then why would a private manufacturer do it? The idea is to incentivize industry to change their practices. Allow them to make money in a different, more sustainable way. But even then, why would they share data? And how would the protocols and processes of one huge manufacturer work with those of another. They are competitors after all and the profit of one signals the loss of another. 

So, circularity without being open source, is not really circularity. By making it so, then it would ensure interoperability for start. Meaning the products of one manufacturer would work with those of another. Open licenses and standards for parts, tools, materials as well as the sharing of all relevant information would mean that the product of one manufacturer would be possible to be repaired or maintained by whomever locally. Their materials would also be easier to locate, distribute, and reuse. However, at least for now, this seems not to be the goal.

When it comes to the circular economy, we are attempting to apply a concept on a production system that is incompatible. And the attempts so far, seem either too small or they end up being co-opted to such a degree that they lose any transformative potential.  

Part 2: On the Sharing Economy

As a global society, we are facing what could be understood as an existential dilemma with the sharing economy. As a phenomenon, the sharing economy has been increasingly gaining attention since -roughly- 2004, as it gets more and more share in the global markets. But sharing, as a practice, is not a new phenomenon. It has been present in communities since the dawn of human history. And, frankly, in our current form of economic organisation we have not always been very fond of it…. 

Those of us who have been old enough to witness a primitive type of audiovisual technology called “Digital Video Disc” (aka DVD), have often found ourselves irritated with -and simultaneously amused by- aggressive anti-piracy ads like this one. In all their ridiculousness, comparing a downloaded movie with car theft, what they were basically tackling was early forms of peer-to-peer file-sharing.  

So what has happened in less than 10 years that made sharing (esp. over the internet) from a criminal activity to the whole “sharing is caring” story? 

Apparently, the answer lies in some people making enormous amounts of money through sharing. A glimpse on the net worth of Mark Zuckerberg or the market value of tech start-ups like Uber or AirBnB nicely illustrate this. On the other hand, a closer look in their underlying infrastructures (and also their tax returns) shows that, despite profiting on sharing capacities, they are not equally interested in sharing themselves. So, to put it bluntly, what is interesting about sharing, is the sharing economy. What is less obvious is what it is about the economy that is of the interest of sharing. 

In a broader view, the economy can be described as a system that caters for the production and distribution of the means necessary for our subsistence and well-being. In the specific kind of economic system we broadly refer to as capitalism, economic affairs usually involve two main institutions: (a) private property; and (b) market exchange. The latter is fundamentally dependent on the former, and, respectively, the former rationalises the latter. This line of economic understanding also by and large underpins the definition of the sharing (or collaborative) economy from the European Union (European Commission (2016). A European Agenda for the Collaborative Economy. Available): 

“[…] the term “collaborative economy” refers to business models where activities are facilitated by collaborative platforms that create an open marketplace for the temporary usage of goods or services often provided by private individuals” 

And further it is pointed out: 

“Collaborative economy transactions generally do not involve a change of ownership and can be carried out for profit or not-for-profit” 

More or less, the understanding of sharing on behalf of the EU is reduced to the extent it can relate to these fundamental institutions of property and exchange. The focus is then placed on regulating issues evolving around these relations, concerning both things and people, including labour, liability and taxation. 

Nevertheless, the same document still cannot move away from pointing out -even if in a footnote- a certain element that is significantly different: 

“Collaborative economy services may involve some transfer of ownership of intellectual property […]” 

And I would add a hint: often without conventional market-based transactions. Earlier examinations of the phenomenon focus exactly on this dynamic, explaining those conditions that allow them to have massive economic impact. Harvard Law Professor, Yochai Benkler, more than a decade before the EU became interested in the sharing economy (Benkler, Y. 2004. Sharing Nicely: On Shareable Goods and the Emergence of Sharing as a Form of Economic Production. The Yale Law Journal, 114(2): 273-358), eloquently argues on sharing as a form of economic production and nicely summarises his position as follows (again in a footnote, yet for different reasons here): 

“I am concerned with the production of things and actions/services valued materially, throughnon-market mechanisms of social sharing […]” 

And then continues: 

“Sharing’, then, offers a less freighted name for evaluating mechanisms of social-relations-based economic production” 

The phrase “valued materially” concerns the real value of sharing, not the one expressed in financial markets or the balance sheets of Facebook’s partner advertising companies. It relates to the very human interaction of sharing stuff and our own time and capacities in things we consider meaningful, from food, shelter and rides, to knowledge, information and technology. The meaning, or value, of this interaction, contrary to the so-called sharing economy, is not guided by price signals between the people, commodities and services. It is a form of an economy, i.e. a system catering for human subsistence and well-being, based solely on social relations. And this is partly why a Harvard professor has to come up with a “less freighted name” for it, as we can all imagine the all-too-freighted name of it that any Fox News anchor would instinctively shout out based on the above definition alone. 

And here lies the real transformative dynamic of sharing as a form of economic production. It is this element that allows a group of uncoordinated software developers create better a web-server than Microsoft; or thousands of people, contributing their knowledge with no predefined structure, roles or economic incentives, create a digital encyclopedia that outgrows Britannica. But such sharing-enabled success stories typically don’t mobilise huge cash flows and don’t create “added value”, which basically entails an understanding of value stemming exclusively from selling stuff to people.  

Going back to our existential issues with sharing, our general position as societies is that we basically think of sharing as a nice thing to do, but lack the institutions to really appreciate its value for our economic system. This massively restrains the actual dynamics of sharing, which are gradually subsumed by the dominant private-property-and-market-driven system. 

There are of course great alternatives in the digital economy alone that build on this sharing capacity in a more humane and socially-minded way, from early neighbourhood tools and rides sharing platforms, to Free and Open Source Software, open design projects and Wikipedia. There is frankly as much sharing taking place on Facebook as in Wikipedia, at least on the front end. But the underlying value models and, subsequently, potential outcomes for the majority of the people involved are vastly different. 

