Somewhere between convenience, efficiency, cost saving and a comprehensive EU surveillance mega state, the use of drones and other in-the-sky technologies for ensuring CAP compliance represents, as it were, a Brave New World. 

Helene Schulze: Imagine annual farm audits performed not by EU regulators pacing the fields and talking through the details with farmers but by gently buzzing machines flying overhead, measuring, photographing, assessing compliance to CAP rules and regulations. Whether this image inspires excitement or apprehension has divided opinion in Europe. How have AgTech tools like satellite mapping, remote sensing and drones been implemented in measuring CAP compliance? What are the concerns?

The EU spends almost half of its annual budget on agricultural subsidies, around €59 billion a year.These subsidies are allocated on a two-pillar basis; the first, a basic payment per hectare of agricultural land and the second funds based on voluntary agri-environmental service provision. A form of compensation for farmers, they encourage the maintenance of hedge rows, buffer strips and meadows, the limitation of fertiliser use and adherence to crop rotation plans, for example.

With such vast spending comes the necessity to ensure taxpayer funds are allocated fairly and accurately. High-tech data collection devices such as satellite mapping and drones are a way of doing this. Ray Purdy, Senior Research Fellow in environmental law at the University of Oxford, told me ‘almost all EU countries now use satellite technology, which can produce accurate maps of the size of agricultural parcels (ensuring farmers are only claiming subsidies for genuine farmland), and to check if claimants are complying with certain environmental conditions attached to subsidies.’

Since 1988, the Monitoring of Agriculture and Remote Sensing (MARS) programme has used satellite mapping to measure CAP compliance. Adherence assessment is the responsibility of each member state which must establish a paying agency to perform checks and audits. EU law stipulates that each year at least 5% of all farms must be audited.

In 2012, around 70% of these required inspections performed by satellites, Purdy notes. Primarily, this is a money-saving strategy: satellites are able to cover vast swathes of land in little time. Satellite monitoring a farm costs around a third the price of sending a regulator.

Additionally, Purdy said when queried, ‘they can make farmers happier, if they provide a level playing field i.e. if they know there is less chance of others breaking the law, they don’t have to because they’re not being put in a disadvantageous competitive position.’

As mentioned in a previous Arc2020 article, AgTech hardware is being employed by many farmers across the continent as part of their own farm management strategies. The European Commission supports these efforts, arguing that ‘technological development and digitisation make possible big leaps in resource efficiency enhancing an environment and climate smart agriculture, which reduce the environment-/climate impact of farming, increase resilience and soil health and decrease costs for farmers.’

A question submitted by NABU representative at recent Agriculture and Food Summit, 30th November Paris. Interestingly, Tobias Menne global head of digital farming at Bayer, who was on the panel on digital farming at the time, thought this would be a very bad idea, in terms of farmer trust. Photo (c) Oliver Moore

However, farms that tend to incorporate such AgTech tools currently are large agri-businesses. I asked Chris Henderson from NGO Practical Action about this scale and affordability issue: ‘new hardware such as drones and robots are unlikely to be within the financial reach of smallholders…they are more likely to find application in high-potential commercial areas with better off farmers. One thing that needs careful consideration at the macro level is the negative effects intensive agriculture (driven by new technologies) might have on the poor – perhaps displacing them from their land or out-competing with them for water.’

Image: Gavin Whitner (CC BY 2.0) http://musicoomph.com/

This points to a divergence in access and response to AgTech. Perhaps, if farmers are not employing drones, robots and satellite imagery on their own land, they may appear more critical of auditing bodies doing the same.  Since member states are responsible for their own compliance assessments, there has been some variance in the types of technologies and strategies of inspection, as well as responses to these across the continent. A 2008 study by Ray Purdy found that a third of farmers were opposed to satellite monitoring in the UK, where it has been used to combat subsidy fraud for over a decade. In his interviews with farmers Purdy found that many ‘made reference to ‘1984’ and ‘Big Brother’ and were concerned that the satellite would be ‘peeping’ or ‘spying’ on them.’

