Agroecology as an Open-Source Technology: Progress Conceived Collectively

The region of Epirus in Greece is a place of immaculate beauty, cuddled between pristine mountainous nature and the warm strokes of the Ionian Sea. Yet it is constantly among the poorest regions in Europe, with its rural areas largely suffering from lack of basic infrastructure, isolation, and abandonment. Fourteen years of intensifying economic despair in Greece further exacerbated the situation. With local populations fled or exhausted, the land and mountains are undefended against the aggressive expansion of extractive investments, mining, and over-tourism exploitation. 

The emergence of digital ‘commons’

Our research and activist practice at the P2P Lab is situated in this troubled place. As a research collective focusing on the commons and open-source technologies, we strive to make sense of a world full of stark contradictions. We are witnessing an unprecedented surge of technological advances that, paraphrasing Arthur C. Clark, are almost indistinguishable from magic. Simultaneously, more than ever the majority of the world struggles to meet their basic needs, amidst an ever intensifying ecological collapse. The more we are stunned by the wonders of technology, the harder we question what these wonders may ever offer to the wretched of the Earth. 

Early experimentations with digital technology enabled people across the world to connect, with no predefined roles, hierarchies, and chain of command, share information and contribute to open projects. Cases like Wikipedia and free and open-source software illustrated how myriads of users can co-create a common project through smaller and larger contributions. 

Early utopian visions inspired by digital communication sought a world where things and relations could be produced ‘from everyone according to their capabilities; to everyone according to their needs.’ As these new forms of collaboration managed to outcompete dominant corporate players in the digital sphere, light has been re-shed on the rich history of the commons, now led by their digital variation. 

The commons are understood as socio-ecological systems collectively managed by the communities relying upon them, based on commonly agreed rules and norms of stewardship and care. In the digital sphere, practices of commoning have been expanding from knowledge and information, to software, and technological design, collectively created and maintained by globally distributed communities, through shared infrastructures and organizational practices. 

The digital commons also reproduce the contradictions through which they emerged. The visions and practices of a new, digitally emancipated world coexist with the rise of Big Tech, which exploits and distorts the same relational and creative dynamics underpinning the digital commons. Amidst a renewed cycle of violent accumulation and exploitation unleashed by tech giants, digital commoning enabled forms of creative resistance and emancipatory imaginaries. Reifying the adage that there is no commons without commoning, digital commons have been carried in the real world by local communities, coalesced around spaces of experimentation and sharing of knowledge and technology, from fab labs and makerspaces, to urban community gardens and, eventually, agroecology farms. 

Which also takes us full circle: from the wonders of digital technology, to the mountains of Epirus. 

A technology for the mountains: distributed, resilient, networked communities 

Roughly ten years ago we first entertained the idea of a community-driven place in a mountainous village equipped with cutting-edge machines for digital fabrication. Inspired by the maker culture stemming from places such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology, we imagined a space that gives access to basic tools of making for local communities to manufacture (almost) anything. 

Soon, we came across pioneer communities finding a creative synthesis of this tech-driven culture with the rich traditions of the peasant movement, permaculture and agroecology. Initiatives like the L’Atelier Paysan cooperative in France and Farm Hack in the USA empower communities of farmers, engineers, makers and enthusiasts to manufacture technological solutions tailored for low-intensity, small-scale, resilient farming. Further, they rigorously document their solutions, create designs and manufacturing guides that are made globally available as digital commons. 

Global agritech chains seek to maximize yield, efficiency and profitability, and rarely provide for small-scale production. When they do, machines rarely serve the farmers’ needs, forcing them to adapt to the machines’ needs instead. The costs of acquiring and maintaining technologies are unbearable for small-scale farmers and it is often impossible to repair them when they break. Open-source farming projects like the ones described above emerged from such challenges to transcend maker culture and technological ethics through practices fostering local autonomy and resilience.

Facing similar struggles, local farming communities in Epirus resonated with the innovations of open-source farming projects. The community makerspace ‘Tzoumakers’ was established in 2019 in a small village of the mountainous cluster of Tzoumerka, soon to become a lighthouse project for rural regeneration. After five years of collective experimentation and learning, the makerspace became a reference point for a vibrant web of social enterprises and initiatives working to revitalize mountainous life as a viable option for the emancipation of people everywhere. Here is a glimpse of some of them. 

The High Mountains is a social coop seeking to streamline mountainous rehabilitation, through forms of solidarity tourism, education, and community supported mountainous production. Another social coop called ‘At the heart of the bee’ is fusing organic farming with localized manufacturing and cultural and creative practices to improve farmers’ livelihoods and counter rural abandonment and desolation. Boulouki is a research collective focused on the conservation and documentation of living knowledge of traditional building techniques through educational and hands-on construction workshops. 

Finally, Nea Guinea, recently moved part of their activities in the area, bringing their long experience on self-reliance and resilience through tools and practices in diverse fields, such as food, energy, health, and permaculture. It is also part of the international Wind Empowerment network, which is working on sustainable rural electrification through locally manufactured small-scale wind turbines, thus planting the seeds of an alternative energy governance, joining the efforts of the local energy community CommonEn. 

Open-source technological ethics and commoning practices are at the core of this expanding ecosystem of communities and organizations. They connect to each other through open exchanges of knowledge, experience, ideas, and practices around farming, culture, and rural life. Together they identify the shared patterns and agree on the collectively held rules and norms through which they co-produce their livelihood in common. Eventually, they redefine what technology means for them and the local landscape, along with new perceptions and imaginaries of technological advance and progress.

The most advanced technologies are those we hold in common

Open-source farming projects showed how agroecological values and practices can emancipate the digital commons from the contradictions of their own making. Likewise, the Epirus open-source farming ecosystem demonstrates how digital commoning imbues agroecological practices with technological imaginaries of shared knowledge and learning, expanding communal and resilient forms of working and living. 

Geographical boundaries between local and global, rural and urban are transcended, as distributed communities emerge. Driven by diverse needs and motivations they connect through smaller and larger contributions to shared knowledge, design, and practices. They help agroecology scale wider through networks of autonomous communities and organizations that are mobilized locally around global concerns.

Open-source agroecology transcends the dominant perceptions of progress and technological advance. Innovation and technological capabilities are serving the needs of local communities, with machines that are built at human scale, open to study, adapt, and share with your neighbors. Tools are built to last and can be maintained and repaired by the communities relying on them, using locally available materials and avoiding extractive activities elsewhere.

 Technologies that come with their own limits of how much yield and efficiency is enough, promoting self-sufficiency and emancipation. They reinvigorate the meaning of technological advance, beyond deterministic visions of always larger, faster, stronger tools in an endless race for more economic growth at all costs. Instead, a vision is put forward where the most advanced technologies are those that better serve the needs of the people and local landscape, nested within networks of shared planetary concerns and capabilities. The most advanced technologies are those we hold in common.