June Agriculture Walkthrough at Factor e Farm by Sean
The bottom line is that resilience in food is not difficult to come by, but it presently requires more energy than we have with 2 full time people – engaged fully in open source equipment development. We are prioritizing technical development, such that appropriate-technology mechanized agriculture makes food provision effective. Our next priorities in terms of the type of generalists we’d like to have at Factor e Farm is 2 more flexible fabricators and the open source agroecologist. The flexible fabricators should generalize in power electronics and CNC controls, and the agroecologics should generalize in agricultural and processing equipment development.
Juliet Schor: Harvard and Boston academic, economist on permaculture, transition, cooperatives etc, what she calls Plenitude
In Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth, economist and bestselling author Juliet B. Schor offers a groundbreaking intellectual statement about the economics and sociology of ecological decline, suggesting a radical change in how we think about consumer goods, value, and ways to live.
Humans are degrading the planet far faster than they are regenerating it. As we travel along this shutdown path, food, energy, transport and consumer goods are becoming increasingly expensive. The economic downturn that has accompanied the ecological crisis has led to another type of scarcity: incomes, jobs, and credit are also in short supply. Our usual way back to growth — a debt-financed consumer boom — is no longer an option our households, or planet, can afford.
Responding to our current moment, Plenitude puts sustainability at its core, but it is not a paradigm of sacrifice. Instead it’s an argument that through a major shift to new sources of wealth, green technologies, and different ways of living, individuals and the country as a whole can actually be better off and more economically secure.
And as Schor observes, Plenitude is already emerging. In pockets around the country and the world, people are busy creating lifestyles that offer a way out of the work and spend cycle. These pioneers’ lives are scarce in conventional consumer goods and rich in the newly abundant resources of time, information, creativity and community. Urban farmers, D.I.Y renovators, Craig’s List users, cob builders — all are spreading their risk and establishing novel sources of income and outlets for procuring consumer goods. Taken together, these trends represent a movement away from the conventional market and offer a way toward an efficient, rewarding life in an era of high prices and traditional resource scarcity.
Based on recent developments in economic theory, social analysis, and ecological design, as well as evidence from the cutting edge people and places putting these ideas into practice, Plenitude is a road map for the next two decades. In encouraging us to value our gifts — nature, community, intelligence, and time — Schor offers the opportunity to participate in creating a world of wealth and well-being.
La Finca Agroecológica Utopía es una experiencia de resistencia integral detrás de los cerros de Monserrate en los Andes colombianos. Utopía es un territorio de experiencias alternas donde cultivamos alimentos ancestrales, recuperamos las semillas nativas Andinas y brindamos a otros la oportunidad de experimentar nuestra forma de cultivar la agrobiodiversidad a través de la educación alternativa. Buscamos establecer alianzas con los sectores populares, campesinos y neocampesinos. Nuestros alimentos ancestrales y medicalimentos pueden comprarse vía internet (para despachos en Colombia).
The goal of Open Source Ecology is to build the world’s first replicable, open source, self-sufficient village. The means of achieving that is an ecology, or ecosystem, of open source hardware and permaculture that works as an interconnected ecological whole to provide all needs – the Global Village Construction Set. However, the name implies much more than technology – for technology is merely a basis upon which social organization can happen, in harmony with its natural life support systems. The real issue then emerges – the possibility of unprecedented quality of life for all. The basic assumption is that humans are capable of transcending the struggle for survival and resource conflicts, where this preoccupation is replaced by higher pursuits of personal and societal evolution.
Factor e Farm is the land-based facility where we put the theory of Open Source Ecology into practice. Factor e Farm is not a factory farm. Why e? It is a transcendental number. We aim to transcend. We push towards open source. Factor 10 reduction in price. Or at least e. Ten times cheaper means ten times the freedom. It is Factor e improvement in quality of life. It is technology for ecology. Agricola sum. We are farmer scientists – working to develop a world class research center for decentralization technologies.
This episode covers the basic economic model of Factor e Farm. It is Community Supported Production (CSP) with two parts: Manufacturing (CSM) and Agriculture (CSA). It is permaculture and permafacture in one. We’re a replicable, vertically integrated, open source, community-supported flexible fabrication model – for short. View on. Transcript is found below the video.
Our economic model has further details. We are developing a replicable, vertically integrated, open source community-supported flexible fabrication model. We do vertical integration – in our case carrying out all these business functions ‘under one roof’ – from the growing of feedstocks – design – parts fabrication – assembly – marketing – to public relations functions. We are open source – an open collaborative effort where many stakeholders get together behind the design effort. We are flexible – because the fabrication facility that we are creating will support multipurpose production.
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Last week, Design Action sent out a letter to the Oakland City Council, some local businesses, and to local newspapers, in support of Occupy Oakland. The Oakland Tribune published the Op-Ed today (11.15.11) with the headline: “Banks cost Oakland more than protesters” We are a downtown local, cooperatively-owned and managed small business, and residents of Oa […]
In her visit to Los Angeles, Vandana Shiva reminded us how Gandhi had the symbolic actions -- sitting in protests -- but with that he also had the cotton -- the tangible actions. Dr Shiva said that along with the protests, people need to grow food, to build connections within their communities, to make changes in their lives. read more […]
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