Makers and the related  activities are more often observed in vibrant cities, encapsulating diverse communities of designers, engineers and innovators. They flourish around luscious spaces and events, where talent and ideas are abound. Pioneer cities, like Barcelona, Madrid, London, Copenhagen and Amsterdam, have gradually evolved to prominent centres of the maker culture.

But what about places where these elements are less eminent? It is often said that some of the most advanced technologies are needed in the least developed places. And here the word “technology” conveys a broader meaning than mere technical solutions and enhancements of human capacities. Etymologically, technology derives from the ancient Greek words “techne”, i.e. art or craft, and “logos”, which refers to a form of systematic treatment. In this sense, technology is practically inseparable from the human elements of craftsmanship, ingenuity and knowledge. Elements that are as embedded in our very existence, as the practice of sharing with our neighbours. Especially in situations of physical shortage and scantness, solidarity and cooperation are the most effective survival strategies.

This is the case of a small mountainous village in North-Western Greece called Kalentzi. It is situated in the village cluster of Tzoumerka, a place abundant in natural and cultural wealth, yet scarce in the economic means of welfare. The local population mostly depends on low-intensity and small-scale activities combining arboreal cultivation, husbandry and beekeeping. Investment was never overflowing in the region, let alone in today’s Greek economy in life support.

A local community of farmers assembled around a practical problem: finding appropriate tools for their everyday activities. Established market channels mostly provide with tools and machinery that are apt for the flatlands. Acquisition and maintenance costs are unsustainably high, while people often have to adapt their techniques to the logic of the machines. They begun with simple meetups where they created a favourable environment to share, reflect and ideate on their common challenges and aspirations, facilitated by a group of researchers from the P2P Lab, a local research collective focused on the commons.

Soon the discussion was already saturated and they started building together a tool for hammering fencing-poles into the ground. Several tools and methods have been used for this task for ages, though each one with its associated difficulties and dangers. Some farmers climb on ladders to hammer the poles, while others use barrels. However, it’s the combined effort of hammering while maintaining one’s balance that is particularly challenging, whereas there are often two people required for the job.

Interesting ideas were already in place to solve this problem. Designs were drafted on a flipchart with a couple of markers and the ones more available brought some of their own tools, like a cut saw and an electric welder, to build a prototype.

That has been the birth of Tzoumakers: a community-driven agricultural makerspace in Tzoumerka, Greece. Tzoumakers is more than an unfortunate wordplay of “Tzoumerka” and the maker culture; it is about a unique confluence of the groundbreaking elements of the latter, with the rich traditional heritage of the former. A distinctive synthesis that transcends both into a notion that seeks to create solutions that are on-demand and locally embedded, yet conceived and shareable on a global cognitive level.

It is important to emphasise that Tzoumakers is not a place that develops new tools ‘in house’. Rather it builds upon the individual ingenuity of its community and remains open for everyone to participate in this process. Through collective work, field testing and representation new tools may be released and further shared to benefit others with similar problems. Many of the necessary innovations are already there; the role of Tzoumakers is to collect, formalize and disseminate them.

But it’s also important to understand that Tzoumakers, much like its tools and solutions, cannot provide ready-made blueprints for solutions to be simply copy-pasted elsewhere. The same applies to the projects that have been its inspiration, such as L’ Atelier Paysan and Farm Hack, which cannot convey one unified cosmopolitan vision for the agricultural sector. The same process of connection, collaboration and reflection has to be followed on every different context, whether rich or poor, vibrant or desolate, in abundance or scarcity. But it is this combination of human creativity, craftsmanship, meaningful work and sharing that arguably embodies a true, pervasive and “cosmolocal” spirit for the maker culture.

Notes:

Tzoumakers and the P2P Lab are supported by the project “Phygital: Catalysing innovation and entrepreneurship unlocking the potential of emerging production and business models”, implemented under the Transnational Cooperation Programme Interreg V-B “Balkan – Mediterranean 2014-2020”, co-funded by the European Union and the National Funds of the participating countries.

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In this interview, Claire Milne, Inner Transition Coordinator for the Transition Network, discusses the addictive qualities of digital technologies, how we can make peace with them in our own lives, and how to repurpose these technologies for the transition to a more just, caring and ecological future.

On 20th November, Claire will join Gaia Trustee Philippe Sibaud at 42 Acres Shoreditch in London to launch Gaia’s new report Wh@t on Earth: How digital technologies are severing our relationship from ourselves, each other and our living planet. Book now!

Tell us about  your role at the Transition Network?

The Transition movement is about celebrating the wealth of our communities; it is a community-led global initiative to achieve spiritual growth and ecological, social and political change. I am both the Inner Transition Coordinator and I hold a role called Nurturing Collaboration. My roles are basically around the inner dimension of Transition and designing for collaborative culture.

Your work is in large part collaborative and reaching out to external organisations. Is there a place for digital technology in your work in Inner Transition?

I feel like although it [digital technology] plays a role in eroding deeper relationships I also feel like it’s playing, in some respects, very positive roles in connecting people at levels of scale that would otherwise be very difficult, if not impossible. So being able to collaborate beyond the local level – at the regional, national and international levels – is very helpful.