These are natural concerns. For one, with a human inspector one at least knows when the assessment is taking place whereas satellite monitoring gives no such indication. Farmers are unaware when they are undergoing an inspection. There are also questions to be raised about who has access to the collected data. This is powerful information, information which could give some farmers a competitive advantage. With the potential implementation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in CAP compliance testing, these concerns are heightened further. Drones can get a lot closer to the target, taking sharper photographs. Farms are also homes on private land and such inspection could be very intrusive. Whilst UAVs are being explored in the agricultural context and there are pilot projects across Europe, they have yet to be included in CAP monitoring.

When queried, Vicki Hird, food and farming policy coordinator at Sustain, argued that ‘there’s certainly a lot of potential here both in measuring compliance but also from the perspective of the farmers and workers as part of a sustainable farming strategy to assess needs and review progress on land. It can help bring the whole farming community into understanding about how nature and farming should work together on a whole farm basis.’ So, AgTech tools must be incorporated into other governance and management strategies which bring people together rather than alienate them which would risk farmers feeling observed from a distant, invisible body reading to subject penalties.

Purdy reiterates this call for the maintenance of human interaction in farm auditing; ‘if a machine is doing the monitoring it provides less contact between the farmer and the regulator, which might also be an opportunity to discuss other farming issues. Sometimes human contact can be important.’

Irrespective of these fears, CAP auditing will likely become only more technology-dominated in the years to come. Key is to consider in which frameworks such technology can be used to support farmers and prevent feelings of alienation and constant surveillance. Theoretically if collected data were made publicly available, small farmers could begin to benefit from AgTech developments currently too expensive for their own use. Through open-source initiatives, they could have access to information about their land currently only accessible to wealthy agri-businesses. It is also possible to collectively own and manage technologies, as the extensive CUMA machinery co-ops in France show. Again, for this to work these developments must be thought through thoroughly in consultation with farmers. Moreover, the delivery of any such tech should involve farmers – not so much as inspected from the sky, but, rather, as participants in the process of verifying their own management techniques.

It is also interesting to explore how these technologies might impact the relationships between companies, environmental NGOs, regulators and farmers: if Bayer sound more farmer-concerned than NABU, as the example from the politico event referenced in the image above suggests, we are in strange territory. And if farmers are ignored it is unlikely that such auditing technologies will receive widespread support in a climate of concern over an increasingly intrusive surveillance state.

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Complex Systems and the Energy Commons

In this article, we look at the future of the Energy Commons, and how using a complex adaptive systems lens can lead to effective solutions. As an example, I’m going to demonstrate how this method can lead us to a solution I call “swarm micro-solar.”

Complex adaptive systems as a lens tells us that the dynamic energy solution of the future should:

• be made up of many small components
• be fluid and flexible, utilizing component diversity
• be aware of and respond to its environment, by being mobile

From a complex systems perspective, we can predict the properties of a future solution even though we do not yet know the details. We can know that a marble in a bowl will settle at the bottom even when we cannot predict the specific path it will take. We can know that a percentage of a population will become adults even when we cannot know which ones will survive.

Similarly, we can understand that “small pieces loosely joined” should be more efficient even though we do not yet know precisely how. The reason this works is because all complex systems exhibit instances of deeper patterns found in the universe.

Disaggregate the Solar Panel

Our first understanding above was:

1. be made up of many small components

So, take, for instance, the solar panel. A single solar panel converts solar energy into usable electricity but suffers from the loss of some of that energy as heat. Solar panels don’t work when they exceed their tolerance thresholds for heat buildup.

Heat radiation occurs on the edges of the solar panel, so more edge length means more radiation and a cooler system. It just so happens that an array of smaller panels:

• covers nearly the same area, and so generates about the same amount of energy, and
• has significantly more edge length and so radiates heat more effectively and can run for longer.