For this we need to finally mature with regards to our issues with sharing and, eventually, make a choice for the kind of sharing for which we would design our institutions and societies. And hopefully that would be the one that would help us escape the current dead ends on the social and ecological front. 

Part 3: Needs-based design as an alternative paradigm 

Despite the serious conceptual and systemic problems described in the previous parts of this short series, it does not necessarily mean that there are no examples of true implementation for collaborative and circular practices right now. In fact, there are several technological development communities that make it happen to some significant degree. More specifically,  needs-based design and grassroots innovation as community-driven endeavours offer a serious alternative paradigm. 

In other words, communities can harness these ICT-enabled capabilities to collaboratively create technology for themselves, and promote sustainable practices based on shared values, knowledge and infrastructure. For instance, small-scale farmers in the agricultural communities of L’atelier paysan and Farm Hack, collaborate to produce tools and machines, often from recycled scrap material, suitable for their type of agriculture, which conventional market channels often fail to adequately cover. 

Yet, this type of self-construction activity is limited in simpler, frugal solutions, whereas  to address today’s challenges we need a broader engagement of design and engineering. But for a community to create complex technologies and systems, advanced skills still need to be employed, including designers, engineers and software developers. The main difference is the type of relationship they have with the community of users. This means the experts would act according to their own motives for engagement but with an explicit purpose to provide a solution which best serves the users of the technology. 

As far as the users are concerned, designers take up a specific purpose. They serve the role of guides or “Sherpas” (with reference to the ethnic group of the Himalayas that are expert mountaineers helping other groups). In that sense, the design process begins after a need within a community is made explicit. Then the designer meets with the community several times to discuss the parameters of the problem that needs solving and uses her expertise to design the solution, which is then reviewed by the community. This is an iterative process until a final artefact is produced, often through a collective process.

Nevertheless, engaging in such a creative activity  and simultaneously making a living out of its is no easy task, yet it is better than the alternative. Having a community as a base of support beats deciding to engage in “social innovation” on your own. At least if we are defining social innovation as something that you make for the common good rather than a thing to make money out of. For instance, designers in the agricultural communities mentioned above, could receive funds to help farmers refurbish or redesign an existing tool, or they could crowdfund within the community for the creation of a new tool. 

Such hybrid and radical models may lead to some sustainability for the designer willing to engage in social production. In our view however, for these terms to be genuinely meaningful in terms of sustainability, openness and equity, structural changes need to take place starting from a policy level. These communities provide a certain blueprint to inform the direction which needs to be taken. 

For instance, instead of incentives for manufacturers, perhaps more focus could be placed in empowering communities to tackle parts of the extremely complex problems of circular production. Likewise, user-communities can harness favourable licences and legal tools to build on shared capacities for collaborative forms of production and distribution. Individuals like designers could also be given incentives and support to engage with these communities in a relationship that is not profit-driven but informed by mutually shared values. 

What this would look like may take many forms, especially depending on local cultures and social contexts. For instance, such a community in the US, which generally lacks serious welfare structures, means that farmers need to rely largely on themselves and each other. Designers that work with them, manage to secure limited funding through the national agriculture organisations and donors while doing also something else to secure their personal sustainability. A similar community in Europe, on the other hand, which still manages to maintain basic social welfare amidst austerity obsessions, means that designers and engineers working with the farmers can secure state funding. So the volume of the work, as well as the quality of tools and documentation can be significantly increased. 

In conclusion, collaborative and circular economies are possible. But we need, as a society, to engage with these ideas in more radical ways than it is happening at the moment.

The post OD&M: Designing for Sustainable Economic Transformations appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Image credit

As much as it may seem that the nuts and bolts of resource and waste management is about sorting machinery, storage, bins and collection systems, it is really ultimately about people.

We know that if people are to use resources mindfully, to manage them well, and to both demand and correctly use appropriate end of life systems, then we need to design systems that they are easy and convenient to use.

There are two ‘muscles’ that can be flexed in relation to resource and waste management – the Circular Economy muscle, and the Access Economy muscle. A lot of muscle-building effort has gone into the former, and the latter is a muscle we’ve only just discovered we can build.

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The Circular Economy is a concept and model which has been around for some time now, but is increasingly gaining traction – the UK’s leading waste & recycling organisation, WRAP UK have recently rebranded themselves as ‘Circular Economy and Resource Efficiency Experts’.

The Circular Economy seeks to shift activity from a linear to a circular model by making better use of materials, by keeping materials in circulation through reuse and recycling, industrial symbiosis and other efforts to divert material from landfill.

It displaces some demand for new materials, but does not address the rate at which materials enter the circle, as evidenced by total material demand continuing to grow faster than recycling rates improve.

It is vital to maintain a focus on bending the Linear Economy (‘take-make-waste’) into a Circular Economy, but it is not enough.

There is an entire, parallel area of territory yet to be explored, which I will call The Access Economy (aka Sharing Economy, Collaborative Economy) – or being able to access what we need by better using what we already have.

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The Access Economy seeks to minimise the demand for materials, and is as – if not more – significant than The Circular Economy. There are also overlaps between the two eg. reuse could be considered Circular and Access.

The rapidly-gaining momentum of the collaborative (aka sharing) economy holds huge potential for addressing how we consume resources, and ways it could result in less waste.

The Access Economy is focused not on managing material at end-of-life, of better managing ‘waste’. It is focused on designing systems that facilitate more efficient, cost effective and in many case, community-enhancing ways of enabling people to meet their needs by tapping what is already available and leveraging idle assets (be they stuff, time, space, skills).

This means looking at the design of our living systems – how we grow food and prepare it; how we clothe and transport ourselves; how we meet our daily needs. We need to look at how we can solve the pain points of people’s lives – cost of living, time poverty –in a way that also delivers on environmental objectives.

The systems for The Access Economy are different from those for The Circular Economy – and significantly they may be more appealing to people who don’t see themselves as ‘green’, or really care about recycling. 

