CERN is home to some of the largest and most complex scientific equipment on the planet. Yet back in March, scientists gathered there for a conference about DIY laboratory tools. Scientists in poorly funded labs, particularly in the global south, have used DIY tools for many years. But well-resourced institutes are increasingly interested in the collaborative possibilities of open labware. Citizen scientists are also using it to build instruments for tasks like environmental monitoring, which can then be used to support community demands for justice from polluters.

It is not only scientists – citizen or professional – who are going DIY. An open hardware movement of hobbyists, activists, geeks, designers, engineers, students and social entrepreneurs is creating ingenious versions of all sorts of technologies, and freely sharing the know-how through social media. Open hardware is also encroaching upon centres of manufacturing. In August, for instance, the global gathering of FabLabs met in Shenzhen (already host to Maker Faires) to review how their network can help to decentralise design and manufacture.

The free software movement is cited as both an inspiration and a model for open hardware. Free software practices have transformed our culture by making it easier for people to become involved in producing things from magazines to music, movies to games, communities to services. With advances in digital fabrication making it easier to manipulate materials, some now anticipate an analogous opening up of manufacturing to mass participation.

One online community has been developing DIY book scanners. These enable you to build a machine for automatically photographing book pages; and then download free software to process the images into a file. Having digitized your books, you might go further by sharing the files online (taking care to post anonymously to a site relaxed about copyright law).

The list of open hardware available to people continues to grow. The Open Source Ecology group is even developing a Global Village Construction Kit of tools for self-sufficiency, from machine tools to housing to tractors and beyond. A ‘global commons’ of accessible tools is emerging.

Open hardware can be serious business too. Take RepRap: a 3D printer community whose open source practices enabled its rapid growth. Its evolution took a controversial turn when members of the Resistor hackerspace in New York decided to commercialize their version of the RepRap, and protected aspects of its design through intellectual property. Their Makerbot business was subsequently bought for $400 million by 3D printer manufacturer Stratosys; a move which provoked fierce criticism from open hardware advocates.

Hobbyists have always tinkered with technologies for their own purposes (in early personal computing, for example). And social activists have long advocated the power of giving tools to people. The Whole Earth Catalogue was an early proponent of the liberating potential of digital technology. Then there were the dog-eared Appropriate Technology manuals that a generation of aid workers carried into the developing world in the 1970s and 1980s. Other antecedents include Victor Papanek’s Nomadic Furniture and Walter Segal’s self-build housing. We can compare these with their digital heirs at Open Desk and WikiHouse. Open, community-based technology workshops are not so new either.

So is this just old wine in new bottles? We think not. Open hardware lowers the barriers to participation in rapid prototyping in ways that earlier activists would find astonishing. And with community-workshops popping up in many towns, and online sharing platforms proliferating, the possibilities for doing technology differently are genuinely exciting.

Nevertheless, older experiences hold important lessons for the new. Our research into grassroots innovation movements, old and new, brings insights that activists today would be wise to consider.

The immediacy and connectedness of open hardware does not nullify the need for real skills in technology development. There remains a craft element to even the fleetest of digitally enabled tools. Experienced designers, engineers and machinists know the importance in understanding not just the tools themselves, but also the materials they work with. Practices that respect materials across their whole life cycle become imperative. Sustainable open hardware shifts the focus to making sufficiently, design for repair and repurposing, upcycling objects, and valuing the craft therein. Just because we can make almost anything, doesn’t mean we should.

And the materials involved are not simply physical. They are social too. If open hardware is to be genuinely inclusive, then its practices must actively empower people to become involved. Notionally accessible tools need to become actually available, and people need to feel confident using them. This requires social skills in community participation, as well as technology skills.

FabLabs are fantastic at combining face-to-face developments with online networks. These hybrid spaces contribute important infrastructure for open hardware. But maintaining infrastructure needs investment. Existing institutions, such as schools, museums, local governments, universities, and corporations are helping fund open workshops.

These institutional links bring the political dilemmas of open hardware to the surface. Is it really transforming technology development, or simply a refreshing input for business as usual? Education institutions see cool ways to induct people into conventional science, technology and manufacturing jobs. Local governments get excited about the entrepreneurial possibilities. Corporations see a reservoir of design prototypes offered up by the free labour of enthusiasts.