In addition, these smaller pieces can be individually enabled not only to produce energy but also to store it, using individual mechanisms (such as batteries). Energy could be “uploaded” into larger storage networks when the individual units are in range of an upstream connection to the Energy Commons. Since the swarm components are connected horizontally, only one component would have to be in range in order for the entire system to communicate upstream.

Decenter the Solar Array

Our second understanding above was:

2. be fluid and flexible, utilizing component diversity

So the next step would be to detach the entire solar array from it’s “center” and instead connect the parts directly to each other. There are two ways to operationalize this:

• connect them together physically into a “mesh” or “net”
• connect them together virtually into an information network

Physically connecting them could be advantageous if you needed them to exist as a single unit for some reason. More useful however would be to connect them digitally into a “swarm.” A swarm of panels could communicate information about the sunlight they are converting, local conditions, etc. Moreover, you could even have the units send energy to one another to balance the energy storage. In other words, a unit that has more storage available could store energy for one that has less storage available.

The effect of horizontal connectivity is to make the entire system function like a brain. The swarm could essentially “rewire” itself by monitoring inequalities in the system and balancing its members’ behavior accordingly.

Detach the Swarm

Our third understanding was:

3. be aware of and respond to its environment, by being mobile

Solar panels need sunlight. The earth rotates. The complex adaptive systems lens suggests that the system should be able to perceive its environment and adjust its collective behavior accordingly. For example, slime molds exist as individual cells, but when changes in resource conditions demand, those cells come together to form a multi-cellular organism, which is mobile, and can move elsewhere to a better resource environment.

So, too, can our solar array. If it is a flying drone array, then it could be positioned in the sky as an actual swarm.

• It could move away from clouds or other obstacles, and even orbit the planet in order to avoid ever being on the dark side. A swarm of swarms, all autonomous but capable of cooperation and communication, could effectively perceive their environment and adjust accordingly to target better environments.
• Also, the diversity of the units would enable them to behave differently as individuals. Each unit could angle itself into the sun, or adjust to wind conditions, etc. Because every component adjusts its own behavior in response to every other component, individual behaviors would create systemic effects. Just as a swarm can fly around obstacles without a leader, so, too, could a micro-solar swarm dynamically adjust to changes in its environment.

D-words and Micro-Solar Swarms

This article has demonstrated how using complex adaptive systems as a lens can lead to an innovative solution in the Energy Commons. We focused on a language of:

1. Disaggregate
2. Decenter
3. Detach

There are many other facets to a fully-developed and organically evolving Energy Commons. There are other solutions, and there are also other commons (food, things, etc.).

We gain a significant advantage when we realize that solutions across these commons exhibit the patterns seen in complex adaptive systems, and when we focus on a “pattern language” for those future solutions.

I hope this article contributes to that effort in some small way.

Read More:
If you would like to learn more about robot swarms, take a look at:
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/06/the-bees-of-the-future-that-can-pollinate-and-save-disaster-victims

To engage with the original please go to Solving the Energy Commons with Micro-Solar Swarms by Paul B. Hartzog

The post Solving the Energy Commons with Micro-Solar Swarms appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Governments still use this statement today.

This year the Standing Rock Sioux tribe began protests after the U.S. Government awarded an easement to an energy consortium building a pipeline that would impact the Sioux reservation water supply. “Of course, the reservation is your land,” the government told them, “but we’re allowing this project to go ahead anyway.”

Nor do governments only use this statement with indigenous people or minorities. This month President Obama outraged the governor of the state of Nevada by declaring a large swath of land a federally protected National Monument. “We know it’s your land,” the President told them, “but we’re taking control of it.”

What recourse do these groups have when their land is appropriated?

One community in  Guyana adopted a novel response.