Successfully meeting sustainability challenges means we need to stop focusing on ‘reducing’ and ‘managing’ energy, emissions, water, waste and everything else (which are symptoms, outcomes of how people live) and start looking our systems through a lens of design (not just physical design) and social innovation.

Ultimately, environmental organisations and programs are not really about ‘environment’ at all – they are social innovation, because they set out to create new patterns of behaviour among human beings in order to lessen our impacts on the ecological systems which sustain all life. And social innovation is a design process.

We are now far from the traditional, familiar territory of the Circular Economy, but into an exciting new realm we have scarcely begun to explore that is fast gathering momentum around the world.

What would we be capable of if we combined the existing strength of the Circular Economy with the emerging juggernaut of the Access Economy?

Further references:

Circular Economy – Ellen Macarthur Foundation – a series of articles about the circular economy model, its principles, related schools of thought, and an overview of circular economy news from around the world.

Shareable – an award-winning nonprofit news, action and connection hub for the sharing transformation.

OuiShare – a global community empowering citizens, public institutions and companies to build a society based on collaboration, openness and sharing.

Collaborative Consumption – comprehensive online resource for collaborative consumption worldwide and network for the global community, curating news, content, events, jobs, studies and resources from key media outlets and industry blogs, as well as original content.

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Originally published in 2014 on cruxcatalyst.com

Header image: Matthew Perkins, Flickr

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On Sunday 9th of June, four selected makers presented their agricultural solutions at Tzoumakers, our rural makerspace in Kalentzi (Ioannina, Greece). The workshop has enabled participants to explore a new dimension in making, to increase their competences and to discover that open source solutions in agriculture can be developed through knowledge diffusion and collaboration for mutual benefit.

Here are photos of the four solutions:

The project will continue with a final promotion of two developed prototypes in a European design event. Updates will be provided on our Facebook page.

We want to thank all the participants and wish them all the best for their future!

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During the last years we have witnessed a popularization of the maker movement. This phenomenon has arisen on a global scale due to the emergence of what is known as open hardware, which has allowed the appearance of innovations with an open design and low cost. The great development of new technologies of free access around digital manufacturing has created new and numerous possibilities for citizenship, to adopt the benefits promised by personalized production.

This factor, together with the emergence of spaces oriented to collaboration such as Fab Labs, Makerspaces or Media Labs, where several projects are being worked on in a social production regime and with a marked orientation toward citizen needs, has allowed the development of new forms of collaborative innovation based on the social production of non-proprietary technologies. For this reason, the maker movement is attracting the attention of all kinds of institutions interested in the possibilities that this phenomenon entails for education, science, technology and sustainability.

Although the beginnings of the maker movement can be clearly identified with a series of non-proprietary technologies that are the product of the expiration of a series of patents in fields such as microelectronics, 3D printing or 3D design, it must be added that in addition to these new free technologies are another type of social factors that have led to their irruption into society. Thus, new forms of work such as collaborative social production or what is known as Peer to Peer or P2P and an emphasis on informal and non-formal learning, which are produced on-line and off-line have clearly contributed to its consolidation.

The new maker culture is also characterized by involving individuals who try to play and experiment with technology as well as hackers, but whose scope of experimentation is much greater due to the development of what is known as open hardware, which has allowed linking the physical world with the virtual one through artifacts that have a non-proprietary design. This is the case of such successful initiatives as Arduino, Raspberry Pi, Makerbot or RepRap, which have in turn allowed the development of a myriad of projects low cost but with a great impact and popularity on the Internet. These technologies work as open source platforms that allow a multitude of amateurs and technology enthusiasts to develop various artifacts in the field of microelectronics, telecommunications or digital manufacturing. Initiatives that are usually of low cost but that are oriented to the specific needs of various marginal groups of society and that are not usually covered by mass production.

The great advantage offered by these low-cost solutions is that there is no need to manufacture a large print run, with the associated high cost involved, but small prototypes can be manufactured that can be improved without having to make longer series. This makes it possible to develop better control and modification of the various innovations, so that they adapt to the personal needs of their users instead of the opposite, which is usually the case in current production structures.

This irruption of personalized manufacturing and low-cost micro-electronics has led to great interest in the general public and this has led to spaces such as Hackerspaces, Makerspaces or Fab Labs they have become common in cities. In these places, thematic events, courses and activities of all kinds are held aimed at the collaborative production of digital objects capable of covering different social needs proposed by citizens. That is why the phenomenon is making its way into the mainly urban environment, but not only into it, as there are notable experiences in the rural world.

All these spaces that we have cited above are characterized by having an equipment in which we can list various types of machines such as 3D printers, 3D scanners, welding kits, laser cutters, CNC’s and a long list of tools that facilitate the collaborative development of manufacturing projects through which to learn and experiment with technology. In addition, the development on the Web of platforms such as Thingiverse and many others that function as knowledge artifacts allows these users to download designs, instructions and tutorials to replicate projects already carried out by other users. in other laboratories around the world or share their own designs through this type of platforms. In addition, these platforms also constitute a public agora where we can discuss with different users and creators of the projects the possible doubts or questions that arise in the processes of manufacturing and technological development.

The Fab Labs, Makerspaces and Hackerspaces allow their users to develop collaborative digital manufacturing projects or access courses, seminars and conferences where they can learn to master the indicated machines and acquire the necessary knowledge to develop the appropriate skills. Some of these spaces belong to more formal networks such as the Fab Labs. The creation of these spaces is followed by the development of various teaching materials that Neil himself develops to publicize the functioning of the machines that make up a Fab Lab and introduce the concepts of digital manufacturing and open hardware. These materials are the ones that will later form part of what is known as Fab Academy: a distance training program to instruct and certify people who want it in the tools available in these alternative manufacturing spaces.

Other initiatives such as the Makerspaces or Hackerspaces… also have a series of digital manufacturing machines and tools, as well as developing various training activities and having people trained in the use of these digital manufacturing tools (many of which have usually been carried out the course of the Fab Academy). In this type of laboratories, cooperative learning methodologies are usually used, through the development of projects or challenges that involve multidisciplinary learning of diverse competences and that rely in turn on the use of software and free hardware.

