Introduction

E.F. Schumacher’s seminal work Small Is Beautiful (1973) champions the idea of smallness and localism as the way for meaningful interactions amongst humans and the technology they use. Technology is very important after all. As Ursula Le Guin (2004) puts it, “[t]echnology is the active human interface with the material world”. With this essay we wish to briefly tell a story, inspired by this creed, of an emerging phenomenon that goes beyond the limitations of time and space and may produce a more socially viable and radically democratic life.

We want to cast a radical geographer’s eye over “cosmolocalism”. Antipode has previously published an article by Hannes Gerhardt (2019) and an interview with Michel Bauwens (Gerhardt 2020) that have touched upon “cosmolocalism”. Cosmolocalism emerges from technology initiatives that are small-scale and oriented towards addressing local problems, but simultaneously engage with globally asynchronous collaborative production through digital commoning. We thus connect such a discussion with two ongoing grassroots developments: first, a cosmolocal response to the coronavirus pandemic; and, second, an ongoing effort of French and Greek communities of small-scale farmers, activists and researchers to address their local needs.

Cosmolocalism in a Nutshell

Τhe most important means of information production – i.e. computation, communications, electronic storage and sensors – have been distributed in the population of most advanced economies as well as in parts of the emerging ones (Benkler 2006). People with access to networked computers self-organise, collaborate, and produce digital commons of knowledge, software, and design. Initiatives such as the free encyclopedia Wikipedia and myriad free and open-source software projects have exemplified digital commoning (Benkler 2006; Gerhardt 2019, 2020; Kostakis 2018).

While the first wave of digital commoning included open knowledge projects, the second wave has been moving towards open design and manufacturing (Kostakis et al. 2018). Contrary to the conventional industrial paradigm and its economies of scale, the convergence of digital commons with local manufacturing machinery (from 3D printing and CNC milling machines to low-tech tools and crafts) has been developing commons-based economies of scope (Kostakis et al. 2018). Cosmolocalism describes the processes where the design is developed and improved as a global digital commons, while the manufacturing takes place locally, often through shared infrastructures and with local biophysical conditions in check (Bauwens et al. 2019). The physical manufacturing arrangement for cosmolocalism includes makerspaces, which are small-scale community manufacturing facilities providing access to local manufacturing technologies.

Unlike large-scale industrial manufacturing, cosmolocalism emphasizes applications that are small-scale, decentralised, resilient and locally controlled. Cosmolocal production cases such as L’Atelier Paysan (agricultural tools), Open Bionics (robotic and bionic hands), WikiHouse (buildings) or RepRap (3D printers) demonstrate how a technology project can leverage the digital commons to engage the global community in its development.

Two Cases of Cosmolocalism

While this essay was being written in March 2020, a multitude of small distributed initiatives were being mobilised to tackle the coronavirus pandemic. Individuals across the globe are coming together digitally to pool resources, design open source technological solutions for health problems, and fabricate them in local makerspaces and workshops. For example, people are experimenting with new ventilator designs and hacking existing ones, creating valves for ventilators which are out of stock, and designing and making face shields and respirators.

There are so many initiatives, in fact, that there are now attempts to aggregate and systematise the knowledge produced to avoid wasting resources on problems that have already been tackled and brainstorm new solutions collectively.[1] This unobstructed access to collaboration and co-creation allows thousands of engineers, makers, scientists and medical experts to offer their diverse insights and deliver a heretofore unseen volume of creative output. The necessary information and communication technologies were already available, but capitalism as a system did not facilitate the organisational structure required for such mass mobilisation. In response to the current crisis, an increasing number of people are working against and beyond the system.

Such initiatives can be considered as grassroots cosmolocal attempts to tackle the inability of the globalised capitalist arrangements for production and logistics to address any glitch in the system. We have been researching similar activity in various productive fields for a decade, from other medical applications, like 3D-printed prosthetic hands, to wind turbines and agricultural machines and tools (Giotitsas 2019; Kostakis et al. 2018).

The technology produced is unlike the equivalent market options or is entirely non-existent in the market. It is typically modular in design, versatile in materials, and as low-cost as possible to make reproduction easier (Kostakis 2019). Through our work we have identified a set of values present in the “technical codes” of such technology which can be distilled into the following themes: openness, sustainability and autonomy (Giotitsas 2019). It is these values that we believe lead to an alternative trajectory of technological development that assists the rise of a commons-based mode of production opposite the capitalist one. This “antipode” is made possible through the great capacity for collaboration and networking that its configuration offers.

Allow us to elaborate via an example. In the context of our research we have helped mobilise a pilot initiative in Greece that has been creating a community of farmers, designers and fabricators that helps address issues faced by the local farmers. This pilot, named Tzoumakers, has been greatly inspired by similar initiatives elsewhere, primarily by L’Atelier Paysan in France. The local community benefits from the technological prowess that the French community has achieved, which offers not only certain technological tools but also through them the commitment for regenerative agricultural practices, the communal utilisation of the tools, and an enhanced capacity to maintain and repair. At the same time, these tools are adapted to local needs and potential modifications along with local insights may be sent back to those that initially conceived them. This creates flows of knowledge and know-how but also ideas and values, whilst cultivating a sense of solidarity and conviviality.

Instead of Conclusions, a Call to Arms

We are not geographers. However, the implications of cosmolocalism for geography studies are evident. The spatial and cultural specificities of cosmolocalism need to be studied in depth. This type of study would go beyond critique and suggest a potentially unifying element for the various kindred visions that lack a structural element. The contributors (and readership) are ideally suited to the task of critically examining the cosmolocalism phenomenon and contributing to the idea of scaling-wide, in the context of an open and diverse network, instead of scaling-up.

Cosmolocal initiatives may form a global counter-power through commoning. Considering the current situation we find ourselves in as a species, where we have to haphazardly re-organise entire social structures to accommodate the appearance of a “mere” virus, not to mention climate change, it is blatantly obvious that radical change is required to tackle the massive hurdles to come. Cosmolocalism may point a way forward towards that change.

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant no. 802512). The photos were captured by Nicolas Garnier in the Tzoumakers makerspace.

Endnote

[1] Volunteers created the following editable webpage where, at the time of writing, more than 1,500 commons-based initiatives against the ongoing pandemic have been documented: https://airtable.com/shrPm5L5I76Djdu9B/tbl6pY6HtSZvSE6rJ/viwbIjyehBIoKYYt1?blocks=bipjdZOhKwkQnH1tV (last accessed 27 March 2020)

References

Bauwens M, Kostakis V and Pazaitis A (2019) Peer to Peer: The Commons Manifesto. London: University of Westminster Press

Benkler Y (2006) The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. New Haven: Yale University Press

Gerhardt H (2019) Engaging the non-flat world: Anarchism and the promise of a post-capitalist collaborative commons. Antipode DOI:10.1111/anti.12554

Gerhardt H (2020) A commons-based peer to peer path to post-capitalism: An interview with Michel Bauwens. AntipodeOnline.org 19 February https://antipodeonline.org/2020/02/19/interview-with-michel-bauwens/ (last accessed 27 March 2020)

Giotitsas C (2019) Open Source Agriculture: Grassroots Technology in the Digital Era. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan

Kostakis V (2018) In defense of digital commoning. Organization 25(6):812-818

Kostakis V (2019) How to reap the benefits of the “digital revolution”? Modularity and the commons. Halduskultuur: The Estonian Journal of Administrative Culture and Digital Governance 20(1):4-19

Kostakis V, Latoufis K, Liarokapis M and Bauwens M (2018) The convergence of digital commons with local manufacturing from a degrowth perspective: Two illustrative cases. Journal of Cleaner Production 197(2):1684-1693

Le Guin U K (2004) A rant about “technology”. http://www.ursulakleguinarchive.com/Note-Technology.html (last accessed 27 March 2020)

Schumacher E F (1973) Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered. New York: Harper & Row

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The trend goes by several attractive names, like “smart” farming, “precision” or digital agriculture. The vision is common though: a ‘technocentric’ approach, including gradual to extreme mechanization of farm management supported by algorithmic, data-driven procedures and sophisticated tools, like cloud computing, specialized software, drones and Internet of Things.