Extracted from: http://qz.com/662530/a-tiny-forest-tribe-built-a-diy-drone-from-youtube-to-fight-off-illegal-loggers/

Southern Guyana’s Wapichan community—one of nine indigenous groups in the country, numbering about 9,000 people—knew their forests were being invaded by illegal loggers and miners. But in order to compel the government to take action, they needed proof. So, beginning in 2003, they assembled an army of citizens to document their traditional lands. As technology evolved, so did their methods. At the start, volunteers trekked through the forest and interviewed the elders in far-flung villages, entering GPS coordinates and folktales alike into their smartphone records.

And then they built a drone.

vimeo 114816953 w=640 h=360

Watching YouTube videos for do-it-yourself instruction and collaborating with fellow drone creators, they used bowstrings to tie parts together and a lollipop stick as an impromptu drill.

Their drone confirmed what the Wapichan had long suspected: In the south, close to the border with Brazil, illegal loggers were harvesting trees in lands that were supposed to be protected. And the gold mine at Marudi Mountain, to the southeast of Shulinab, appeared to be leaching pollution into the headwaters upon which the Wapichan depend.

“We are hoping to get them to recognize that these maps will actually help the government to resolve issues,” Fredericks said.

https://www.digital-democracy.org/blog/we-built-a-drone/

I arrived in Guyana with a bag of foam, wires, glue and tools. The Wapichana monitoring team arrived, five men and one woman from villages throughout Wapichana territory. We worked under the leaf roof of the “benab” – the community house – and together learnt how to build a drone, from ironing laminate to strengthen the wings to soldering a live video transmission system.

I was amazed at how quickly the team learned, and their initiative at solving engineering problems with the limited tools we had available. When the motor mount broke, the team scoured the village for different types of plastic, and fashioned a new mount from an old beer crate. The drone was no longer a foreign, mysterious piece of technology, but something they owned, built, and therefore understood.

The Wapichana monitoring team have shown that a remote indigenous community with no prior engineering experience can build and fly a complex drone and make a detailed map. Our next step is to continue training to get the whole team comfortable with flying and to streamline the process from mission planning to processing imagery. Ultimately we want this to be a tool that the monitoring team can deploy at the request of the Wapichana villages. So far we’ve discussed using it to monitor deforestation of bush islands over time; creating high-resolution maps of villages to use as a basis for resource-management discussions; and flying over logging camps in the forest to document illegal deforestation.

http://forestcompass.org/how/resources/thinking-together-those-coming-behind-us-outline-plan-care-wapichan-territory-guyana

The  Wapichan are an Amerindian group in South Guyana. This document was published by the Wapishana as a general framework for land-management and self-determined development. The plan’s three main aims are to support:

• Wapichan leaders’ work to get rights to Wapichan territory legally recognised
• Wapichan Village Councils to protect the land and natural resources that their way of life depends on
• Wapichan communities to agree on how to use the land, for the benefit of the present and future generations

vimeo 109484074 w=640 h=360

http://forestcompass.org/how/resources/where-they-stand-report-wapichan-efforts-assert-land-rights

The plan establishes monitoring committees to review mining and logging concessions on indigenous lands, and road building projects. It records current land uses and important cultural and sacred sites, and in this way represents a monitoring report from the community. The document includes maps of proposed extensions to their official land-rights, and proposals for how the community will respond to and interact with outside development proposals.

This is an eloquent and engaging narrative of the efforts of the Wapichan people of Rupununi, Guyana, to obtain title over their traditional lands, beyond the area they already own. A major element of their work to justify their land claim has been extensive mapping, combining GPS and modern technology with the knowledge of elders about the uses and significance of every creek and mountain. Regular patrols to monitor land invasions along their borders have had a deterrent effect, as illegal gold miners and cattle rustlers fear ‘monitors with smartphones’.

The years of work resulted in a series of agreements and proposals, brought together in this plan for the Wapichan land. The mapping project aimed to show the government how the Wapichan use the land that they claim, but so far there has been no response, and frustration is increasing. The document explains that logging and mining concessions create an urgent need for effective conservation, and bring social problems. There is a clash of cultures within villages, and a sense of flux as people leave to find work.

Photo by Thierry James Weber

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