Finally, Maker Faires or maker fairs are the most popular events where you can contemplate the creations made by many passionate about technology. This type of exposition emerged in 2006 thanks to the push of Make magazine to “celebrate the maker movement” and give visibility to all those projects that have been conceived under the DIY philosophy and that have been developed in garages or neighborhood stores. Over the past few years, these types of fairs have attracted a large audience and have consolidated in many locations around the world.

In relation to institutional support, regarding the European continent we can see several initiatives by the European Commission to support this type of spaces and organizations. Through the Horizon 2020 research framework program, there are several specific sub-programs of work such as Science with and for Society (SwafS) that seek to promote the scientific-technological education of citizens and schoolchildren through the financing of collaborative projects of research that promote the STEM approach (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics).

The European Community has also dedicated various efforts to the realization of specific events oriented to the exaltation of the maker culture and for this reason it has supported the celebration of the Maker Faire in Rome as the reference event of the maker movement in the continent. Finally, it has also promoted its institutional support for other types of events more related to the culture of entrepreneurship and in which there has been support from large companies related to digital technologies such as Makers Town.

Focusing on the field of use, the education sector has been one of the most paying attention to the possibilities offered by the culture of manufacturers when it comes to rethinking current learning methods. The narratives of power that accompany the production of artifacts using digital manufacturing technologies constitute an element that facilitates personal empowerment through the use of technology, the development of specific skills and competencies and a greater motivation and participation towards the attainment of curricular objectives delimited in their learning. Perhaps the danger of incorporating this type of technology and spaces in the classroom is more in the adoption of a technocentric and simplistic approach, instead of an axiological and holistic approach.

In addition to education, the manufacturing industry can also benefit from the culture of manufacturers when it comes to promoting greater sustainability of production and consumption practices, in addition to adapting to the needs demanded by the digitization of the industry. The irruption of open manufacturing, fostered by the combination of free technologies, the social production of artifacts and the generation of knowledge in a network, also represents an important opportunity for industrial SMEs that often do not. Have the necessary resources to acquire high-tech equipment or hire highly qualified professionals. In this sense, the ease of access to the spaces of the manufacturers, the absence of restrictive licenses in the use of technologies and the free access to the information produced in this phenomenon can help this type of companies to adopt dynamics that allow them to adapt to the increasingly accelerated pace of technological innovation fostered by digitization.

In this sense it is important to emphasize that, despite being an emerging phenomenon, the values ​​that are circumscribed in it are of paramount importance in the face of the transition of society towards postindustrial environments, in which the role of innovation, experimentation, social learning and access to knowledge will be increasingly important, while relegating other values ​​currently present in structures from the industrial stage. Therefore, the emergence and popularization of the maker movement is a foretaste of the new sensibilities that are forging the use of new technologies that come from the digital revolution, and simultaneously an expression on the one hand of society of the need to rethink our structures current productive and technological development.

Content of the article is a summary of the following publication. References and full text available in:

ARBOR Ciencia, Pensamiento y Cultura

Vol. 194-789, julio-septiembre 2018, a471 | ISSN-L: 0210-1963

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I said in my last post that putting good software and data into the hands of farmers can profit a local economy, and I’d like to back up that claim a little. I also hinted that the direction in which such data flows is especially important in an increasingly globalized industry, where in a few years we could reasonably expect to see most of the world’s farming data owned by one or two multinational corporations. In order for farming communities to wrest some control over their own data, I believe it needs to originate with food producers, then travel outwardly along the supply chain to the consumers, who consume that data just as they would the food.

Those are some fairly abstract terms, and I won’t pretend they’re at all unbiased either. But I believe there’s some hard, practical rationale for why farmers can profit from controlling their own data, and I can put it in terms that any farmer with enough business-savvy can understand: data adds value to the product, which means more value for the consumer, which means a better price for the farmer. Let me explain.

The Value of Data

There are a lot of ways farmers already know to add value to the food they grow: washing and bunching vegetables, making a nice display and signage at market, investing in a refrigeration unit for one’s truck, canning sauce from unsold or surplus tomatoes, etc. All these measures avail the farmer a higher price at the point of sale, either by having a fresher, more marketable product when it arrives, or by creating a new market for a product that otherwise might not have sold. Most of this value also ships with the product, meaning the value will be propagated down the supply chain until it reaches its final destination, even if it passes through a few more hands before it does so.

Reliable farm data can do all these things and more. There are some metrics which the end consumer will obviously value, and farmers can leverage those for a higher price. If a farmer can provide accessible, verifiable data regarding when the product was harvested, how it was grown, what environmental impacts could be measured during its production and the specific seed variety it was grown from, then she will find a large market of customers willing to pay a premium for the food associated with that data. That kind of data can be especially valuable to distributors and other partners further down the supply chain, where normally such information becomes more obscure the further it travels. There’s also the mere ability to verify a product was grown by someone within a small radius of the consumer, assuring them that their dollars are staying in the local economy.

These are all sources of value that traditional methods can capture as well, if not quite with the same granularity and level of persistence; however, I think the real value will be in the predictive power that data can provide, to an extent that other value-added practices can’t really replicate. This comes in especially handy with larger buyers, who have their own downstream markets to be concerned about, and who would truly value knowing a yield within a few percentage points and a harvest window within a matter of a day or two, all from perhaps two weeks out or more. If a farmer has a reasonable expectation that demand will outstrip her yield, and can predict that reliably enough ahead of time, she can offer a guarantee of availability, at a premium, to any interested buyers who order in advance. If instead she anticipates overproduction, she can offer volume discounts to potential early buyers, so that once the harvest date rolls around that abundance will be at a more manageable volume.

