‘It is important to approach open data and open technologies with an open mindset. Citizen- and farmer-generated data can lead to major breakthrough in policy making, providing insights and evidence for better informed environmental management and nature conservation. In the context of climate adaptation and mitigation, open data can also become a powerful tool in the hands of communities of practice, advocacy groups and small companies which can use it to generate solutions that address problems at regional, national and global level.’

These were the summary remarks of Pavlos Georgiadis, ethnobotanist, social entrepreneur and participant of the CAPSELLA, Harvesting Innovation event in Milan in May. Part of Milan Food Week, the event was hosted in collaboration with OPERA, the Italian Observatory for Agroecology. The guiding question was: how can ICT and open data innovations be used to further agroecological and agrobiodiverse farming practices?

The meeting was a culmination of the Horizon 2020-funded CAPSELLA project, the Collective Awareness PlatformS for Environmentally-sound Land management based on data technoLogies and Agrobiodiversity. This project emphasises communities of practice and bringing together diverse food system actors from tech and open data specialists, to scientists, farmers and academics. Under the principles of co-design and open innovation, the project experiments with the different ways technology can be used to further sustainable food systems.

ARC2020 has been tracking this project from the start, with Oliver Moore presenting at the CAPSELLA launch, two years ago. Helene Schulze went along to the closing event to think-through and present on the ways that innovation and open data for agroecology may be incorporated in policy-making.

CAPSELLA – linking agroecology and technology?

Concepts of social digital innovation, co-design and co-innovation, emphasise the significance of how ICT innovations are designed, how a need is identified, who is involved in the design and innovation process and who has access to the final product(s).

This is the key potential opportunity and potential obstacle for AgTech innovations aligning with or furthering agroecology. How can we ensure that this technology (such as data from satellite imaging) does not fall into the hands of the existing power concentrations within the global food system, Big Ag? Instead, how can technology empower small producers? The CAPSELLA project emphasises that this technology must be designed and built with the active participation of those for whom it is intended.

Policy promoting AgTech

With a range of researchers in agroecology, farmers representatives and innovation, ICT and policy experts, I was asked what policies are needed for data to drive innovation in sustainable agriculture and food systems.

I first addressed the need for nuance – when we talk about AgTech, we are talking about a large swathe of different innovations and interventions. These range from using drones to measure CAP compliance to grassroots open-source technology movements to large agribusineses collecting and purchasing satellite data. Accordingly, when faced with the question of what policies encourage innovation, we must think about the kind of innovation we want to see. What innovations enhance and further agroecology? How can those innovations be supported?

These questions were asked at the start of the day and the answers seemed clear: community-driven, bottom-up and accessible innovations. Innovations designed and built with the eventual user. An important part of agroecology is about decision-making capabilities, questioning and problematising the power dynamics embedded in the existing food system. This is why, when we talk about innovation, this term should refer not only the technological innovation but innovation in the decision-making structures, innovation in the way we make policy.

We need more participatory policy making where all sorts of actors and stakeholders are folded into all stages of the process, right from the very beginning in formulating the questions of concern. A purely top-down decision making approach is not agroecologically aligned, will likely lead to a situation where AgTech and digitisation reinforces existing vertically inclined or hierarchical decision making structures. Such structures may allow for increased corporate consolidation of the food system, or at least do not pave the way for a more equal food system.

Access to best practice

In what ways could AgTech counter such power dynamics? One solution is improved knowledge dissemination. In the words of participant and speaker Dr Andrea Beste,

‘Organic farming and agroecological farming systems depend on knowledge. We have so much knowledge spread around the world but it is fragmented. If you can put this knowledge together on the internet or on a platform where you can change or share something, then this knowledge will spread very fast around the world.’

The internet is a space which facilitates easy, fast and affordable access to knowledge such as best farming practice.

An example of how CAPSELLA proposes that AgTech might help knowledge dissemination is the SOILapp. This builds upon a very old soil quality measure, the spade test. Here the farmer digs up the top 30cm of soil with a spade. The app will then ask a series of questions to help the farmer understand the quality of the soil, these include soil moisture and texture as well as vegetation coverage. The data is then uploaded onto a map allowing the user to track changes in their own soil quality as well as compare with soil quality in other areas.

Open-data and open mindsets

The open-data mindset as used in the CAPSELLA apps requires a reframing in the way we think about knowledge. It requires a shift from a system based on competition to one encouraging cooperation. What might a food system look like where skill-sharing, knowledge dissemination and collective learning empowers individuals and communities rather than placing them at a too-risky competitive disadvantage?