The agri-industry and policy makers are majorly implicated in this new digital era: Giant agri-corporate mergers, like Bayer/Monsanto, develop a very strong parallel agricultural data-science agenda and market policy, buying smaller companies which specialize solely in data management related to soil, irrigation, weather or climate, like Monsanto did with start-up Climate Corp. Another mix of smaller, ambitious, and often opportunistic entrepreneurial players enter as well the agricultural sector with a multitude of promises on digital solutions to important agricultural and environmental issues.

Both EU and global data economy policies back these efforts by facilitating the creation of a market players’ ecosystem, including corporations, researchers, developers and infrastructure providers, in order to ensure that value will be extracted by data and a novel economic sector will rise. Of course, this new business expresses a genuine market-oriented and neoliberal approach, for delivering profits and entrepreneurship opportunities from new topics.

But, before evaluating the effectiveness of such solutions, we must identify the well- documented problems, stemming from the modern food production system. What is taken for granted both by scholars and international institutions like FAO, is that combating the scarcity of resources, the reduction of soil and water pollution, the greenhouse gas emissions and the loss of species and habitat are major issues that have to be managed quickly. It is also undeniable that this kind of global change requires developing much more sustainable agricultural systems, which will depend less on high synthetic inputs and fossil fuels and will be characterised by efficient resource use, low environmental impacts and, last but not least, climate change resiliency, in order to produce sufficient and healthy food.

So, can digital and (bio)technological innovations really meet these goals? Despite the hype, it appears not to be the case. The paradigm derived by such approaches is largely conceived to aim only at a “weak” ecological modernisation of agriculture, as many scientific authors suggest. Their effect is restricted to a partial increase in the efficiency of inputs and resource use and some decrease of production costs, which are however accompanied by the high costs of farm management’s mechanization. Often these tools developed ignore main ecological processes, under whose principles the agricultural ecosystems function. In a better case scenario, these innovations may just lead to partial substitution of inputs with some short-term positive effects on the sustainability and stability of the food system. And that’s it. They fail to address serious concerns on the structural weakness of the modern food system, which generates a major part of the negative impact to environment and society.

Another key issue is the problematic innovation process followed. In the above mentioned approaches, the narrative and practice of innovation is restricted to a framework of economically driven developments promoting technological solutions. The innovation transfer’s mode mainly follows a top–down procedure towards the end users, farmers or agronomists. Under this framework, as innovators are regarded only the scientists and agricultural advisors, who design and promote tools and practices, and companies, that develop and provide the technological solutions. Technological development is mostly out of reach to any but the agTech giants, as highlighted in the debate’s opening article. Suddenly sort-of-solutions become ‘one size-fits-all’ recommendations: farmers then must follow strategies and practices that evolve along with their research outputs and corporate technologies. In other words, these are innovation processes that create vertically developed and hierarchically-based tools, obviously fitting to serve better an industrially-scaled and profit-oriented farming system and the market itself.

Of course, the above criticism does not suggest some kind of agro-Luddism approach condemning advanced technologies, which are here already – like it or not. It has been already recognised that alternative examples of digital or analogue agricultural innovations that support the transition towards truly sustainable food systems can exist and are not inherently incompatible with the framework of an agroecological approach. The examples of open source agricultural technology initiatives, like farmhack in US, collaborative projects for the creation of technology solutions and innovation by farmers, as l’Atelier Paysan in France or international research projects, like Capsella. As many times described, agroecology is an emerging concept which provides a holistic approach for the design of genuinely sustainable food systems. It does not simply seek temporary solutions that will improve partially the environmental performance and productivity of the food systems. It stands mostly for a systemic paradigm of perception change, towards a full harmonization with ecological processes, low external inputs, use of biodiversity and cultivation of agricultural knowledge.

The important thing about agroecological design of the food systems is that they emphasize independent and participatory experimentation and not the reliance on high technology and external suppliers, with a high degree of dependency on additional support services. Therefore, it becomes obvious that hi-tech and any other technological solutions can stand as a complementary element to agroecological innovation processes, and only when the development of innovative tools includes a peer-to-peer planning framework and user involvement within the reach of an economy of the commons, as the above mentioned examples do.

Thus, the main issue is related to the way innovation processes evolve – in whose interests, and with who’s participation, do they emerge? We should realise that innovation lies in the creative process, not only in the generated tool itself. Bearing this in mind, it becomes evident that it is the lack of autonomy that matters – in other words, the absence of the end user’s engagement in the technology’s development. Appropriately used, technology can share power with all actors collectively involved in developing the innovation. And this appropriate use of technology allows us to democratize knowledge.

Vassilis (Vasileios) Gkisakis, Agronomist (MSc, PhD): Vassilis specialises in Sustainable Agriculture and Agrobiodiversity, with a background in Food Science. He worked previously in the organic farming sector, while he has collaborated with several research groups across Europe on organic farming/agroecology, olive production, biodiversity management strategies and food quality.

He is a contracted lecturer of i) Organic Farming and ii) Food Production Systems in the TEI of Crete and visiting lecturer of Agroecology & Sustainable Food Production Systems in the Agricultural University of Plovdiv. He is official reviewer in one scientific journal, Board member of the European Association for Agroecology and moderator of the Agroecological Network of Greece and also the owner of a 20 ha organic olive and grain farm.

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This is a story about people who build their own machines. It’s a story about people who, due to necessity and/or conscious choice, do not buy commercial equipment to work their lands or animals, but who invent, create and adapt machines to their specific needs: for harvesting legumes, for hammering poles, for hitching tools onto tractors.

The machines are just one part of our story, and this article will talk about encounters between people, tools and knowledge and it will take us to various places: Paris and Renage in France, Pyrgos and Kalentzi in Greece, and Tallinn in Estonia.

Let us begin our journey in Greece. In Pyrgos (southern Crete), there is a small group of people called Melitakes (the Cretan word for ants) interested in seed sovereignty and agroecology. It is a group that cares about organic farming and that tries to form a small cooperative. One of the things the group does is to plant legumes in between olive-trees or grapes. While olive trees are abundant in Greece, the land in between individual trees is usually not cultivated due to the distance necessary to avoid shading and foster the growth of the trees. So the idea was quite simple: use the unused land. However, the members of the group soon faced a specific problem: it’s hard to harvest legumes by hand and there are no available tools to do this arduous job in a narrow line between olive trees. On the market, there are only big tractor accessories, suitable for such a job, and only for large crops. That is why the group sought the help of a friend in a nearby village, a machinist, to help them out. He liked the idea. He saw it as a challenge and started to develop a tool (see picture 1). At that time, there were no concrete ideas or talks of ‘open sourcing’ the tool and of ‘do-it-yourself’ (DIY) practices. The situation was rather a pragmatic one: ‘there is a need for a machine that does not exist in commerce, we need a person to build it… and that’s what we did, supporting that person as much as we could, during the process’.