Through API’s (Application Programming Interfaces), this data could be propagated to buyers automatically, and prices adjusted the same way. For instance, in the case of overproduction, the sale window could be set to close once a certain number of bushels had been sold. Or if a certain quota isn’t met for premium orders, the price could be lowered after a given time. All this will help guarantee the best price for the highest volume of sales. The availability of this data via API’s also means that, once again, the value can be easily passed down the supply chain. A wholesaler or retailer with an ecommerce business can have the data relayed automatically to their website, and thus to their own customers. A chef can post a new seasonal item on his menu a week or more in advance and start promoting it via social media.

The Protocol vs the Data, Public vs Private

This raises a potentially contentious point regarding what data is made public and what is kept private. This inevitably comes back to who owns the data in the first place, but plain data, technically, cannot be copyrighted or patented, so once someone has access to it, there’s nothing to prevent them from sharing it however they see fit. It’s more a matter of who owns the computer the data is stored on, and what terms of service they’ve negotiated with the user. In that sense, farm data also cannot be made open source in strictly the same way that software or other creative works can.¹

If farm data was made publicly available from one source, and then a third party copies that data, there is nothing holding that third party to make the data or its derivatives freely available via their own platform. This means if a farmer publishes the data related to their wholesale prices and volumes via a free API, a distributor who connects to that API can still restrict access to that data via their own website, even excluding the very same farmer who grew the product. So if that farmer wanted to see what kind of markups that distributor was applying to the original wholesale price, she might have to pay a subscription fee, or perhaps wouldn’t be able to view it at all. At the same time, this doesn’t exactly create any guarantees of transparency for the consumer, who might also be restricted. Perhaps the distributor just wouldn’t be incentivized to pass that data along to the end consumer at all. We can’t just assume that opening up the data will automatically create better markets for the farmer and more transparency for the consumer.

So I’d like to clarify the difference between the need for open standards and public API’s, which I believe are absolutely essential for a transparent food shed, versus the caution which should be exercised when pushing for all farm-related data to be made public. This will take a bit of understanding of how API’s are used to store and transmit data, so we can distinguish them from the data itself. For our purposes, I’ll emphasize that API’s are mainly just the processes by which data is transmitted and stored, not the data itself. It’s the way that one computer application communicates to another.

To use an example of a human interface, rather than an Application Programming Interface, consider the process by which you log into your email account and view your inbox. You go to a URL, perhaps https://mail.gmail.com, then when the login page loads, you click on the field called “Email Address”, type your address in, then click on the field called “Password” and type it, and finally press enter or click a button called “Submit”. After that you can view your inbox, and access different mail items by a similar series of clicks. The process is the same whether it’s your inbox or your friend’s or your bosses, even though you lack the credentials to access your boss’s Gmail account (presumably). What’s most important is the process: the succession of clicks, the names of the fields you enter your credentials into, and the order in which all that happens. You probably don’t think about all those steps, but they’re all critical to a successful login attempt; if you entered your password into the wrong field, or clicked on the wrong button, you wouldn’t get to see your inbox.

API’s have similar protocols for accessing data and authenticating users, but instead of using a series of mouse clicks and keyboard entries, it uses a programming language. Like the human interface, the API is the same no matter who is logging in, and no matter the contents of their inbox. The only exceptions are the actual characters that make up your email and password, because they are themselves a type of data. They’re input data, whereas your inbox is output data. The interface needs to be flexible and generic enough to accept different inputs and respond with different outputs. If it just assumed the input data was the same every time, that the email and password were the same for everyone, then everyone would have the same inbox. This is why it’s important for any API to separate the data from the process. This also means that the process can be made public, while the data, including your password or an email from your significant other, can be kept private. Any programmer can access the Gmail API to write their own email app, but that doesn’t mean they can access your password or inbox. The same can be achieved with farm data, separating public API’s from the private data.

None of this means that there aren’t cases where it would be desirable to make certain farm data public, and perhaps expose that data over an API that is free for anyone to use, with or without credentials. But farmers, as both individuals and as businesses, have a reasonable expectation of privacy over some portion of the their data, just as a Gmail user expects the contents of their inbox will be kept (reasonably) private. Once a farmer puts a product onto the market, there are more compelling reasons to make some of that data public. For instance, it benefits both the farmer and the consumer at that point to have some level of transparency about the growing practices, freshness of the product, price, etc. Public API’s and open data can provide such transparency. Still, I think there is a strong case for leaving trade secrets, personal info, and other types of pre-market data at the discretion of the farmer to publish, whether freely or for a price, so she can thereby leverage that data for the type of value-added services I mentioned above. There needs to be a delicate balance struck between making our local farmers more competitive in a globalized market, while also making that market more transparent for the consumer.

Keeping Data in the Community

I think there is a huge need to talk about how we decide what parts of this data should be made public and what kept private, and I don’t expect to put much of a dent into that discussion here. I will assert, however, that this is something that should be decided at the community level, between farmers and the people eating their food. Unfortunately, that does not appear to be the course we are currently taking.

As is well known by now, the trend among Big Data companies, like Facebook and Google, is to provide users with a nominally “free” or inexpensive service in exchange for the data they’re able to collect from those users. A similar trend is already taking over in digital agriculture, especially as big mergers like the one between Bayer and Monsanto aggregate more and more data into fewer and fewer hands. Angela Huffman, an advocate for anti-monopoly reform in the agriculture, writes in the Des Moines Register that the newly approved conglomerate “will have more in common with Facebook and Cambridge Analytica than meets the eye.” She goes on to say,

In recent years, large agrochemical companies, including Bayer and Monsanto, have been heavily investing in digital agriculture. This new platform involves collecting data from farms, then building mathematical models and algorithms aimed at giving farmers real-time information on how to grow and manage their crops. […] It stands to reason that if Bayer and Monsanto combine to increase their dominance over digital farming, they will use their near monopoly on farmer data to sell more of their chemicals and seeds to farmers.

This new data system, as it’s evolving, favors a dynamic where farmers get cheap services for analyzing their crop data, in exchange for giving away that data to Big Ag, instead of having the chance to leverage that data themselves. These services usually come bundled together with other products, like seeds, fertilizers and even tractors.