The open-data mindset was framed as a response to the question of how to scale up agroecology. Professor Yiannis Ioannidis from the ATHENA Research and Innovation Center, argues that

‘By coming up with connections among the communities and people involved, helping them to communicate best practices and reuse data from a different environment and in general raising awareness… Openess and connectedness is key and technology is a perfect tool to be able to achieve this.’

There is a long way to go to reshuffle power dynamics in the food system. Bottom-up, community-driven AgTech innovations are small ways powerful actors can be challenged nonetheless. Through access to data and knowledge such technologies may facilitate, in the long-term, a food and farming culture more oriented toward cooperation, collaborative learning and the collective good.

CAPSELLA – participatory science and open data for field, seed & food

The post Cultivating an Open-Data Mindset: the CAPSELLA Project appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Potatoes are, of course, a central element of Quechua culture. When a reporter from Gourmet magazine visited the region, she was amazed to discover that “each potato, it seemed, had its own special or ceremonial use: There were potatoes to eat at baptisms; potatoes, like the bride potato, for weddings; and others for funerals. Potatoes like the red moro boli were high in antioxidants, while potatoes such as the ttalaco – a long, banana-shaped tuber – must be either soaked and steamed or made into a potato alcohol.”

Some potatoes must be grown on steep slopes above 13,000 feet. Some can be grown nearly anywhere. It is not uncommon for a single farmer’s field to produce hundreds of different varieties, many of them quite rare.

The six Quechua communities see themselves as living in reciprocal relationship with the land, each other and the spirit world. The approach has been called ayllu – a political and socioeconomic system in which “individuals with the same interests and objectives [are] linked through shared norms and principles with respect to humans, animals, rocks, spirits, mountains, lakes, rivers, pastures, food crops, wildlife, etc.,” write Alejandro Argumedo and Bernard Yun Loong Wong (Argumedo & Loong Wong 2010; Argumedo 2008. These monographs are the source for many facts in this essay). People strive for a balance between the ayllu of the Runas (humans and their domesticated crops and animals), the Sallaka (wild plants and creatures) and the Auki Ayllu (sacred beings, including mountain protector spirits).

In this cosmovision, the Earth is seen as giving potatoes, other crops, animals and the living landscape to the people – gifts that must be reciprocated through the giving of pagos, or offerings, in return. The spiritual engagement with pachamama, or Mother Earth, is not incidental, but a key factor in the Quechua’s deep respect for the earth’s limits, generativity and agrobiodiversity. “The main objective of the ayllu,” Argumedo and Loong Wong explain, “is attainment of well-being, which in Quechua societies is defined as Sumak kawsay.” The term refers to living a harmonious and healthy relationship with pachamama.

The point of agriculture in Quechua societies is not to raise maximum crop yields for market sale and profit. It is to faithfully implement the principles associated with the ayllu, which lies at the core of the Quechua’s stable, regenerative agroecological practices that have evolved within the Andean landscape – a region that has a variety of different “vertical” microclimates at different altitudes, often at short distances from each other. Thus the altiplano region may grow potatoes and quinoa, notes Argumedo, while fields in lower valleys may grow maize, and higher pastures may be used to raise llamas (Argumedo & Loong Wong 2010).

In recent decades, multinational biotech and agricultural corporations have increasingly sought to appropriate the fruits of such distinctive ecosystems and convert them into market commodities. They often buy up or evict traditional communities, dismantle traditional agriculture and claim patents in seeds, genes and other organisms. Regions with rich biodiversity such as Peru are a prime hunting ground for such corporate predators, whose acts of biopiracy seek to privatize genetic and physical resources that have been managed as commons for generations.

To prevent such market enclosures of shared wealth, the indigenous peoples of the Cusco Valley joined with the nonprofit group ANDES¹ in the 1990s to develop an ingenious legal innovation, the Indigenous Biocultural Heritage Area (IBCHA). The idea, launched in 2000, was to create a sui generis² legal regime to preserve and promote native potato varieties and protect the fragile ecosystem by recognizing the role of indigenous “biocultural heritage” practices (Argumedo 2008:49-57).

The communities established a protected agroecological region called the “Potato Park” – “Parque de la Papa” – to protect more than 12,000 hectares considered essential to the agrobiodiversity of the Pisaq region and conserve traditional culture, knowledge and livelihoods. The Potato Park is a community-led and rights-based approach to conservation that points toward a very different model of “development” than conventional market-based ones.³ The villages of the Potato Park all share authority in running it, with each one electing a chairperson to coordinate the work of the association. Special attention is paid to integrating traditional spiritual values and practices into the everyday operations and policies of the Potato Park.