Like with anything, if we are able to be in full choice we can have a healthy relationship with digital technology and it can play a healthy role in our life. Then it starts to get more complicated because, you could equally say that hard-core Class A drugs are not wrong, because at the end of the day it’s about our relationship with them. But what we know about Class A drugs or even technology is that the way they interact with our neurobiology [has] the potential to be hurtful at the physiological and psychological level. Then it becomes more complicated because what we’re being asked to do is recover from addiction.

What part does technology play in the Transition Network’s ideal envisioned future?

I find it really helpful to ask the question: ‘is the world that I’m longing for and that my life is dedicated to in part creating screen based?’ The answer is really clearly no.

But another a part of me recognises that at the stage that we’re at, there is a need for some degree of that relationship with digital technology to enable that scale of change that is required in order to bring about transformation. And at the same time to have the depth of psychological and spiritual transformation that’s needed for us as a species, to survive, there is equal need for us to have times in our lives that are free from digital technology.

That comes back to the reality that technology has this addictive quality and therefore the creative tension that we’re all being asked to navigate at this point in history is how can we relate something that is so crucial to the transformation of our world in a way that doesn’t fall into encouraging that addiction.

And the degree to which we’re addicted to technology is seriously high, and plays out to the identity politics that were already there. The degree to which we are addicted and to what we are addicted to is correlated to the ideas we hold about what will make us lovable and feel like we belong and feel like we’re good enough. Technology just completely feeds into that, and that’s why at a psychological level it’s addictive.

In identity politics at the moment, there are certain aspects like the ‘work ethic’ that plays a big role in burn out. This core belief within us, seen as the capitalist protestant belief, that for us to be good enough – for us to be accepted by the tribe, for us to be loved – we need to be productive and we need to be good at stuff. It’s very clear that technology feeds that. It feeds this idea that we can be superhuman, we can get even more done, we can work 24/7. Social media feeds into identity politics, around what we look like and celebrity status and all the phenomena around getting likes. This is all about that addiction to looking good that feeds into these identity politics.

And I say this with compassion because it’s very easy to slip into a sort of persecutory tone, but the reality is that these are deep wounds and they’re painful and we develop behavioural strategies to protect us from feeling the wounding of believing we’re not lovable and don’t belong. These behavioural strategies have been really amplified and codified by technology.

We are at a tipping point in terms of the ecological damage that humans are causing to our living planet. We have so much knowledge about our impacts, but are arguably more disconnected from Earth than ever. Do you think digital tech is playing a role in that? Can we revive that important connection with the Earth in time before our crises totally overwhelm us?

On a good day I’ll feel like that’s possible and on a bad day I think that that’s just an absolute joke. And I don’t think anyone has the answer.

It comes back to that question: is the life I’m longing for screen-based? And I realise that’s not answering your question. I think that maybe what is important is being able to sit with the not knowing. Too much is unknown to know whether that depth of inner change is possible.

Because we cannot control what is happening, we can make a difference and make interventions. So whatever happens, we need to learn how to navigate challenging, precarious situations in the physical world. So the greatest privilege, and I think human right, is access to support around inner resilience: education around emotional intelligence, and inner resilience.

If we can be in choice around how we respond to things and in choice around how we respond to addictive substances like technology, then we have freedom. For me, the inner dimension of change and the inner dimension of transition are all about liberation from the ego and the superego, and the destruction of patriarchy and capitalism.

So ultimately, the future of the Earth and our interdependence with the other-than-human world is dependent on us liberating our egos from patriarchy and the conditions that then leads to the destruction of the Earth and other beings, because it is leading us to this state of disconnection, disillusionment and separation.

Do you see a correlation between technology and patriarchy?

I think it’s really important to look at the role that our relationship with technology is playing in coping with trauma. Because I think for a lot of people, connecting via technology enables us not to have to feel that trauma.

Connecting through technology really colludes with that dissociated state that comes with trauma. If we’re not in our bodies and in our hearts, then we can’t meet other beings from that heart-felt, emotional place, we’re just two heads meeting.

That dissociated state is what is very characteristic of a lot of society because there’s this sort of low-level trauma that’s just across the board, and I think that technology really speaks to that. A lot of the population are sort of drawn to connecting via technology because it protects us from feeling the pain and limitations around relationships.

Is there any practice that you employ to feel that reconnection with the Earth?

Well, an interesting one for me is the sit spot. And I work with the sit spot in two ways. There’s the kind of well-known sit spot where you go out and you find your spot in nature and take your attention 50% with yourself and 50% with your peripheral vision, which as a regular practice just allows this deepening of connection to the other-than-human world.

But the tune-up on that would be the inner sit spot. So bound out into the world to find your sit spot, and then practice the inner sit spot, whereby you go in to your inner world. It could take the form of a body scan or all sorts of mindfulness practices, but there’s something really beautiful about the combination of that classic sit spot out in the world and then combining that with an inner sit spot to make sure you are in connection with yourself as well.

Join Claire Milne, Philippe Sibaud and Gaia to launch the Wh@t on Earth Report and delve deeper into these reflections on 20th November, at 42 Acres Shoreditch, London.

Photo by docoverachiever

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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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