In 2015, John Deere & Company told a farmer that he would be breaking the law if he tried to fix his own tractor by accessing the firmware that controlled a faulty sensor. When it failed, that one inconsequential sensor would shut down the entire tractor and halt his farm’s production for two days while he waited for the replacement part to arrive. Cynics and digital rights advocates alike all thought this boiled down to Deere’s agreements with licensed repair shops and parts dealers, but Deere’s rationale for withholding the source code turned out to be something a lot more lucrative, as Cory Doctorow points out (video):

The first thing that happens when a Deere tractor runs around your field is that it does centimeter-accurate soil surveys using the torque sensors in the wheels. And that data is not copyrightable, because facts aren’t copyrightable in America. […] But because the only way you can get access to those facts is by jailbreaking the tractor and removing a thing that protects access to copyrighted works, which is the operating system on the tractor itself, […] it’s a felony to access that data unless you’re John Deere. So John Deere pulls that data in over the wireless network connections in these tractors, and then they bundle it all together and they sell it to a seed company. And if you want to use the centimeter accurate soil surveys of your fields to do automated, optimized seed broadcasting you have to buy seed from the one company² that licenses it. […] But it’s actually just the tip of the iceberg because if you are doing centimeter accurate soil surveys of entire regions you have insight into crop yields way ahead of the futures market. And that’s why John Deere committed PR-suicide by telling the Farmers of America that they didn’t own their tractors, that they were tenant farmers.

This case study in bad agricultural data policy perfectly highlights the concerns we should have for how farm data is used and collected, starting quite literally from the ground up. Before the seed even meets the soil, all of a farmer’s most critical data — which brings with it the power to increase yields, decrease waste and command a better price at market — is being siphoned away to large corporate data stores half a world away. Then the derivatives of that data are sold back to the same farmer who generated it with every pass of his tractor. We can’t blame Big Ag for concocting such a clever scheme to profit its shareholders, but we can learn from it. We can learn to take active measures to restore control of that data back to the local communities where it originated, and with it, return all the value it held.

We as consumers should also have a chance to say how this data is used. Do we want this data to boost the sales of the chemicals which run off into our backyards and are responsible for emitting one third of humanity’s annual contribution of CO2 into the atmosphere? Or do we want to leverage the full potential of farm data to eventually render the extensive farming technologies of last century obsolete, replacing them with smarter, cleaner, more efficient technologies that could save us from environmental catastrophe in this century?

An Alternative Model

Instead of being forced to buy seed from the only company that is licensed to provide services like precision planting, under a different model a farmer could shop around for seed companies that provide other data services. These services would include the ability to import seed data into the farmer’s preferred crop planning software at the time of purchase. Soil surveys could be taken with sensor widgets, which could be installed cheaply on even the oldest, non-computerized tractors and would include their own light-weight, off-grid networking capabilities. This data, combined with the integrated seed data, could be sent to publicly funded university extension programs, who could analyze that data and provide services to help farmers calibrate their machinery to optimize planting.

The benefits of this system over the John Deere model would be numerous. The farmer would get higher yield from each seed planted, which is a tremendous value in its own right, but retrofitting such hardware could also present significant cost savings, compared to the price of a new tractor with computer diagnostics built-in, some of which reach seven figures. Such an arrangement would also provide data to public research institutions, who could be trusted to anonymize and aggregate the data from a wider distribution of growers, and could publish the results of their analysis for others to use. Instead being used to push chemicals, this data could aid research into new intensive growing practices that are better for the environment, and could even help monitor the total soil health of vital growing regions. Plus, if anything ever happened to the sensors, they could be easily repaired by any third party, or by the farmer herself, because they would be built with open source hardware and software.

This data would continue to profit the farmer when she brought the product to market. Instead of giving Bayer/Monsanto the trade insights to hedge on commodities markets, the farmer could use this data herself to get the best price possible. Over time, the data from these soil surveys could be used to train programs that optimize prices, just as the extension’s analytical programs were optimized for planting. The planting data itself could be correlated with data from the National Weather Service to calculate the growing degree days necessary for each crop to reach full maturity. This would have a tremendous pricing advantage if the farmer could start offering more reliable delivery dates. Additional sensors on the farm could make these predictions even more precise, and if it was known that favorable weather conditions in her own micro-climate could bring her crop to market even a few days before other nearby farms, that could provide a real competitive edge.

Again, as I suggested above, forward-thinking distributors and retailers could receive this data and forward it to end consumers. The consumers would be able to anticipate having the spring’s first snap peas or strawberries weeks in advance, and could count down the days on the calendar. They could know when they were harvested and know just how many hours they spent in transit before reaching their table. That transit time could be reduced by innovative software for food hubs, and CSA programs and farmers markets, which could all pull data from such crop planning software and pass along the value.

We shouldn’t be skeptical about the technology itself — that it seems too futuristic or that modern farms wouldn’t have a practical use for it. That technology is certainly coming and will be used. A lot of it has already arrived. We should be skeptical about how that technology will be used, and who it will favor. Ultimately, whoever controls the data will determine where the value of that data flows. Will it all go to a few private interests and controlling shareholders? Or will it benefit the people growing the food, and those who are nourished by that food, as well as the environment that food depends on to grow? That is not a decision the technology will make for us, and it most certainly won’t be an easy one to make or execute. It’s a choice, nevertheless, which we need to make as a community, and it’s one we need to make soon, before others make the decision for us.

¹ There is, of course, a corresponding Open Data movement, which shares a lot in common with Open Source, but in a legal sense it operates entirely differently. Also, there is a myriad of different legal interpretations that I’m glossing over here, but a good primer, if you’re curious, is Feist v. Rural Telephone.

² Doctorow indicates that this seed company is in fact Monsanto, but I have been unable to verify that claim through other sources.

Originally published at jgaehring.com.