DIY legumes harvesting machine by Nikos Stefanakis and the Melitakes group. Source: Alekos Pantazis.

Several weeks later, the two authors of this article met in Paris: Alekos, who knew about his compatriots who built the legume-harvesting machine met Morgan, who knew about l’Atelier Paysan, a French cooperative specialized in the auto-construction of agricultural equipment, based in Renage. Alekos explained his plans: carrying out his PhD at Tallinn University of Technology on convivial technologies, getting to know l’Atelier Paysan, and ‘implementing’ some ideas in Greece through creating a makerspace for building agricultural tools within the framework of an EU funded programme called Phygital. Morgan explained the trajectory of his research on/with l’Atelier Paysan: his involvement in a collaborative project on user innovation since 2015 and his analysis of l’Atelier Paysan through looking at the politics and materialities of open source technologies in agriculture. After their discussion about theoretical approaches, methods, concepts and fieldwork, it was time for Alekos to meet l’Atelier Paysan ‘on the ground’ by participating in a 5-day workshop to build two tools for organic grape crops.

Alekos gained several kinds of knowledge via the workshop. Practical knowledge on working with metals, cutting, and welding. He also gained theoretical knowledge from l’Atelier Paysan: its organizational structure, the problems faced (and how they are solved), the financial setup and how to run workshops (see picture 2).

Construction of the charimaraîch (a wheelbarrow/wagon adapted for market gardening). Source: l’Atelier Paysan

L’Atelier Paysan is one of the few collectives specialized in such activities (other notable collectives being Farmhack and Open Source Ecology). L’Atelier Paysan has developed a range of practices and tools for ‘liberating’ agricultural tools: a website, workshops, a book, video tutorials, and open-source plans. In their recent article, Chance and Meyer (2017) have analyzed l’Atelier Paysan by retracing their history and form of organization, studying how they enact the principles of open source in agriculture, and by describing their tools within their economic and political context.

When Alekos got back in Greece, he visited the Melitakes group again. He explained how l’Atelier Paysan works – its practices, philosophies, and ethics – and the various tools that have been designed and built. While thinking about the future development of Melitakes’ tool and its possible diffusion through some of the standards developed by l’Atelier Paysan, the collective faced a new problem: none of them was a mechanical engineer. None of them thus could draw the design of the components of the legume harvesting tool in situ. Yet this was a crucial step for digitizing the design and making it accessible online. So they sought the help of architects for how to best illustrate each part of the machine. Subsequently, they dismantled the tool, took photos of each component (more than 300 photos in total) in the correct angle (90 degrees) and with a tape measure visible on each photo. They also used big pieces of paper to trace some complicated parts (see picture 3). And they started looking for persons who, based on the pictures and imprints, would be able to (digitally) draw the mechanical design of the tool.

The plan, at the moment of writing this article, is to draw the plans of the tool, open source them by publishing them on the Internet under a Creative Commons type of license and then organize workshops to teach people to build it. So while the full story about the legume-harvesting tool has yet to be written, some features can already be told: a practical problem has been translated into a technical tool; this tool has been disassembled and photographed in order to make it ‘drawable’ and thus available via Internet. The hope, for the future, is that many more people, in many more places, will be able to build this tool, further improve it and share the improved design with the global community. But alongside the tool, something else will travel and be reinforced: the principles of agroecology and the practices of open source.

Imprinting of some complicated parts from the DIY legumes harvesting machine by Nikos Stefanakis and the Melitakes group. Source: Alekos Pantazis.

Our second story begins in a village called Kalentzi in Northern Tzoumerka region, Greece. The local community of farmers (called Tzoumakers) had another practical problem: finding an appropriate tool for hammering fencing-poles into the ground. Several tools have been used for this task for ages. But not without its difficulties and dangers: there are farmers who climb ladders and hammer the poles, and others who climb on barrels to do the job. But the combined efforts of hammering the poles into the ground and, at the same time, maintaining one’s balance on the ladder/barrel proves difficult – plus, you need two people to do the job. That is why several local farmers and makers got together, tried to find a solution and set up a plan to build a tool that can do the job without the need for acrobatic moves by making it possible for one person to hammer the poles while standing firmly on the ground (see picture 4).

Testing the newly constructed tool for hammering fencing-poles from the Tzoumakers group. Source: Alekos Pantazis.

The next phase, after the current prototyping of the tool, will be the design of a booklet that will include a detailed presentation, an explanation of the usefulness of the tool, a list of all the equipment and material needed, instructions for building the tool (and the risks thereof), drawings and pictures.

It is time, now, to move back to France and give more details about l’Atelier Paysan. The first tool construction workshops took place in 2009 by a group of innovative organic farmers that was eventually formalized and structured into the cooperative l’Atelier Paysan in 2014. At that time, l’Atelier Paysan had already begun situating its practices theoretically, by mobilizing various vocabularies and concepts (agroecology, open source, social/circular economy, common good, appropriate technologies, etc.) as well as various authors and academics (André Gorz, Jean-Pierre Darré, etc.). Active collaboration with several academics in the social sciences was sought from 2015 onwards.

By that time, l’Atelier Paysan had already perfected its general methodology: doing its TRIPs (Tournées de Recensement d’Innovations Paysannes / Tours to Make an Inventory of Peasant Innovations); developing tools via testing, prototyping, upgrading and realizing workshops; and ‘liberating’ the collectively-validated tools via publishing detailed plans and tutorials on the Internet. One of its most prominent tools is the quick hitch triangle, which replaces the usual three-point linkage between a tractor and the tool to be fixed behind it. For the quick hitch triangle, l’Atelier Paysan has produced a 10-minute video, taken many pictures, issued a 47-page booklet, drawn several plans – all of which are freely available on its webpage (see picture 5).

Design, making and testing the quick hitch triangle from the l’Atelier Paysan. Source: l’Atelier Paysan.

It is important to stress a key feature: it is not l’Atelier Paysan that develops new tools from scratch ‘in house’; rather, they actively look out for individual farmers’ innovations. Only thereafter, through collective construction work, after testing the tool in the field and various processes of representation (plans, pictures, videos), are the tools released. Put differently, while user innovations are already there, ‘in the field’, the role of l’Atelier Paysan is to collect, formalize and disseminate these innovations.

In Greece, the situation is somewhat similar: local peasants already have several ideas in mind for tools that they would like to materialize. The idea is now to continue building tools with the local community, a practice that is usually experienced as positive and empowering. Ideas – like seeds – need fertile ground. Yet, a model like the one from l’Atelier Paysan, cannot simply be copy-pasted to another country and another context unmodified: a thorough understanding of both realities is needed. For example, in Greece, there are no public funding streams available for such endeavors, and the specific plants, soils, and morphologies of the country also call for specific, locally adapted tools. Apart from the political and natural peculiarities, socio-cultural characteristics also differ. For example, farmers’ skills are not the same in Greece than in France, and the collective memory and experience of building cooperatives in Greece is different. The conditions under which people can cooperate have their local ‘flavours’ rooted in habits, perceptions and social imaginaries. Therefore, l’Atelier Paysan’s model can act as an inspirational starting point but needs to be adjusted through continuous local experimentation.