It is important to keep sharp open hardware’s more transformational edges, on agendas such as dismantling intellectual property and releasing investment for alternative business models. Only through a mix of craft, politics, and the support of social movements, will open hardware fully realise its potential to democratise technology.

Adrian Smith is professor of technology and society at the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) and a member of the ESRC STEPS Centre (Social, Technological and Environmental Pathways to Sustainability) at the University of Sussex. Dr Mariano Fressoli is a researcher at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET, Argentina) and STEPS Latin America. Their new book, Grassroots Innovation Movements, includes chapters on social technology, fablabs, hackerspaces and makerspaces.

Originally published on theguardian.com

Photo by LarsZi

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Sam DeJohn: Recently, Pablo Soto Bravo, Madrid City Council Member, computer programmer and the city’s lead for public engagement, spoke at an event in New York on “Restoring Trust in Government” on the occasion of the United Nations General Assembly. “Why should we trust government,” he asked, adding “the people don’t trust governments…they’re right not to trust the government.” Like many Spaniards, Soto had joined the 15-M movement in 2011 to protest the government’s austerity measures and rising levels of corruption.¹ With trust in government having declined over twenty percentage points since 2007,² Soto used his programming skills to champion the adoption of digital technology to give the public a greater voice in a traditional two-party governing system from which the average person had generally been excluded. But, as we shall explore in this three-part series, Decide Madrid, a pathbreaking civic technology platform co-designed by Soto to force “the administration to open their ears” (El Mundo), is evolving from a protest tool designed to challenge the status quo into a more mature platform for improving governance.

In Part 1, we will explore the platform, which is among the best-of-breed new generation of open source civic technologies, and its myriad features. In Part 2, we will draw on open data from Decide to focus in more depth on how people use the site. In Part 3, we focus on recommendations for improvements to Decide and how to test their impact on the legitimacy and effectiveness of decision-making.

What is Decide?

The Ahora Madrid coalition (which was founded with support from the Podemos political party³) created Decide in 2015 to enable citizens to propose, deliberate and vote on policies for the city and ensure transparency of all government proceedings within the municipality.  An information page on the Decide website further elaborates the program’s focus. “One of the main missions of [the platform] will be to ensure the inclusion of everyone in the participatory processes, so that all voices and wills form a part of them and no one is left out.” The website, which utilizes the free software Consul as many other administrations are now doing, allows Madrileños to influence the City’s planning and policy-making through voting, discourse, and consultations with the goal of empowering citizens, promoting transparency, and fostering open government practices. The site is composed of four distinct features to address these areas of desired impact. Of these components, two processes stand out as having the most potential for direct citizen influence: a proposal section where individuals may propose new laws and subsequently vote on them, and a participatory budget section where citizens decide how a portion of the City’s budget is distributed among different projects. The other two features include a consultation process where citizens are asked to offer, and vote on, opinions about City proceedings and finally a debate process which does not directly lead to action but rather deliberation for the City to assess public opinion. These processes are all designed with the intention “to create an environment that mobilizes existing collective intelligence in favor of a more hospitable and inclusive city.”

Key Features

Propuestas: Citizen Proposals Enable More Direct Democracy

The proposals feature was designed as a way to allow citizens to utilize the full power of direct democracy and shape government actions. According to Pablo Soto Bravo and Miguel Arana Catania, Director of Participation for the City Council of Madrid and Project Director for Decide Madrid, the proposals feature is by far the most important aspect of the platform as it has the greatest potential for impact. It has definitely generated interest as almost 20,000 proposals have been submitted since the launch of Decide in 2015.

This feature enables citizens to create and directly support ideas for new legislation. Registered users⁴ can propose an idea by simply clicking the “Create a Proposal” button and submitting a title and description. Proposals range significantly in terms of length and content, but gravity of the topic does not seem to influence popularity as two of the most supported proposals currently active on the site are “Penalty for those who do not collect the feces of their pets” and “Replacement of public lighting by LED lights.” Once a proposal is submitted, anyone with verified accounts can click a button expressing their support for said proposal.⁵ Each proposal is given twelve months to gather requisite support to advance in the process.