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Makers and the related  activities are more often observed in vibrant cities, encapsulating diverse communities of designers, engineers and innovators. They flourish around luscious spaces and events, where talent and ideas are abound. Pioneer cities, like Barcelona, Madrid, London, Copenhagen and Amsterdam, have gradually evolved to prominent centres of the maker culture.

But what about places where these elements are less eminent? It is often said that some of the most advanced technologies are needed in the least developed places. And here the word “technology” conveys a broader meaning than mere technical solutions and enhancements of human capacities. Etymologically, technology derives from the ancient Greek words “techne”, i.e. art or craft, and “logos”, which refers to a form of systematic treatment. In this sense, technology is practically inseparable from the human elements of craftsmanship, ingenuity and knowledge. Elements that are as embedded in our very existence, as the practice of sharing with our neighbours. Especially in situations of physical shortage and scantness, solidarity and cooperation are the most effective survival strategies.

This is the case of a small mountainous village in North-Western Greece called Kalentzi. It is situated in the village cluster of Tzoumerka, a place abundant in natural and cultural wealth, yet scarce in the economic means of welfare. The local population mostly depends on low-intensity and small-scale activities combining arboreal cultivation, husbandry and beekeeping. Investment was never overflowing in the region, let alone in today’s Greek economy in life support.

A local community of farmers assembled around a practical problem: finding appropriate tools for their everyday activities. Established market channels mostly provide with tools and machinery that are apt for the flatlands. Acquisition and maintenance costs are unsustainably high, while people often have to adapt their techniques to the logic of the machines. They begun with simple meetups where they created a favourable environment to share, reflect and ideate on their common challenges and aspirations, facilitated by a group of researchers from the P2P Lab, a local research collective focused on the commons.

Soon the discussion was already saturated and they started building together a tool for hammering fencing-poles into the ground. Several tools and methods have been used for this task for ages, though each one with its associated difficulties and dangers. Some farmers climb on ladders to hammer the poles, while others use barrels. However, it’s the combined effort of hammering while maintaining one’s balance that is particularly challenging, whereas there are often two people required for the job.

Interesting ideas were already in place to solve this problem. Designs were drafted on a flipchart with a couple of markers and the ones more available brought some of their own tools, like a cut saw and an electric welder, to build a prototype.

That has been the birth of Tzoumakers: a community-driven agricultural makerspace in Tzoumerka, Greece. Tzoumakers is more than an unfortunate wordplay of “Tzoumerka” and the maker culture; it is about a unique confluence of the groundbreaking elements of the latter, with the rich traditional heritage of the former. A distinctive synthesis that transcends both into a notion that seeks to create solutions that are on-demand and locally embedded, yet conceived and shareable on a global cognitive level.

It is important to emphasise that Tzoumakers is not a place that develops new tools ‘in house’. Rather it builds upon the individual ingenuity of its community and remains open for everyone to participate in this process. Through collective work, field testing and representation new tools may be released and further shared to benefit others with similar problems. Many of the necessary innovations are already there; the role of Tzoumakers is to collect, formalize and disseminate them.

But it’s also important to understand that Tzoumakers, much like its tools and solutions, cannot provide ready-made blueprints for solutions to be simply copy-pasted elsewhere. The same applies to the projects that have been its inspiration, such as L’ Atelier Paysan and Farm Hack, which cannot convey one unified cosmopolitan vision for the agricultural sector. The same process of connection, collaboration and reflection has to be followed on every different context, whether rich or poor, vibrant or desolate, in abundance or scarcity. But it is this combination of human creativity, craftsmanship, meaningful work and sharing that arguably embodies a true, pervasive and “cosmolocal” spirit for the maker culture.

Notes:

Tzoumakers and the P2P Lab are supported by the project “Phygital: Catalysing innovation and entrepreneurship unlocking the potential of emerging production and business models”, implemented under the Transnational Cooperation Programme Interreg V-B “Balkan – Mediterranean 2014-2020”, co-funded by the European Union and the National Funds of the participating countries.

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by Antonin Calderon & Jean Rossiaud (Leman Currency / APRES-GE in collaboration with Gaëlle Bigler (FRACP / URGENCI)

This is the third issue of the series we started in October, on the theme of “local currencies”, after a general presentation of the advantages and challenges of local currencies through the example of the Leman currency (October 2018) and the avenues for collaboration and synergies between local currencies and sustainable food (December 2018), we propose today to reflect in terms of production/supply chains, for different types of agricultural products, and starting once again from the Geneva experience: from seed to production, from production to processing, from processing to distribution, from distribution to consumption. The five key agricultural sectors on which Leman and the Chamber of the Social and Solidarity Economy (APRES-GE) are currently working are the following:

• Beer: from hops to pints
• Vegetables: from pitchfork to fork
• Bread: from seed to bread
• Wood: from tree to stere
• Wine: from vine shoot to glass

This is why it is particularly interesting to bring the different actors in a production/supply chain together around the same table, in order to reflect together on current and potential value flows – and the resulting cash flows. Many economic actors generally do not have the time to take this step back. The local currency offers producers a great opportunity to strengthen the links between them, and between them and consumers, and thus to strengthen the local economy in the face of competition from globalized markets. The service provided by the local currency is “economic facilitation”: it is a form of brokerage that allows producers to better choose their local suppliers, and in case of overproduction to sell stocks in the payment community.

The beer production/supply chain: from hops to pints

Let us take the example of the beer sector to illustrate what we are saying. The development of artisanal breweries is currently in full expansion and their operation is easily modelable. The main links in this chain are: farmers, malthouse, breweries, distributors, as well as bars, restaurants or grocery stores. The diagram below illustrates this.

If you still don’t know it, you should know that 90% of beer is made up of water, which is used as the basis for adding malt, hops and then yeast. To this can be added additional ingredients, such as coffee, fruit, spices or other condiments or herbs.

Farmers (1) grow the cereals, which will then be processed into malt by the Malting plant (2). At the same time, hops (2”), a climbing plant, must be cultivated and its flowers harvested and dried; yeast (2”) must be produced, usually in a laboratory.

