[hepr-vn] seedPOD: A "Wikiseedia" for the Future of Food and Farming

Thu Sep 25 23:56:43 EST 2008

Subject: 	[bytesforall_readers] seedPOD: A "Wikiseedia" for the Future
of Food and Farming
Date: 	Wed, 24 Sep 2008 20:45:20 +0530
From: 	Frederick "FN" Noronha <fredericknoronha at gmail.com>
Reply-To: 	bytesforall_readers at yahoogroups.com

     http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/006588.html

     seedPOD: A "Wikiseedia" for the Future of Food and Farming

Alex Steffen and Sarah Rich <http://www.worldchanging.com/about>
April 27, 2007 11:48 AM

shift.jpg

/Many people advocating a bright green future also strongly support
<http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//006355.html> local food systems
<http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//005111.html>. But learning
what's local and eating accordingly
<http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//004534.html> in the 21st century
will be a lesson in perennial change, because as the climate changes,
agricultural zones shift, and that means what's local now may not be the
same stuff that will grow well in your region in ten or twenty years.
What's more, in some regions of the world where subsistence agriculture
provides a living for large numbers of people, fair, sensitive and smart
help adjusting to new realities will need to be provided./

/seedpod.jpg We recently were asked to imagine how new models and
designs might help us address critical food-related sustainability
issues. We chose to tackle this thorny problem of farming and gardening
in a changing climate. Here it is, a speculative anticipation of what a
model for tracking and trading local knowledge about farming and food in
an open, global network might look like. We call it seedPOD. Think of it
as a /gedankenexperiment/, an imagined toolkit to keep seeds moving,
farmers thriving and communities fed in the face of massive
environmental change. Perhaps it will trigger some interesting thinking
out there: at very least, we hope you find it briefly diverting./

SeedPOD includes programs both online and on-site which allow farmers to
share their own observations of their land and crops, to advise one
another on cultivation strategies for introducing a "new native"
species, to save seeds and preserve biodiversity, and to establish a
community of peer teachers who can guide each other through the
adaptation process.

ricefarmer.jpg

*Citizen Science*

Changes in agricultural zones will likely occur faster and more widely
in coming years. Before scientists can publish peer-reviewed research or
governments can announce official responses, farmers will be developing
appropriate solutions on the spot, by necessity. It only makes sense to
network those farmers to better distribute their solutions and make them
widely accessible.

Fortunately, the rate of Net access distribution around the world may be
rising almost as fast as the rate of change in agricultural conditions.
By connecting large numbers of participants in both the Global North and
Global South, SeedPOD becomes the virtual laboratory
<http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/002974.html> in which mass
collaboration <http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/001090.html> can
yield quick conclusions.

wikiseedia.jpg

*Collaborative Online Agricultural Resource*

In tandem with the online exchange, seedPOD will host an open archive of
resources which can be augmented and developed through the discoveries
made by citizens and farmers. We call it /Wikiseedia/ -- a
collaborative, free online agricultural encyclopedia.

Wikiseedia will be presented and continuously translated into a
multitude of languages, and SeedPOD will also work to install community
internet hubs and wireless versions where access is scarce or
nonexistent, so that rural farmers in the developing world
<http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//003021.html> can take advantage
of these tools, too. Trained scientists will be able to check in on
Wikiseedia and the online citizen science lab to gain the most current
agricultural information available for inclusion in longer-term
research, and to participate in the collaborative editing process, as well.

Think of it as something akin to the Open Architecture Network
<http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//005970.html>, for agriculture,
bringing together great existing efforts (like the Honey Bee Network
<http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//006333.html>) and best practices
(like greenbelt efforts in the Sahel
<http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//006060.html>) with a platform
for sharing undiscovered or newly invented innovations.

Indeed, in an ideal world, such efforts in all disciplines, from
architecture to farming to public health
<http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//004785.html> to ICT4D
<http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//004835.html>, would have such
collaborative repositories of knowledge, and all of the efforts would be
interoperable and easily dovetailed, so that a person working in a
specific context could easily learn how to find and use detailed
knowledge from a number of disciplines and projects.

vault.jpg

*Seed Collection and Savings Banks*

Probably the least hypothetical component of the seedPOD toolkit, seed
banks <http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//002867.html> already exist
all over the world as preventative measures against the loss of barnyard
biodiversity <http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//002867.html>. The
model collided with future scenarios with the announcement of plans to
build a huge doomsday seed vault
<http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//003993.html> near the Arctic
Circle which would be more secure and stable than existing banks -- able
to withstand the more catastrophic possible outcomes of climate change
(or war or asteroid impact).