Screenshot from the “proposals” home page on the website

Example of an ongoing proposal

In order to move forward for consideration, a proposal must receive the requisite support, represented by 1% of citizens of Madrid over 16 years of age (~27,000 people currently). The process is designed this way to ensure that every citizen has the opportunity to submit proposals but that the administrators do not have to waste time considering proposals that fail to attract minimal backing.

Proposals that receive the necessary votes advance to the decision phase, which affords time and opportunity for citizens to get educated about the issues and make informed decisions. The site announces whenever a proposal reaches this phase and it is grouped with others that are in the same stage of the process, thus beginning a 45-day period of deliberation and discussion before the final voting phase. The managers of the platform do not provide background information other than what is posted by users, so citizens are responsible for conducting their own research and perusing the site for debates and comments about the proposal. Afterward begins a seven-day period where anyone over 16 years of age and completely verified in the municipality of Madrid can vote to either accept or reject the proposal.

It is important to note that proposals that receive majority support are not automatically implemented, as the Spanish Constitution does not permit binding referenda. Instead, the Madrid City Council commits to a 30-day study of any such proposal, during which they will determine if it is to be implemented. During this examination, the proposal is evaluated based on its legality, feasibility, competence, and economic cost, all of which are highlighted in a subsequent report that is openly published. If the report is positive, then a plan of action will be written and published to carry out the proposal. If the report is negative, the City Council may either propose an alternative action or publish the reasons that prevent the proposal’s execution.

Although it is understandable that the administration wants to ensure that only popular, viable proposals are presented before them, the hurdles that each proposal must clear are proving to be a significant obstacle. While it is difficult to determine the reason, the undeniable fact that only two proposals have even reached the final voting phase suggests a serious flaw in the system and a possible deterrent for future participation. However, on a more hopeful note, the two successful proposals (one calling for a single ticket for all means of public transportation and the other an extensive sustainability plan for the city) reached majority support in February of this year and in May the Council approved them and posted implementation plans.

Presupuestos participativos: Participatory budgeting

This feature was created to allow citizens a substantial say in how their taxes are being spent. Specifically, it permits them to decide where a designated portion of the City’s budget is going to be allocated. In the first step, individuals registered in Madrid can submit expenditure projects which will be posted publicly on the website. Spending projects can be submitted for either the entire city or for an individual district. One key difference between this process and that of proposals is that authors of similar projects are contacted and offered the possibility of submitting joint projects as a way of limiting the volume of projects and ensuring cost-effectiveness.

The next phase consists of a two-week period where qualified voters are authorized ten support votes for city-wide projects and ten for projects in a district of their choosing. After this period, all projects undergo an evaluation by the City Council either confirming or denying that the projects are valid, viable, legal, and includible in the municipal budget. Following the evaluation, both approved and rejected projects are published with their corresponding reports and assessments. The “most supported” projects then move on to the final voting phase, but the administrators are unclear about this term’s definition as they do not specify how many projects are permitted to advance.

In the final voting phase, the total available budget and the final projects along with their estimated cost (produced by the City Council during the evaluation phase) are published. Qualified voters can vote for any number of projects for the whole city and one project from the district of their choosing but the projects they support cannot exceed the total amount of funds available in the budget.

Projects are then listed in descending order of votes received, both for city-wide projects and district projects. They are then selected down the line from highest number of votes to lowest number of votes, making sure each additional proposal can fit within the total available budget. If the estimated cost of a project would cause the budget to be exceeded, that project is skipped and the next viable option is selected. Finally, the selected projects are included in the Initial Project of the General Budget of the City of Madrid (Participatory Budgets).

This feature is making impressive progress consistent with its goals. From 2016 to 2017, the amount allocated to these projects rose from €60 million to €100 million and the total number of participants rose by almost 50% from 45,531 to 67,132 people. With each project’s status and details available in a downloadable file on this page of the site, transparency is not an issue for this component. Pablo Soto Bravo and Miguel Arana Catania have indicated that citizens should start seeing concrete results from the 2016 projects very soon, which should lend credibility to, and faith in, the process.

Screenshot of Downloadable Project Spreadsheet

Debates and Consultations

In addition to the proposed actions which actually go through a voting process, the site contains sections that are intended more for simple deliberation, promoting communication and information-sharing. Debates do not call for any action by the City Council but are instead used to assess the public’s opinion and general consensus on a range of topics.

