OPEN GRAINS is a part of ongoing SSHRC funded research-creation project by Samuel Oslund. This series draws on research on farmer led innovation with La CAPÉ in Canada, Farm Hack in the U.S., and the North American Digital Agricultural Working Group.
ABOUT ︎︎︎ Over the last century of industrial development, agricultural has been caught in a feedback loop, with emerging technological innovations driving farming towards increasingly unsustainable scales of production. In addition to the social, economic, and environmental impacts, this cycle has led to a lack of affordable and appropriate technologies for small scale, sustainable farming.
In response to this, farmers across the world have been collaborating regionally to design, develop, and produce their own tools. Building on the longstanding traditions of rural cooperation these open, grassroots agricultural innovation networks are harnessing internet and communication technologies, along with new forms of organizing, to address the challenges they face. Beyond new tools and technolgies, OPEN GRAINS aims to bring to light the novel social practices emerging within these networks to better understand how they contribute to alternative pathways to a just, sustainable, and open agriculture.
In response to this, farmers across the world have been collaborating regionally to design, develop, and produce their own tools. Building on the longstanding traditions of rural cooperation these open, grassroots agricultural innovation networks are harnessing internet and communication technologies, along with new forms of organizing, to address the challenges they face. Beyond new tools and technolgies, OPEN GRAINS aims to bring to light the novel social practices emerging within these networks to better understand how they contribute to alternative pathways to a just, sustainable, and open agriculture.