The final leg of our trip brings us back to our respective academic homes (in Paris and Tallinn), to our keyboards to write this article, and to the theorizations that we are currently working on. Our stories have been about the work – and sometimes difficulties – that go into transporting ideas, machines, practices, and knowledge from one site to another. This is not a simple move, it is not just a matter of copy-pasting an idea, a practice or a technology from one place to another. Ideas, practices, and technologies are not immutable objects, but they are, in a sense, ‘quasi-objects’. In order to move ideas and technologies, they need to be transformed, disassembled and reassembled, translated, represented, adjusted. It is only via a variety of interlinked actions – imagining, testing, photographing, drawing, theorizing, sharing, rebuilding – that objects can travel and multiply. For these technological devices to be open, ‘convivial’ and low-tech, they need to be opened up in several ways. Our argument is that this opening up is both a technical practice and a social endeavor. Our stories are thus not only about the practices of open sourcing agricultural tools, but also about the (geo)politics, ethics, aesthetics and collective dimensions thereof.

(Note: the authors of the article would like to thank Luis Felipe Murillo, Evan Fisher, Chris Giotitsas and Vasilis Ntouros for their suggestions and comments. Alekos Pantazis acknowledges financial support from IUT (19-13) and B52 grants of the Estonian Ministry of Education and Research, COST Action CA16121 project and the Phygital project which is funded via the Transnational Cooperation Programme Interreg V-B Balkan – Mediterranean 2014-2020)

Lead Image: L’Atelier Paysan

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From the shownotes to the video:

When it comes to repair, farmers have always been self reliant. But the modernization of tractors and other farm equipment over the past few decades has left most farmers in the dust thanks to diagnostic software that large manufacturers hold a monopoly over. In this episode of State of Repair, Motherboard goes to Nebraska to talk to the farmers and mechanics who are fighting large manufacturers like John Deere for the right to access the diagnostic software they need to repair their tractors.

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You may not know it by its admittedly awkward name, but a process known as commons-based peer production (CBPP) supports much of our online life. CBPP describes internet-enabled, peer-to-peer infrastructures that allow people to communicate, self-organize and produce together. The value of what is produced is not extracted for private profit, but fed back into a knowledge, design and software commons — resources which are managed by a community, according to the terms set by that community. Wikipedia, WordPress, the Firefox browser and the Apache HTTP web server are some of the best-known examples.

If the first wave of commons-based peer production was mainly created digitally and shared online, we now see a second wave spreading back into physical space. Commoning, as a longstanding human practice that precedes commons-based peer production, naturally began in the material world. It eventually expanded into virtual space and now returns to the physical sphere, where the digital realm becomes a partner in new forms of resource stewardship, production and distribution. In other words, the commons has come full circle, from the natural commons described by Elinor Ostrom, through commons-based peer production in digital communities, to distributed physical manufacturing.

This recent process of bringing peer production to the physical world is called Design Global, Manufacture Local (DGML). Here’s how it works: A design is created using the digital commons of knowledge, software and design, and then produced using local manufacturing and automation technologies. These can include three-dimensional printers, computer numerical control (CNC) machines or even low-tech crafts tools and appropriate technology — often in combination. The formula is: What is “light” (knowledge) is global, and what is “heavy” (physical manufacture) is local. DGML and its unique characteristics help open new, sustainable and inclusive forms of production and consumption.

Imagine a process where designs are co-created, reviewed and refined as part of a global digital commons (i.e. a universally available shared resource). Meanwhile, the actual manufacturing takes place locally, often through shared infrastructures and with local biophysical conditions in mind. The process of making something together as a community creates new ideas and innovations which can feed back into their originating design commons. This cycle describes a radically democratized way to make objects with an increased capacity for innovation and resilience.

Current examples of the DGML approach include WikiHouse, a nonprofit foundation sharing templates for modular housing; OpenBionics, creating three-dimensional printed medical prosthetics which cost a fraction (0.1 to 1 percent) of the price of standard prosthetics; L’Atelier Paysan, an open source cooperative fostering technological sovereignty for small- and medium-scale ecological agriculture; Farm Hack, a farmer-driven community network sharing open source know-how amongst do-it-yourself agricultural tech innovators; and Habibi.Works, an intercultural makerspace in northern Greece where Syrian, Iraqi and Afghan refugees develop DGML projects in a communal atmosphere.

This ecologically viable mode of production has three key patterns:

1) Nonprofit: Objects are designed for optimum usability, not to create tension between supply and demand. This eliminates planned obsolescence or induced consumerism while promoting modular, durable and practical applications.

2) Local: Physical manufacturing is done in community workshops, with bespoke production adapted to local needs. These are economies of scope, not of scale. On-demand local production bypasses the need for huge capital outlays and the subsequent necessity to “keep the machines running” night and day to satisfy the expectations of investors with over-capacity and over-production. Transportation costs — whether financial or ecological — are eradicated, while maintenance, fabrication of spare parts and waste treatment are handled locally.

3) Shared: Idle resources are identified and shared by the community. These can be immaterial and shared globally (blueprints, collaboration protocols, software, documentation, legal forms), or material and managed locally (community spaces, tools and machinery, hackathons). There are no costly patents and no intellectual property regimes to enforce false scarcity. Power is distributed and shared autonomously, creating a “sharing economy” worthy of the name.

To preserve and restore a livable planet, it’s not enough to seize the existing means of production; in fact, it may even not be necessary or recommendable. Rather, we need to reinvent the means of production; to radically  reimagine the way we produce. We must also decide together what not to produce, and when to direct our productive capacities toward ecologically restorative work and the stewardship of natural systems. This includes necessary endeavors like permaculture, landscape restoration, regenerative design and rewilding.

These empowering efforts will remain marginal to the larger economy, however, in the absence of sustainable, sufficient ways of obtaining funding to liberate time for the contributors. Equally problematic is the possibility of the capture and enclosure of the open design commons, to be converted into profit-driven, peer-to-peer hybrids that perpetuate the scarcity mindset of capital. Don’t assume that global corporations or financial institutions are not hip to this revolution; in fact, many companies seem to be more interested in controlling the right to produce through intellectual property and patents, than on taking any of the costs of the production themselves. (Silicon Valley-led “sharing” economy, anyone?)

To avoid this, productive communities must position themselves ahead of the curve by creating cooperative-based livelihood vehicles and solidarity mechanisms to sustain themselves and the invaluable work they perform. Livelihood strategies like Platform and Open Cooperativism lead the way in emancipating this movement of globally conversant yet locally grounded producers and ecosystem restorers. At the same time, locally based yet globally federated political movements — such as the recent surge of international, multi-constituent municipalist political platforms — can spur the conditions for highly participative and democratic “design global, manufacture local” programs.

We can either produce with communities and as part of nature or not. Let’s make the right choice.

• Originally published in Truthout
• Art by Jared Rodríguez

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A technology is considered ‘open’ when it gives users the freedom (a) to study it, (b) to use it any way they wish, (c) to reproduce it and (d) modify it according to their own needs. By contrast, closed technologies are those that restrict these freedoms, limiting users’ ability to study them, reproduce them and modify them so as to adapt them to their needs. That is precisely the advantage of open technologies from the perspective of end users: whereas closed technologies limit the spectrum of possibilities of what end users can do, open technologies ‘liberate’ them, giving them the possibility to tinker with them and evolve them. Paradoxically, despite the fact that open technologies are greatly appreciated by the global technological community because of the freedoms they offer, the technology products manufactured and marketed by the vast majority of technology firms around the world are ‘closed’. This, of course, does not happen because of technological reasons: most of these companies supply their clients with closed machines and tools simply because in that way they can easily ‘lock’ them into a relationship of dependence.