There is also a consultation process where users can voice their opinions about certain proceedings throughout the city. They can answer questions, make suggestions, and praise or denounce measures or activities that are already happening instead of creating new proposals. For example, the City Council currently plans on remodeling several squares and plazas throughout the city. Thus, there is a section where citizens are able to answer three questions created by the City Council pertaining to the revitalization of each area. City officials can comment and debate as well, allowing them to directly engage users on the site. There is no indication as to how seriously the public’s opinions are taken into consideration, but it is implied that their ideas are valued. At the very least, the highlighted names of politicians appearing on the debate space creates the appearance that they are taking an interest in these concerns.

Membership Levels

Because Decide has the potential to cause such a grand impact on Madrid’s citizens, government, and economic prosperity, there are certain security precautions to encourage participation while protecting the integrity of the process. The platform has a sliding scale of permissions with stronger authentication enabling access to more features of the site to create the incentive for more accountable participation. The site is open to anyone with internet access and users may create an account simply by providing a username and valid email address. While anyone can submit proposals, additional authentication is necessary to access other capabilities. There are three levels of authentication, each with differing rights of access.

• Registered users, who provide a username, email address, and password but do not verify residence, are able to:
  • Participate in discussions
  • Create proposals
  • Create expenditure projects
• Basic verified users must verify residence online by entering their residence data. If it is correct, they will be asked to provide a mobile phone number in order to receive a confirmation code to activate their verified account. People may also elect to do this in person at a Citizen Assistance office. These users are able to:
  • Participate in discussions
  • Create proposals and expenditure projects
  • Vote for proposals and expenditure projects in the support phase
• Completely verified users must fully verify their account in person at a Citizen Assistance Office or via mail. If done by mail they will receive a letter containing a security code and instructions to carry out the verification, which they must send back to a Citizen Assistance Office. These users are able to:
  • Participate in discussions
  • Create proposals and expenditure projects
  • Vote for proposals in the support phase
  • Vote for proposals in the final decision phase

Conclusions

Although the concept of Decide is consistent with the highest ideals of open government, the execution falls short in practice as, with the exception of participatory budgeting, there is no evidence that the site leads to improved decisions. We will discuss these shortcomings in more detail in part two, however, on the surface it is seems that Decide has not yet accomplished its ultimate goals, as its creators acknowledge. Soto and Arana want Madrileños to understand and fully utilize the power of direct democracy. With only two proposals reaching the voting phase of the process, it is clear that neither citizens nor Madrid’s institutions are taking advantage of this novel system and it has yet to achieve a significant impact on governance in Madrid.

The platform’s design is innovative and impressive and has been inspiring many other administrations to adopt similar programs. Indeed it bodes well for Madrid, and the rest of Spain, that various cities throughout the country are being inspired by the same political aspirations to replicate this process, such as decidm.barcelona which uses the same Consul software. However, like many others, Decide still has its flaws. In the next installment, we will address how Decide handles the keys to a successful digital democracy, such as advertising, incentivizing, and stakeholder analysis. We have identified the strengths and weaknesses at its foundation, so the next step is to examine the results it is producing.

¹ 2016 marked Spain’s worst year on Transparency International’s annual Corruption Perceptions Index since its launch in 1995, as they scored just 58 on the 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (highly clean) scale.

² Trust and Public Policy: How Better Governance Can Help Rebuild Public Trust, OECD, http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/download/4217051e.pdf?expires=1492821633&id=id&accname=ocid177224&checksum=6C5097C12FAE130455255C94D249CA20 (Mar. 27, 2017)

³ Podemos did not formally run in the most recent local elections. However, it has been the driving force behind local platforms that share the same political agenda.

⁴ See “Membership Levels” below for detailed explanation

⁵ Note: in order to maximize citizen participation and accommodate those without internet access, most actions that take place on the website can also be done in one of Madrid’s 26 Citizen Assistance Offices with the help of trained staff.