SeedPOD seed banks will be a network of living facilities (rather than
sealed vaults) where seeds can be deposited as they become threatened,
or taken and planted where they couldn't previously have grown. Though
seedPOD is primarily citizen driven, this will be one place where staff
will be employed to catalog and archive records of the flow of seeds
through the bank, and the locations from which they originate and to
which they go. By supporting the existing, highly-stressed seed bank
organizations around the world, creating such a network also meets the
purpose of preserving existing seed collections.

priorart.jpg

*Protection of Indigenous Rights*

With any attempt to gather local knowledge of food crops, issues of
biopiracy <http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//000941.html> almost
immediately rear their heads. How do we ensure that the communities that
have developed crops for millennia retain commercial control over these
heritage plants and animals? One method is through the establishment of
prior art <http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/000062.html> claims:
documentation that sequences the genome of crop species, asserts the
existence of the community's right to the crops it has developed, and
helps prevent the patenting of those crops genetic material by others.

*Traditional Knowledge Sharing*

Of course, this new process is not just about obtaining, planting and
cultivating seeds; it's also about harvesting and making use of their
yield. Beyond sharing farming practices, seedPOD's online network will
be a platform for exchanging traditional methods of harvest,
preservation, cooking, and eating newly local food.

Food is culture: new foods will require cultural innovation and
cross-polinization. Such efforts could be furthered as well by good
approaches to intellectual property, using Creative Commons licenses
<http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//005359.html> and related tools
<http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//003214.html> to create a global
food culture commons. Indeed, in some places
<http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//004461.html>, gathering that
knowledge to share with others could help make that knowledge more
widely available, more useful and more likely to be preserved at home.

truck.jpg

*Global Community Supported Agriculture*

Supporting farmers locally through community supported agriculture
<http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//002835.html> programs (CSAs) is
a great idea; increasingly, it may even be possible for us to imagine
using similar tools for supporting farmers in far-off lands
<http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//006197.html>. As farmers learn
to grow new crops, direct farm-to-table support will be more necessary
than ever. SeedPOD envisions a widespread network of interlacing
relationships, connecting directly consumers in one climate with farmers
not only in their area, but in places with different climates who grow
crops they've come to love.

seedPOD logo design: Marc Alt
All Images are Flickr/Creative Commons. Links to come.

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Comments

Thank you!
Are you suggesting little experiments being conducting on tiny plots all
over the planet? People more frequently gathering together to share
seeds and cuttings which bring them joy, whether it be food and/or
flowers. Maybe even a story or song to go along with the DNA?
Coincidental with this exchange are "progressive", yet ancient, theories
and practices of nutrient cycling and watershed enhancement. These
techniques that you folks continue to share will prove to be very useful
in aiding humanity to adapt during these unpredictable climate and
commerce patterns. Thank you again!
Jeff H.
Portland OR

Posted by: Jeff Holiman on April 27, 2007 11:19 PM

In general this seems like a good idea, but it troubles me that it's
coupled with what I read as a radical proposal to restrict the rights of
the public to grow plants and animals without the consent of those who
have traditionally done so, by establishing "that the communities that
have developed crops for millennia retain commercial control over these
heritage plants and animals." This kind of radical
intellectual-enclosurist approach is one of the most serious threats to
our food security and freedom of speech in the coming decades, although
usually it's promoted by big corporations rather than indigenous activists.

Our food security and our freedom of expression depend on a healthy
public domain, threatened neither by patents on traditional food
varieties nor by other restrictive rights that grant those varieties'
traditional cultivators even more powers than those granted by patents.

Posted by: Kragen Sitaker <http://pobox.com/%7Ekragen> on May 4, 2007
9:14 PM

My guess is the article meant to say that local communities should
retain commercial control only in the sense that their right to grow
their own traditional seeds isn't interfered with by patent claims from
large corporations. Prior art is a defense against claims that *anyone*
owns those seeds, not an assertion of new exclusive rights.

Posted by: Jeffrey Rusch <http://www.jeffreyrusch.com/> on May 6, 2007
11:08 PM

Thank you for your important initiative. I encourage you to think of the
human element. We are collecting "food stories" at
http://www.myfoodstory.com <http://www.myfoodstory.com/> We are
collecting these stories on the ground and also finding many sources
online. We are working in the Public Domain "except as noted" and I
encourage you likewise to not trap your work in either copyright or
copyleft. Please don't! And please, let's look for ways to work together.

Posted by: Andrius Kulikauskas <http://www.ms.lt/> on May 8, 2007 3:22 AM

-- 
FN * Independent Journalist http://fn.goa-india.org
<http://fn.goa-india.org>
Blog: http://fredericknoronha.wordpress.com
<http://fredericknoronha.wordpress.com>
Tech links from South Asia: http://twitter.com/fn <http://twitter.com/fn>
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