It is not hard to see why this type of client-supplier relationship is particularly harmful for SSE organizations, as it implies their dependence on economic agents with diametrically opposed values and interests. To put it simply, it is very difficult, if not impossible, for SSE organizations to evolve into a vehicle for the transition to a truly social economy when they are dependent on the above economic agents for the tools they need on a daily basis. By contrast, open technologies may well be strategic resources for their autonomy and technological sovereignty. As brazilian activist-philosopher Euclides Mance remarks, SSE organizations should turn to open design and free software tools (like the Linux operating system for computers) in order to extricate themselves from the relationship of dependence they have unwillingly developed with closed technology companies.

A documentary about Sarantaporo.gr

To find the tools which fit their needs and goals, SSE agents should turn to the ‘community’ itself: in most cases, the development and the transfer of open technology to the field of its application and end-use is carried out by collaborative technology projects with the primary aim of covering needs, rather than making a profit. A great example is that of Sarantaporo.gr in Greece, which operates a modern telecom infrastructure of wireless networking in the area of Sarantaporo since 2013, through which more than twenty villages have acquired access to the Internet. The contribution of those collaborative projects – and that is crucial – is not limited to high-technology products, but extends to all kinds of tools and machines. A characteristic example is the Catalan Integral Cooperative in Catalonia and L’Atelier Paysan in France, which develop agricultural (open design) tools geared to the particular needs of small producers of their region.

The above examples show clearly the great potential of the SSE for positive change. However, for that to happen, it should have sufficient support structures for reinforcing its entrepreneurial action. That is where it is lagging behind. The SSE does not have structures analogous to the incubators for start-ups, the ‘accelerators’ and the liaison offices operating at most universities for the transfer of know-how to capitalist firms. Addressing this need is an area in which government policy could play a strategic role: in that regard, it is extremely positive that the recent action plan of the Greek Government tries to combat this problem through the development of more than a hundred cooperatively-organized support centres for the SSE across the entire country by 2023. That is precisely the kind of impetus that the SSE needs in order to grow. Of course, the capacity of these centres to support the SSE technologically will be of decisive importance: those are the structures that can and must make open technology accessible and user-friendly at local level, supplying the SSE organizations of their region with technology tools that promote the principles of the SSE and ensure its autonomy.

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Imagine a prosthetic hand designed by geographically dispersed communities of scientists, designers and enthusiasts in a collaborative manner via the web. All knowledge and software related to the hand is shared globally as a digital commons.

People from all over the world who are connected online and have access to local manufacturing machines (from 3D printing and CNC machines to low-tech crafts and tools) can, ideally with the help of an expert, manufacture a customised hand. This the case of the OpenBionics project, which produces designs for robotic and bionic devices.

There are no patent costs to pay for. Less transportation of materials is needed, since a considerable part of the manufacturing takes place locally; maintenance is easier, products are designed to last as long as possible, and costs are thus much lower.

Take another example. Small-scale farmers in France need agricultural machines to support their work. Big companies rarely produce machines specifically for small-scale farmers. And if they do, the maintenance costs are high and the farmers have to adjust their farming techniques to the logic of the machines. Technology, after all, is not neutral.

So the farmers decide to design the agricultural machines themselves. They produce machines to accommodate their needs and not to sell them for a price on the market. They share their designs with the world – as a global digital commons. Small scale farmers from the US share similar needs with their French counterparts. They do the same. After a while, the two communities start to talk to each other and create synergies.

That’s the story of the non-profit network FarmHack (US) and the co-operative L’Atelier Paysan (France) which both produce open-source designs for agricultural machines.

With our colleagues, we have been exploring the contours of an emerging mode of production that builds on the confluence of the digital commons of knowledge, software, and design with local manufacturing technologies.

We call this model “design global, manufacture local” and argue that it could lead to sustainable and inclusive forms of production and consumption. It follows the logic that what is light (knowledge, design) becomes global while what is heavy (manufacturing) is local, and ideally shared.

When knowledge is shared, materials tend to travel less and people collaborate driven by diverse motives. The profit motive is not totally absent, but it is peripheral.

Decentralised open resources for designs can be used for a wide variety of things, medicines, furniture, prosthetic devices, farm tools, machinery and so on. For example, the Wikihouse project produces designs for houses; the RepRap community creates designs for 3D printers. Such projects do not necessarily need a physical basis as their members are dispersed all over the world.

Finding sustainability

But how are these projects funded? From receiving state funding (a research grant) and individual donations (crowdfunding) to alliances with established firms and institutions, commons-oriented projects are experimenting with various business models to stay sustainable.

These globally connected local, open design communities do not tend to practice planned obsolescence. They can adapt such artefacts to local contexts and can benefit from mutual learning.

In such a scenario, Ecuadorian mountain people can for example connect with Nepalese mountain farmers to learn from each other and stop any collaboration that would make them exclusively dependent on proprietary knowledge controlled by multinational corporations.

Towards ‘cosmolocalism’

This idea comes partly from discourse on cosmopolitanism which asserts that each of us has equal moral standing, even as nations treat people differently. The dominant economic system treats physical resources as if they were infinite and then locks up intellectual resources as if they were finite. But the reality is quite the contrary. We live in a world where physical resources are limited, while non-material resources are digitally reproducible and therefore can be shared at a very low cost.

Moving electrons around the world has a smaller ecological footprint than moving coal, iron, plastic and other materials. At a local level, the challenge is to develop economic systems that can draw from local supply chains.

Imagine a water crisis in a city so severe that within a year the whole city may be out of water. A cosmolocal strategy would mean that globally distributed networks would be active in solving the issue. In one part of the world, a water filtration system is prototyped – the system itself is based on a freely available digital design that can be 3D printed.

This is not fiction. There is actually a network based in Cape Town, called STOP RESET GO, which wants to run a cosmolocalisation design event where people would intensively collaborate on solving such a problem.

The Cape Town STOP RESET GO teams draw upon this and begin to experiment with it with their lived challenges. To make the system work they need to make modifications, and they document this and make the next version of the design open. Now other locales around the world take this new design and apply it to their own challenges.

Limitations and future research

A limitation of this new model is that the problems of its two main pillars, such as information and communication as well as local manufacturing technologies. These issues may pertain to resource extraction, exploitative labour, energy use or material flows.

A thorough evaluation of such products and practices would need to take place from a political ecology perspective. For example, what is the ecological footprint of a product that has been globally designed and locally manufactured? Or,to what degree do the users of such a product feel in control of the technology and knowledge necessary for its use and manipulation?

Now our goal is to provide some answers to the questions above and, thus, better understand the transition dynamics of such an emerging mode of production.

Reposted from The Conversation

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Humans do not control modern technology: the technological system has colonized their imagination and it shapes their activities and relations. This statement reflects the thought of influential degrowth scholars, like Jacques Ellul and Ivan Illich.

Ellul believed that humans may control individual technologies, but not technology broadly conceived as the whole complex of methods and tools that advance efficiency. Instead, technology has taken a life of its own. Society should be in constant flux so that humans can shape it up to an important degree. Ellul was afraid that technology suppresses this flux, creating a uniform, static and paralytic system.

Building on Ellul, Illich and Ernst Friedrich Schumacher, I argue that there are alternative trajectories of technology appropriation that encompass small-scale, decentralized, environmentally sound and locally autonomous application. The aim of this short essay is to shed light on seeds that may exemplify new or revitalized techno-economic trajectories for post-capitalist scenarios.

Design global, manufacture local

The confluence of the digital commons of knowledge, software and design with local manufacturing technologies (from three-dimensional printers and laser cutters to low-tech tools and crafts) give rise to new modes of production, as exemplified by the “design global, manufacture local” (DGML) model.