This post by Sam DeJohn is reposted from Featured Website, GovLab Blog

Photo by grantuhard

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Adrian Smith: Residents living around Plaça del Sol joke that theirs is the only square where, despite the name, rain is preferable. Rain means fewer people gather to socialise and drink, reducing noise for the flats overlooking the square. Residents know this with considerable precision because they’ve developed a digital platform for measuring noise levels and mobilising action. I was told the joke by Remei, one of the residents who, with her ‘citizen scientist’ neighbours, are challenging assumptions about Big Data and the Smart City.

The Smart City and data sovereignty

The Smart City is an alluring prospect for many city leaders. Even if you haven’t heard of it, you may have already joined in by looking up bus movements on your phone, accessing Council services online or learning about air contamination levels. By inserting sensors across city infrastructures and creating new data sources – including citizens via their mobile devices – Smart City managers can apply Big Data analysis to monitor and anticipate urban phenomena in new ways, and, so the argument goes, efficiently manage urban activity for the benefit of ‘smart citizens’.

Barcelona has been a pioneering Smart City. The Council’s business partners have been installing sensors and opening data platforms for years. Not everyone is comfortable with this technocratic turn. After Ada Colau was elected Mayor on a mandate of democratising the city and putting citizens centre-stage, digital policy has sought to go ‘beyond the Smart City’. Chief Technology Officer Francesca Bria is opening digital platforms to greater citizen participation and oversight. Worried that the city’s knowledge was being ceded to tech vendors, the Council now promotes technological sovereignty.

On the surface, the noise project in Plaça del Sol is an example of such sovereignty. It even features in Council presentations. Look more deeply, however, and it becomes apparent that neighbourhood activists are really appropriating new technologies into the old-fashioned politics of community development.

Community developments

Plaça de Sol has always been a meeting place. But as the neighbourhood of Gràcia has changed, so the intensity and character of socialising in the square has altered. More bars, restaurants, hotels, tourists and youngsters have arrived, and Plaça del Sol’s long-standing position as venue for large, noisy groups drinking late into the night has become more entrenched. For years, resident complaints to the Council fell on deaf ears. For the Council, Gràcia signified an open, welcoming city and leisure economy. Residents I spoke with were proud of their vibrant neighbourhood. But they recalled a more convivial square, with kids playing games and families and friends socialising. Visitors attracted by Gràcia’s atmosphere also contributed to it, but residents in Plaça del Sol felt this had become a nuisance. It is a story familiar to many cities. Much urban politics turns on the negotiation of convivial uses of space.

What made Plaça del Sol stand out can be traced to a group of technology activists who got in touch with residents early in 2017. The activists were seeking participants in their project called Making Sense, which sought to resurrect a struggling ‘Smart Citizen Kit’ for environmental monitoring. The idea was to provide residents with the tools to measure noise levels, compare them with officially permissible levels, and reduce noise in the square. More than 40 neighbours signed up and installed 25 sensors on balconies and inside apartments.

The neighbours had what project coordinator Mara Balestrini from Ideas for Change calls ‘a matter of concern’. The earlier Smart Citizen Kit had begun as a technological solution looking for a problem: a crowd-funded gadget for measuring pollution, whose data users could upload to a web-platform for comparison with information from other users. Early adopters found the technology trickier to install than developers had presumed. Even successful users stopped monitoring because there was little community purpose. A new approach was needed. Noise in Plaça del Sol provided a problem for this technology fix.

Through meetings and workshops residents learnt about noise monitoring, and, importantly, activists learnt how to make technology matter for residents. The noise data they generated, unsurprisingly, exceeded norms recommended by both the World Health Organisation and municipal guidelines. Residents were codifying something already known: their square is very noisy. However, in rendering their experience into data, these citizen scientists could also compare their experience with official noise levels, refer to scientific studies about health impacts, and correlate levels to different activities in the square during the day and night.

The project decided to compare their square with other places in the city. At this point, they discovered the Council’s Sentilo Smart City platform already included a noise monitor in their square. Officials had been monitoring noise but not publicising the open data. Presented with citizen data, officials initially challenged the competence of resident monitoring, even though official data confirmed a noise problem. But as Rosa, one of the residents, said to me, “This is my data. They cannot deny it”.