These three ingredients are used by artisanal breweries (3), with water, for the production of beer. Other goods are also needed to produce beer, including bottles, capsules, labels, glue, and of course water. These products are considered as secondary in the beer production chain, although they are obviously necessary. More and more often, breweries collect their bottles, through a deposit system, and reuse them.

Then, the distributors (4) are responsible for transporting the drinks produced in bars, restaurants and grocery stores (5), where they are sold for consumption, and in particular to employees (6) of the various companies in the beer industry. Indeed, some of the beer consumers work in the sector.

A new activity should also be integrated into this beer sector: mushroom houses (4′). They work with breweries, recovering the used malt (spent grains) and using it as a substrate on which mushrooms (especially shiitake and oyster mushrooms) will grow. The recovery of the substrate is currently being studied for use as protective packaging, for its lightweight and shock absorbing properties.

All these actors also have costs for premises, energy, production and transport machinery, IT, printing and administration. This is what we call the secondary network of suppliers.

The following diagram summarizes the primary network of the beer sector, by modelling the flows of goods/services, as well as the cash flows that allow these exchanges.

The economic relationship

The local currency is above all a tool for establishing economic links between the actors of a sector. While stakeholders are convinced of the value of creating a strong local economy, they do not always have the time, energy or even the knowledge to analyse all current and potential flows in their own economic production/supply chain Pressed by short-term economic constraints and lack of liquidity, they usually go as fast and cheap as possible, whereas their real economic interest in the medium or long term would be to favour a concerted and solidarity-based approach, for example in a pooled credit system.

Working in their own local currency encourages economic actors to be aware of the specificities and various constraints within the chain and puts everyone in commercial contact with their potential suppliers and customers: the farmer with malting, malting with breweries, distributors with breweries, and bars, restaurants and grocery stores with distributors.

The stakes are not only economic and ecological. Admittedly, it makes it possible to increase the volumes of activity of each individual and the wealth produced on the territory; and the development of this territory, in short circuits, reinforces economic resilience and ecological sustainability (reduction of CO2 emissions). On the social and political level, the economic network thus created breaks the isolation of each actor and it is the social fabric that is strengthened. Together, it will be easier to defend your collective interests and become stakeholders in public policies to promote local agriculture.

Monetary liquidity for the sectors

The pooled credit system offered by a complementary local currency such as the Leman in the Lake Geneva region provides significant liquidity to the production/supply chains. Indeed, each actor is granted an operating credit line (currently between LEM 1,000.- and LEM 20,000.-, depending on its size) that can be used without interest rates and without limit as long as it remains below the established threshold. The potential for economic exchange for the entire economic chain concerned is therefore increased by the sum of the credit limits of all its players.

This ancestral system of credit pooling, which has practically disappeared today, swallowed up by the contemporary banking system, is nevertheless a very simple and very stable system. The network as a whole is by definition always totally balanced “at zero”: the sum of the positive amounts is always equal to the sum of the negative amounts, and there is no monetary creation. The more money turns, the more wealth is produced. The lack of liquidity is a barrier to activity. Shared credit therefore replaces bank credit very advantageously.

Conventional bank credit is expensive – when it is granted, because banks often refuse risk. It raises the price of products, because it is necessary to include the cost of money (interest) in the selling price, and weakens the seller in a competitive market occupied by large groups that lower prices.

By working in local currency, we recreate a parallel economy, and we avoid pressure from large groups and foreign products. Getting started with the complementary currency, particularly for agricultural sectors, must be seen as a survival and development strategy. But we must play the game together, companies, employees and consumers, so that the currency can continue to supply the local economy continuously, without stagnating in bottlenecks.

Towards healthy irrigation of the production/supply chains

The main challenge is therefore to avoid the formation of pockets of local currency retention, which indicate an economic blockage. Such a blockage is beneficial if it allows the actor in question to question himself about his partners who do not accept the local currency. It may be time to change it, and to opt for suppliers who also fit into the logic of relocation and social and environmental responsibility.

This is where the services of local currency “facilitators” come into play: they work with companies to integrate suppliers into the payment community, if they meet the conditions of the charter and, if not, to find new partners.

On the other hand, pockets of local currency are problematic if companies cannot put as much currency back into the circulation as they accept: the currency then loses its primary function, which is to facilitate trade. The risk of devaluation of the currency (it will be exchanged below its official value, for example 120 units will be requested for a good/service worth 100 in state currency) is therefore significant.

Two types of actors can find themselves structurally in this “bottleneck” position. First, the company that would occupy a central place in the supply chain, and would have no or too few substitutes. In the “beer” sector, it is the malting industry, with which all local breweries have an interest in working in local currency. Secondly, the company at the “end of the chain”. In our example, it is the farmer who grows the cereals that will then be processed into malt. The following diagram shows this problem of pocket retention of local currency at the end of the supply chain.

For these two cases, there is a simple theoretical answer, but it is not so easy to put into practice, because it already requires a dense economic network: the payment of part of the salaries in local currency. However, the money supply redistributed monthly is a powerful lever for boosting the local and sustainable economy through consumption. This is explained in the diagram below.

We have therefore seen that producers in the agricultural sectors have a clear interest in using the local currency to resist competition from large groups and foreign producers. However, this success is based on the balance of flows. Strengthening the local economy therefore requires organization and patience, as it involves bringing all its stakeholders into the payment community into a virtuous circle.

It is up to the local currency to carry out this work of economic facilitation and credit pooling, and it must be given the means to do so. Once this work is done, in the same way that an irrigation system would be installed in a crop, money can then flow in a virtuous way by creating value in the local and sustainable economy, and by strengthening economic resilience, in the face of systemic financial crises. 2008 should be a lesson to us!

In a future newsletter, we will take the example of one or more particular companies and how they use local currency on a daily basis to make sense of their work: an economic sense, of course, but also the feeling of participating fully in improving the common good.

This post is also available in / aussi en: French Spanish

Photo by practicalowl

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