DGML describes the processes through which design is developed as a global digital commons, whereas manufacturing takes place locally, often through shared infrastructures and with local biophysical conditions in check. Three interlocked practices observed in DGML projects (from wind-turbines and farming machines to prosthetic robotic hands) seem to present interesting dynamics for political ecology: the incentives for design-embedded sustainability, the possibilities of on-demand production and the practices of sharing digital and physical productive infrastructures.

A visualization of the “design global, manufacture local” model. Image credits: Vasilis Kostakis, Nikos Exarchopoulos, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

DGML technologies have the potential to be low-cost, feasible for small-scale operations and adjustable to local needs utilizing human creativity. DGML and other commons-oriented initiatives strive for technological sovereignty, by enabling communities (from farmers and artists to computer engineers and designers) to become technologically more autonomous.

The small group dynamics can now scale-up

The increasing access to information and communication technologies enables the global scaling up of small group dynamics. Local communities and individuals can thus shape their technologies up to an important degree, while benefiting from digitally shared resources in tandem. This dynamic of relating tach other, as exemplified by Wikipedia and free/open-source software to DGML projects such as L’Atelier Paysan and Farmhack, has been called “peer-to-peer” (P2P).

What peer-to-peer and the commons are in a nutshell. Image source: Bauwens, M., Kostakis, V., Troncoso, S., & Utratel, A. (2017). Commons Transition and Peer-to-Peer: A Primer. (pp.8-9). Amsterdam: Transnational Institute.

P2P allows people to connect to each other, to communicate to each other and to organize around common value creation, which is enabled by socio-technical networks that avoid intermediaries and gatekeepers. In this capacity of freely-associated common value creation, P2P becomes a synonym for “commoning”. As used in the current context, P2P is related to the capacity to collectively create commons in open contributory networks.

Challenges from a political ecology perspective

In the Ellulian spirit, technological development could therefore be in a flux. However, these P2P developments present several challenges that have to be examined from various perspectives.

The DGML model, for example, presents limitations within its two main pillars, information and communication as well as local manufacturing technologies. These issues may pertain to resource extraction, exploitative labour, energy use or material flows. A thorough evaluation of such products and practices would need to take place from a political ecology perspective. For instance, what is the ecological footprint of a product that has been globally designed and locally manufactured? Or, up to which degree the users of such a product feel in control of the technology and knowledge necessary for its use and manipulation?

In 2017-19, one of the main goals of the research collective I am part of is to provide some answers to the questions above and, thus, to better understand the transition dynamics of such an alternative trajectory of technological development.

Cross-posted from Entitle Blog

Photo by lars hammar

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Summary

Chris Giotitsas and Jose Ramos: “The basic features of DG-ML are based on the conjunction of open source / open design production logics at the global scale, which are coupled with local-network production at a regional scale. Traditionally corporate enterprises have solely owned the intellectual property (IP) they employ in the production of goods. They source the materials for the goods through national or global supply chains. They manufacture those goods using economies of scale in a set number of manufacturing centres, whereupon those finished goods are delivered nationally or globally. DG-ML is an inversion of this production logic. First of all, the IP is open, whether open source or creative commons or copyfair,3 so it can be used by anyone. Secondly, manufacturing and production can be done independently of the IP, by any community or enterprise around the world that wants to. The democratization of increasingly powerful precision manufacturing technologies, such as 3D printers, laser cutters, CNC routers and automated systems / robots potentiate this. This does not follow the logic of economies of scale (yet), rather it is focused on producing value for a critical reference group (CRG), a community who require such goods. Thirdly, distribution is localized to the CRG, or affiliates of the CRG.

DG-ML is not just the advent of new technologies that can be simply strapped on to the neoliberal globalization machine. DG-ML in fact represents the instantiation and operationalization of a new economic system that draws from an emerging worldview. Drawing from relationships and experiences with people involved in DG-ML, we believe it represents a substantive cultural shift in the orientation of material producers/consumers. It rejects the way in which industrialization has decontextualized inputs and outputs and associated externalities. It is thus allied to the vision for building circular economies, the idea being that the production materials used in a DG-ML process are sourced as locally as possible, with waste outputs utilized as inputs elsewhere, eliminating unnecessary supply chain associated costs and impacts. It is also connected to calls for a post-growth economic model, sustaining livelihoods based on measures of wellbeing rather than corporate / economic growth.10 It is interwoven with the open source movement, a vision for a digital commons where the legacy of human creativity is shareable. It draws from a planetary imaginary where local development work is responsive to the planetary challenges we face.11 It is in fact part of a movement to create an alternative globalization,12 and an expression of an emergent worldview: global ecological integrity versus overshoot, peer worker solidarity versus national competition, value pluralism versus the monoculture of GDP.”

Excerpts

From the conclusion: “These two cases provide a window into an emerging economic model that we are just beginning to understand. The cases demonstrate the peer production of shared value and common resources. However, unlike the open software movement, the mode of co-production within these cases are highly localized, members are collaboratively prototyping, designing and experimenting with machinery. These cases can be considered to be prefigurative, they are potential indicators of things to come. The logic of peer production has hit an important threshold, it is now instantiated through physical / material production. Yet the cases also demonstrate growing pains. For Farm Hack questions still remain concerning their financial viability and the challenges of sustaining the producing communities. Is a weak for-benefit organisation enough to facilitate the healthy growth of their network of peer producers? For L’Atelier Paysans, there are less problems with financing the operation, but more questions about how an entrepreneurial coalition is activated. Looking ahead, what might we take away from these case studies that may allow us to see the faint future outlines of an alternative political economy? The emergence of the network form and the logic of commoning embodied in DG-ML practices as demonstrated in these case studies, provide us with some of the seeds from which to begin to imagine an alternative future for political economy. DG-ML challenges the logic of zero sum competition, which is at the heart of our nationally based (and globally connected) capitalist systems. In the current system we are used to national governments supporting national industries to compete globally, win market share and take the lead in technology and innovation. The DG-ML model is part of the birth of a globally cooperative system, the design innovations from one community in one part of the world can be used and adapted for a community in a wholly different part of the world. Instead of systems of competitive advantage and capturing of market share, technological adaptation is community-based and meant to sustain the livelihoods of critical reference groups. While there is theoretical scope for larger industrial scale DG-ML which is able to produce for regional markets (cities of 4-20 million people for example), the examples in this report show a commitment to the adaptation of design and technology for local critical reference groups, rather than competitive marketing strategies.

This then can also help us to reconsider the role of the state with respect to industry and material production. If DG-ML helps regions to rupture from the zero-sum logic of competition, states may develop policies in which support is given to both scales of the DG-ML coproduction system – global and local. At the scale of the global, national policy can orient knowledge production to be open in a way that potentiates industry in material production society-wide and indeed worldwide. At the scale of the local state policy can support communities and local regions in bootstrapping enterprises and productive communities that can instantiate the potential and value of DG-ML processes, through participatory action research processes. This has been referred to as a partner state model.24Finally, because DG-ML is growing from within the dominant capitalist economy, it is important that the value of a global design commons is not simply captured by capitalist industry as a way to lower its operational costs, without having to reciprocate by entering into the coproduction of the commons. It’s important, therefore, to begin to consider how to create virtuous cycles in the value exchanges between different actors in the global DG-ML meta-system. Some ideas in this vein have may be the development of copyfair licences (commons-based reciprocity license),25 useful for trans-nationalizing a generative circulation of value across commons based initiatives – a form of Dzopen cooperativismdz,26 and through which the capitalist / corporate sector would need to concretely reciprocate into if it wants to draw upon it in the first place. This would conceivably require new global institutions that would be able to provide legal and administrative power in supporting, enacting and protecting an open cooperativist regime of knowledge and value exchange. The potential for DG-ML is to liberate the human heritage of knowledge and design, so that communities and people anywhere have the full array of technologies and capabilities to address their living economic and ecological challenges. If we want to accelerate the human capability to enact sustainable development strategies across the world, the right to global designs and concrete support for building local livelihoods are fundamental pillars. The case studied presented here provide hope grounded in practice. Building on these courageous pioneering efforts will be the next challenge.”