Thick data

Residents were learning that data is rarely neutral. The kinds of data gathered, the methods used, how it gets interpreted, what gets overlooked, the context in which it is generated, and by whom, and what to do as a result, are all choices that shape the facts of a matter. For experts building Big Data city platforms, one sensor in one square is simply a data point. On the other side of that point, however, are residents connecting that data to life in all its richness in their square. Anthropologist Clifford Geertz argued many years ago that situations can only be made meaningful through ‘thick description’. Applied to the Smart City, this means data cannot really be explained and used without understanding the contexts in which it arises and gets used. Data can only mobilise people and change things when it becomes thick with social meaning.

Noise data in Plaça del Sol was becoming thick with social meaning. Collective data gathering proved more potent than decibel levels alone: it was simultaneously mobilising people into changing the situation. Noise was no longer an individual problem, but a collective issue. And it was no longer just noise. The data project arose through face-to-face meetings in a physical workshop space. Importantly, this meant that neighbours got to know one another better, and had reasons for discussing life in the square when they bumped into one another.

Attention turned to solutions. A citizen assembly convened in the square one weekend publicised the campaign and discuss ideas with passers-by. Some people wanted the local police to impose fines on noisy drinkers, whereas others were wary of heavy-handed approaches. Some suggested installing a children’s playground. Architects helped locals examine material changes that could dampen sound.

The Council response has been cautious. New flowerbeds along one side of the square remove steps where groups used to sit and drink. Banners and community police officers remind people to respect the neighbourhood. The Council recently announced plans for a movable playground (whose occupation of the centre of the square can be removed for events, like the Festa Major de Gràcia). Residents will be able to monitor how these interventions change noise in the square. Their demands confront an established leisure economy. As local councillor Robert Soro explained to me, convivial uses have also to address the interests of bar owners, public space managers, tourism, commerce, and others. Beyond economic issues are questions of rights to public space, young peoples’ needs to socialise, neighbouring squares worried about displaced activity, the Council’s vision for Gràcia, and of course, the residents suffering the noise.

The politics beneath Smart City platforms

For the Council, technology activists, and residents of Plaça del Sol, data alone cannot solve their issues. Data cannot transcend the lively and contradictory social worlds that it measures. If data is to act then it needs ultimately to be brought back into those generative social contexts – which, as Jordi Giró at the Catalan Confederation of Neighbourhood Associations reminds us, means cultivating people skills and political capacity. Going beyond the Smart City demands something its technocratic efficiency is supposed to make redundant: investment in old-fashioned, street-level skills in community development. Technology vendors cannot sell such skills. They are cultivated through the kinds of community activism that first brought Ada Colau to prominence, and eventually into office.

Adrian Smith is Professor of Technology and Society at the Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex, and Visiting Professor at the Centro de Innovación en Tecnología para el Desarrollo Humano at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. This blog comes from a European research project analysing the knowledge politics of smart urbanism. He is on Twitter as @smithadrianpaul

Reposted from The Guardian, with the permission of the author.

Image: Making Sense (Talking about noise in Plaça del Sol)

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The new hype

A new phase of agriculture is promoted by the industry and innovation policies in Europe and worldwide, promoting the development and integration of Information and Communication (ICT), sensor-based and data technologies. Many stakeholders refer to this integration of hi-tech solutions in farming as “Agriculture 3.0”, leaving behind Agriculture 1.0, the main form up to 1920 with manual labour, and Agriculture 2.0 following, also known as Green Revolution. Indeed, this new trend has become currently a mainstream narrative of innovation in agriculture, including all sorts of novel high-tech approaches; cloud computing, specialized software, drones and Internet of Things, all presented as promising tools to increase yields, reduce costs and, notably, promote agricultural sustainability. The EU also appears willing to provide a suitable environment through policies which strongly facilitate the development of “smart farming” and data-driven business models in agriculture.

Consequently, this has created an ambitious, and often opportunistic, business “ecosystem”, consisting of a diverse mix of specialised larger or small companies, entering the agricultural sector with a variety of promises for solutions to important agricultural and environmental issues, aiming at a share of the new market, created by the neoliberal approach of delivering profit and entrepreneurship opportunities out of new topics. That includes also a “share data” and “open source” approach, not with the intention of sharing, but for ensuring the possibility these new stakeholders will be able to “extract value” from this raising market.