Under the IBCHA system, communities that belong to the Potato Park have agreed to selectively share their “living library” of potato genetic knowledge with scientists. In a special agreement with the International Potato Center (CIP) – a nonprofit food security organization that works with the global research partnership CGIAR – the Potato Park has shared more than 200 of its 900 native potato varieties with scientists, and is facilitating experiments to cultivate new (non-GMO) potato varieties that can resist climate change. They also have a special interest in “repatriating” potato varieties that were lost when modern, commercial farming methods were introduced. The Potato Park refuses to allow the patenting of any genetic knowledge, however, believing that private property rights are incompatible with the sacred and collective status of the potatoes. The agreement is widely seen as a model that other agroecological cultures could emulate. It both recognizes the sanctity of community control over the potatoes while allowing modern scientific study and certain forms of communal business activities.

Thus, besides preserving Quechua cultures and assisting scientific inquiry, the Potato Park is hosting socially and ecologically sensitive forms of development such as agroecotourism, “nutraceuticals,” (dietary and nutritional products) and pharmaceuticals. The Potato Park has a processing center for natural medicines and soaps, a network of local pharmacies and a video communications center. It has a formal registry of the Park’s biological diversity and uses “geographical indicators” (legal rights for place-based products) and trademarks to protect its stewardship authority over local genetic diversity (Argumedo and Pimbert 2005:11).

Women play a key role in many of the economic activities of the Association of Communities of the Potato Park (the formal name of the project). There is, for example, the Sipaswarmi Medicinal Plants Women’s Collective, which sells natural medicine and soaps, and the Tijillay T’ika Women’s Audio-Visual Collective, a women’s co-operative that makes videos in the native language about local resources.

Although the Potato Park does not have state recognition within either Peruvian national law or the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), that does not mean the association is without legal protection. The IBCHA agreement is legally compatible with existing systems of national and international law, and is seen as an inspiration for similar projects along the Ruta Cóndor agrobiodiversity corridor in the Andes. Meanwhile, many Potato Park agreements and actions are legally enforceable in conventional ways, such as the scientific study agreement with CIP and the Potato Park database that can be used to thwart patent applications for indigenous medicinal plants and knowledge.

In any case, some of the most consequential forms of law are not formal and state-based, but customary and vernacular. It is in local villages that agroecological and biocultural practices are actually managed and enforced, in ways that official, state-based law could never do. The IBCHA agreement is really an attempt to bridge this divide – to use formal law to recognize distinctive, context-specific customary law so that intergenerational cultural knowledge and practices can be recognized as legally valid and practically effective.

In the end, the Quechua culture of commoning remains the stabilizing force. In the village of Chawaytire, there is an all-organic restaurant Papamanka run by a women’s association, which acts as a custodian of indigenous traditions and recipes. Proud of its heritage, the restaurant shares its indigenous folkways without pandering to the tourist trade. When the Gourmet reporter asked a waiter to cut into one of the potatoes to see the color inside, she declined, explaining that cutting a potato without eating it is an insult to pachamama.

Such reverence, which may appear irrational to the modern mind, is a key reason why the Quechua have been able to maintain the integrity of their biocultural traditions and fragile ecosystem.

References

Argumedo, Alejandro. 2008. “The Potato Park, Peru: Conserving Agrobiodiversity in an Andean Indigenous Biocultural Heritage Area,” in Amend, T., Brown, J., Kothari A., Phillips, A., Stolton, S. editors. Protected Landscapes and Agrobiodiversity Values. Vol. 1 in the series, “Protected Landscapes and Seascapes.” IUCN & GTZ. Heidelberg, Germany: Kaspareg Verlag.

Argumedo, Alejandro and Bernard Yun Loong Wong. 2010. “The Ayllu System of the Potato Park, Cusco, Peru.” Satoyama Initiative, United Nations University Institute of Advanced Studies, March 5, 2010, available at http://satoyama-initiative.org/en/the-ayllu-system-of-the-potato-park.

Argumedo, Alejandro and M. Pimbert. 2008. Protecting Indigenous Knowledge Against Biopiracy in the Andes. London. IIED.

David Bollier (US) is an author, activist, blogger and scholar of the commons. He is cofounder of the Commons Strategies Group and the author of Think Like a Commoner and co-editor of The Wealth of the Commons, among other books.

Photo by iied.org

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