Visualization

Comparison of Traditional vs DGML-based peer production

(CRG refers to: critical reference group)

• Images courtesy of L’Atelier Paysan.
• Download the full report here: A New Model of Production for a New Economy.

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L’Atelier Paysan is a French cooperative that works with farmers to design machines and buildings adapted to the specific practices of small farm agroecology. In addition to distributing free plans on its website, L’Atelier Paysan organizes winter self-help training sessions, during which farmers train in metalworking and build tools which they can then use on their own farms. L’Atelier Paysan works to develop the technological sovereignty of farmers by helping them to become more autonomous through learning and regain knowledge and skills.

In market gardening, crops are grown on beds formed from long strips of land. Generally, little or no attention is paid to ground compaction by tractor wheels. In subsequent years, farmers will then try to grow on these tracks. The idea of permanent, “ridged” beds is to form perennial growing beds so the tractor wheels always run in the same place. Tools are needed to form these ridged beds, which allow crops to have superior moisture retention and drainage, and to warm up better in the sun. 

Michel Bauwens: What was the origin of L’Atelier Paysan project?

Julien and Fabrice: The project was born in 2009 after a meeting between Joseph Templier, an organic market gardener from GAEC “Les Jardins du Temple” in Isère (south-eastern France, near the Alps), and Fabrice Clerc, then a technician with ADABio, the local organic agriculture development association. ADABio was created in 1984 to help improve practices, find resources, and share knowledge, among other things.

Joseph and his colleagues used tools on the farm that are very relevant to the soil, especially adapted to an innovative cultural technique called “permanent beds”. Many young farmers came to train in the techniques, the system and the organization of the “Jardins du Temple” and then to practice them on their own farms and projects. At the same time, Fabrice went to many farms in the Rhone Alps to collect and disseminate knowledge and agrarian know-how. Fabrice and Joseph’s idea was to widely publicise the innovative tools used on this farm, which were crafted and assembled from recovered materials and refurbished old tools. Some standardization was necessary first, in order to be able to publish plans for building the tools from parts and accessories that can be found at any hardware store.

Your approach seems very pragmatic. Yet when I read through your website, it is also a very thoughtful approach (philosophical and political). How did you move from one approach to another?

We have just put into words what is happening. A number of farmers in the Alps independently designed and built their own machines, adapted to their own needs. We have gathered and compiled all this into a guide. In the process of constructing this guide, it seemed useful to formalise our approach: first, to take an inventory of innovations on the ground, then to answer the question “what is the meaning of all this?” Why all these bottom-up innovations, which were traditionally outsourced to the equipment manufacturing industry. So, why was the farming world excluded from the design process? Whereas the farmer and the artisan of the village once built the machines needed, now farmers have disappeared from the chain of innovation.

It is not only in the agricultural sector that this has happened: it’s possible to build bridges with changes in other areas such as shared self-build community workshops, and to think about Do It Yourself from the viewpoint of human/social (re)construction. For example, in Grenoble, there are about ten woodworking workshops with available machines and tools, and self-renovation housing initiatives. They are important factors for emancipation, inclusion and social reintegration. For the last 6 or 7 years, we have been thinking a lot about these issues. We don’t want to just make machines. It is a total experience that consists of thinking about daily life and of the political approach it requires.

Current political debate reflects a very strong social demand on the ground. The guide to self-construction is the first book we published in 2012. This is the sum of the first field census of sixteen machines adapted to organic market gardening. These machines, which are low tech (in construction and design) call for a lot of craft know-how. They do not suffer in comparison with high-tech machines. Our machines are three to four times cheaper for an efficiency equal or superior to those of the trade. Why is this search for autonomy not more valued? This is a question of the technological sovereignty of farmers. It is something that is coming back into fashion, taken up by a militant farming community.

The word “farmer” was, until the 1980s, a word used to denigrate. Today, on the contrary, it means someone who is not only a cultivator of agricultural produce but part of a terroir, connected to an ecosystem and a social life. The word “farmer” relates to the invention of a specialized, segmented profession. Today they are even called “producer”, “operator”, or “Chief Operating Officer”. The logic of industrialists and economists invades agriculture.

What are the current project developments?

The approach is open to the whole field of small and organic farming on a human scale. It started around organic market gardening, but now it is open to all sectors: arboriculture, breeding, viticulture… For example, we can include the re-design of livestock buildings and storage. For market gardeners who want to add some poultry farming to their production, we are also working on the issue of mobile buildings.

Depending on the demands of the farmers’ groups on the ground, our resource platform will respond to co-design the tools required for the specific practices of small and organic farmers. We want these tools to be used by conventional farmers to help them adopt a more autonomous and economical approach. It is becoming increasingly credible because it is intended to be a resource available to all farmers. Most of our users are already going through this process, but the technical principles developed, aim to ensure that conventional farmers are no longer frightened by the demanding, know-how-based, techniques of small farm agroecology.

The project started in 2009 at ADABio, a local association of organic producers, but very quickly grew to such a large scale that in 2011 a transitional association was created and then converted into a cooperative in 2014: L’Atelier Paysan. In this human adventure, meetings played a very important part. At each meeting, we took sideways steps, then small jumps and then big jumps. Today we are 11 permanent staff, quite a lot of seasonal staff as well as those who volunteer as a civic service. Everyone comes as who they are and our approach is closely linked to what each person brings. We are very attentive to the requests that come to us, and we have more and more!

What is your business model?

We operate 65% through self-financing and 35% from public funding. In our view, these are normal contributions to our effort to produce and disseminate common goods. We believe that we are in the public interest and that communities need to be involved. Unfortunately, with the reactionary right-wing coming to power in many places, this sort of support has been drastically reduced.

However, we are relatively more secure than other structures, sometimes subsidized at 80%. The 65% self-financing comes from our self-build training activity. In France there are joint vocational training funds that can cover the cost of training. We also profit from a margin on group orders for internships.

We will raise funds more and more from the public: if we want to change the agriculture / food model, the whole of society is involved. That’s why we have set up a partnership with a Citoyens Solidaire endowment fund to collect donations and the associated tax [1]. It is a mechanism that allows people to choose where their taxes are going. We want to make citizens aware of our work so that they can contribute to the economic independence of L’Atelier Paysan.

What is your relationship with other farmer or social movements?

L’Atelier Paysan is positioned as one of the actors in the alternative food project, an additional tool in the social and solidarity-based agricultural economy. As actors of this arena, we naturally wanted to associate ourselves with those that represent the agricultural environment, to connect, so that they might disseminate our information, our technical material and to bring together our different users. Moreover, the question of agricultural machinery was very seldom dealt with by the existing organisations.

Also, we have had an awareness-raising activity for a year now, through the InPACTassociation, which brings together about ten associations at the national level. We have been the standard-bearers for the technological sovereignty of farmers in this context, in particular to document and expose, on the one hand, the over-sizing of farming equipment production tool and, on the other hand, the publicly funded introduction of robotics and digital technology supported by the techno-scientific community.