On the other hand, agroecology as an emerging concept providing a holistic approach for the design of genuinely sustainable food systems not simply seeking temporary solutions that unambiguously will increase environmental performance and productivity. It stands mostly as a systemic paradigm of perception change, towards full harmonization with ecological processes, low external inputs, and use of biodiversity and cultivation of agricultural knowledge. Additionally, agroecology emphasizes independent and grassroots experimentation, and not the reliance on high tech and external suppliers, with a high degree of dependency on additional support services. Obviously, the new “sustainable” approaches and promises of digital technology and big data could be considered as focusing mainly on conventional, industrial-scale agriculture, allowing only large-scale farmers to thrive at the expense of smaller ones, while not having much to do with the transition towards truly sustainable and resilient food systems. However some alternative examples of digital innovation in agriculture focusing on agroecology-based approaches also exist, including open source agricultural technology initiatives (farmhack.net), collaborative projects for the creation of technology solutions and innovation by farmers (l’Atelier paysan) or research projects using data technologies to promote biodiversity and sustainable land management.

Farm Hack from farmrun on Vimeo.

Considering the above, important question marks are raised whether digital solutions fit within the agroecological concept, or they are inherently non-compatible with a strong sustainability approach in agriculture, and to what extent and under which framework such digital innovations may play a role in the transition towards truly sustainable food systems.

Consultation on the topic* recognized that the main barrier to consider to the use of digital innovations in agroecology is related to the lack of autonomy. Farmers may lose control of data provided by vertically developed and hierarchically-based decision support tools that often largely ignore ecological processes and are mostly based on optimization of production models. In addition, the cost of technologies is often not economically viable for individual farmers, especially for the small ones. However, automation of specific production processes and the use of high-tech equipment had and may still have some positive impact on the quality of farmers’ life.

Commonly peer

The main issue is related to how the innovation process to develop a specific technological tool is evolved. The attribution of power relationships in the development of innovative tools, a peer-to-peer approach and the user’s engagement to technology development, often called user innovation, can definitely be used to give power to all actors collectively involved in developing an innovation. We also keep in mind that digitization is no miracle, no more than classic tools are; innovation lies in the creative process, not only in the tool itself. There is a need to work on methodologies to develop a responsible innovation system that allow the technologies to respond to real users needs and not to create needs induced by the technology developers. The main issue is who takes the lead in the innovation system that develops the new digital solutions.

Digitization may also be an opportunity for democratization of knowledge, and agroecology is a knowledge intensive system in which information and data should be specific to the local context. As an example, climate change is an issue that requires a global perspective to solve local problems, but many other natural and ecological processes ask for this approach. Hence, the main issue raised is how to decentralize digital innovation and transform it to a public tool of knowledge exchange, complementary to personal and individual-to-individual processes rather than a substitute to them? An opportunity is offered by the Economy of Commons approach (see here also) – when actors can give and receive back data related to the combination of data collected from different stakeholders. The capacity to combine open data in a way that is useful for farmers at local level can be of interest for agroecology if the technology will work for and from the communities.

The point that makes a difference is the role of rural communities in the innovation process; are they just clients and potential users or main co-innovators?

Notes

* Discussion and consultation on the issue in the relevant workshop, held at the 1st European Forum on Agroecology, Lyon, France, October 26, 2017, with the participation of various academic organizations, organizations and producers, and with presentations by Vassilis Gkisakis (Dr. agronomist, Agroecological Network of Greece, organizer of the workshop), Nicolas Sinoir (L’atelier Paysan), Mariateresa Lazzaro (Dr. agronomist, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, Italy) Livia Ortolani (Rete Semi Rurali, Italian Seed Network).

This article originally appeared on the website of the Agroecological Network of Greece (Agroecology Greece) consists a network and a platform aiming to promote Agroecology as a science, practice and movement, in Greek. Its purpose is to network agricultural scientists/trainers, in order to exchange information, knowledge & research that will familiarize the principles and framework of agroecology in Greece and promote the transition of food production systems towards a truly sustainable form, integrating food sovereignty and security principles.

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.

Lead image of an Open Source Compost Sensor – an agroecologically acceptable new technology? Developed by KindaSmith (CC BY-NC-SA 2.5)

Originally published on arc2020.eu

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