Commons based technology: a glimpse inside l’Atelier Paysan

Farmer, tool hacker, organizer, and self styled agricultural anthropologist (and, we’re proud to say, a GH blog editor) Samuel Oslund takes us on a journey into les Rencontres de l’Atelier Paysan. Les Rencontres is a yearly gathering of farmers from across France, hosted by our French farm hacking heroes,  l’Atelier Paysan (roughly, the peasant’s/agrarian workshop).  The event is a hands on skill sharing celebration, filled with food, good wine, and some fairly strange music.

Beyond throwing memorable shindigs, the farmer-run organization works with agrarians across France designing and developing user based, co-designed tools and implements.  All of their open-source plans are available online and in a beautifully produced manual. Among other things, L’Atelier Paysan is creating a unique business model that fosters collaboration and skill sharing.

Samuel Oslund: “It was hard not to feel a little nostalgic. It was my first season away from the farm in seven years. As part of a independent research project on open source, collaborative production I found myself between Paris, Turin, and Barcelona. For over a month I had been shuffling from a conference on the collaborative economy, to a community maker space, to a tech startup, to an open source hardware producer.”

Read more; click here for the photo essay.

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