At the international level, we are in the Via Campesina network. We participated in the 2nd Nyéléni forum on food sovereignty (in October 2016 in Romania) where we talked about agricultural equipment, saying that there can be no food independence without farmers’ technological sovereignty.

At the forum we met with Spaniards, Romanians, Austrians, Czechs and Hungarians, who were very interested in questions around farming equipment. We staged an exhibition of drawings and fact sheets that really appealed to people. It was not especially a field of exploration for these activists, and there, something happened. No one in Europe has yet set up a platform such as L’Atelier Paysan, which provides ways to document and disseminate knowledge (data sheets, self-construction training …).

We went to Quebec in January 2014 to organize the first self-build training in North America, with the CAPÉ (Coopérative d’Agriculteurs de Proximlité Écologique) and l’EPSH (École professionnelle de Saint-Hyacinthe ), around the vibroplanche (for cultivating permanent “ridged” beds). And now, they independently create self-build courses from the shared tools on our website.

In the United States, we are connected with Farm Hack, incubated and launched by Greenhorns, which itself came from a young-farmer’s coalition, the NYFC (National Young Farmers Coalition). They share tips on adapting machinery via hackathons and open-hacking camps. Though they have not yet organized any training.

We also have discussions with the Land Workers Alliance (a member of Via Campesina) in England. Two years ago they organized the first Farmhack event which we attended to present our work.

Here, a farmer can come for training and can build their own tools: it doesn’t cost much thanks to our famous training funds and group-buying of materials and accessories. Working with metal, tool use (a kind of after-sales service), sharing (using the machine and adapting it to their context in the form of versioning); this is the whole methodology that one wants to share. There is a very specific context in France, which means that a structure like ours can still rely on a large amount of public aid and shared professional funds to pay for the internships (this is not the case in the USA, for example, which has to rely on private funds).

In general, our approach is total, that is what is exciting in this adventure. We are giving ourselves the means to advance this process, between ourselves and with other actors. From a practical point of view, to reach one person is good, but to reach many takes us much further. We also consider political and economic issues, and what are the factors for acceleration and efficiency. The question of agricultural machinery is a question of political and scientific thought. On the whole, on a whole bunch of questions, there is no science-based production. On April 5th we are organizing a seminar on technological sovereignty: we have struggled to find people who have admitted incompetence. These are questions they have never faced.

What do you think of the “Commons” as a political concept?

We would like to be further advanced on this issue of the Commons. We assume that the issue of food, like drinking water, the air we breathe and biodiversity, are essential to protect. In turn, the means to achieve it (know-how, agricultural land, communal areas, techniques…) must by definition be common, since this is the survival of our species. All the know-how and the knowledge of farmers did not come ex nihilo [from nothing. Ed]: they come from sharing, putting into a common pot, shared innovation and openness. We see as a scandal any attempt to expropriate technological solutions so that they can be part of another feed-source for personal profit. This is an issue that we are exploring and trying to pay attention to.

We are alert to the legal regimes related to this issue of the Commons, to open licenses and to what could best reflect this willingness to share knowledge through which we enrich our community of users. If we use Creative Commons, we are always looking for the right license that best expresses this willingness to share.

The starting material of our work are the tools developed by Joseph: he participated very much in the emergence of these communities. But he didn’t only tinker with machines, he also thought of them with regard to a working group of farmers who wanted to adopt the innovative cultural techniques of permanent beds. His machines are designed in a collective. It is therefore the result of a whole lot of visits and picking up of knowledge and know-how from his peers. He had the talent and the energy to imagine and manufacture these machines. It is his way of contributing, like other activists.

How do you see social change? The political atmosphere is not very positive for the change we want. Do you imagine that you work in a “hostile environment”? Is there a political side to your work?

There is the question of public education. The first step of the document on the technological sovereignty of farmers will be to amalgamate the ideas of the users, the political partners, etc. Some participants in our training events do not take long to take the ideas and techniques and disseminate them.

We are also starting to have quite a lot of feedback from researchers / thinkers, who congratulate us for imagining this new way of thinking. This is our goal because we are not going to be able to produce everything: scientific studies, political thinking … What partnerships can be set up to make common the commonalities of these subjects? Additional advocates can be found at meetings. We do not have a strategy. There is nothing stronger than a groundswell to spread our way of doing things. The tidal wave will be less important, there will be no media buzz, no pretty teaser with a background of country music, but this is much more powerful. When people have experienced their ability for self-determination, there is a kind of arriving without the possibility of backtracking.

Are there projects similar to yours but which you criticize and if so, why?

We are quite distinct from the sort of ideas promoted by the likes of Open Source Ecology in the US with a beautiful trailer, to us that does not seem grounded in reality. None of the machines actually work. It is a process of innovation that comes from not involving real users. They are engineers who imagine things a bit on their own.

We are also distancing ourselves from Fablabs, which seem to be an incubator for start-ups rather than for public education. For us, a Fablab must be a place of public education and not of low-cost technological experimentation for the industry.

We are in Grenoble, the cradle of nanotechnology. Here, a Fablab is funded by industry and advanced technology. So there is Fablab after Fablab (woodworking, pedal-powered machines…), and they are generally talking about something other than the quality of what is produced. It takes funding to run a Fablab. In 2013, those who won the call for projects from the Ministry of the Digital Economy are not those who provide public education. How do we finance a general interest?

More broadly, if by Fablab we mean laboratories of open innovation and shared human resources, there are tens of thousands in France. There are ecocentres, Third-Places, associations related to self-build, others that repair bicycles, social innovation, human and economic. They are not necessarily in the high-tech field and are less publicized, but they are working on the necessary questions.

Where do you see yourself in 10 years? How do you think the world will be in which you will evolve? Do you project yourself into the “global arena” and if yes / no, why and how?

The observation is that today, in January, we do not know much about where we will be at the end of December. This has been true since the beginning of the adventure. We are in an exploratory phase, and it is very difficult to know where we will be in 3 years. After 5 years we have already exceeded our dreams of 3 or 4 years ago! Our collective dynamics explode, economically we will have to find more avenues because humanly we will not be able to go much further. We refuse work every day! One of the interesting tracks in a time-scale of 3 or 4 years is to set up our own training centre on a farm with a workshop training centre suited to our needs, a logistics platform, a classroom, offices, garages, and accommodation. Why a farm? To have our feet on the ground, a real support for our experimentation and a working tool to match our needs. Today we operate within our means, but we have ways to improve our work.

In the years to come, beyond the concerts at Rock à la Meuleuse (rock on the grinder) which we organized during our Rencontres in June 2016, we have plans to explore an illustration of our work through contemporary art.

Among the perspectives, we imagine a European network centred on technological sovereignty. In the world of development and international cooperation associations, this idea has been around since the 1970s, based on appropriate technologies: reclaiming ourselves, being more sociable, connecting and building links throughout Europe so that there are more exchanges between our different countries.

Our adventure is not without effort. Part of what helps us keep going is that we don’t miss out on poetry, pleasure and being as we are. We thoroughly, and I mean thoroughly, explore the paths and horizons that are available to us.

One of the objectives for which we believe we are on the right track is the following: while in France local development has always been specialized, today things are actually de-compartmentalized. If we think about things more “globally”, we will participate in developing something richer, more powerful and sustainable. What makes us strong is that we control the whole chain: self-building at the political and collective level.

We are full of energy: our desire is to testify that the fields we are exploring with the methodologies we use, can be applied to a whole bunch of other things.

All images by L’Atelier Paysan. Check out the full photo essay here.

Interview translated by William Charlton and edited by Ann Marie Utratel

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