In the soil: Almendra Cremaschi with 'Ecologies, technologies' January 25, 2023

[Music] just to place myself very quickly I am I'm an artist and researcher Kate Genevieve I was born by the Thames in London and then I've been living the last two years in aotearoa New Zealand and today coming to you from Devon and this place-based focus is really important to the program I think that's a a big emphasis is not to think about technology as one pervasive thing that we want to be considering Technologies and techniques and practices in relationship with the lands and the watersheds and specific needs of the environment and of beings do you give the context of Schumacher College I invite Mona nasseri to tell us a little bit about ecological design thinking with whom the program is partnered um hello everyone my name is Mona nasiri I am the program lead for the ecological design thinking thank you so much for being here and thank you to Kate's you are very kind to say we have collaborated in creating this program but you have done most of the heavy lifting and you have curated this program and brought in this amazing people on Project and I'm very grateful um if you are familiar with Schumacher College you probably know that we are an ecology centered and community community based College we promote and practice learning with head hand and heart experiential and embodied learning is the very Foundation of Schumacher College students and staff are actually initiated to the community by getting their hands into soil and by involving in community activities like gardening cooking cleaning regardless of the program they are in um and the ecological design thinking program we aim to design or redesign human systems in alignment with ecological systems and for that we begin by reflecting on our relationship and direct relationship our direct experience of nature all our modules start or include sessions on nature connection we try to learn with nature not just about it understandably in this kind of environment technology is not very popular most Technologies we know and we use mediate between us and the physical world they take away the chance and desire for embodied experiences energy most of us believe that particularly the digital technology causes and perpetuate art isolation and loneliness separation and disconnection from ourselves from each other and the natural world it's fair to say that technology has played a substantial role in our current ecological and social crisis it's also fair to say that technology first and foremost is a tool a hammer is a tool in the right hands a hammer can be a means of construction and in the right hand it can it can be used as a tool for Destruction unlike the digital technology however a hammer is a simple tool the Simplicity makes it a democratic tool which means that the majority of people have the capability to make it to use it and adjust their application of it whereas the complexity of the digital Technologies make their design and production exclusive to specialists it gives a small number of people a major power to decide who gets to use technology how it's used and how it's evolved and following that it gives them the power to control much wider social cultural narratives and with less ecologically minded and socially concerned people interested in getting involved in shaping the future of this tool this technology it's very likely that the current Narrative of separation and this import this embodiment that is imposed by digital technology continues and dominates we we actually probably meet in metaverse in with our avatars not far from them if this narrative continues this is mostly the reason uh we are hosting this program at Schumacher column College this is not to encourage you to get involved in technology but to create this space to explore alternative narratives different ways of Designing and using technology and to discuss ways in which technological ecological thinking care and embodiment could be integrated in shaping technology for today and tomorrow um and now passed to Becky who will introduce their plan for this evening foreign I'll briefly introduce myself and then I'll get on to the what we're all here for which is to uh listen to almendra um so my name is Becky I am based in Todd Madden which is a small town just outside of Manchester in northern England and I'm a writer I'm an editor and a Content designer with a sore throat um so as a Content designer I apply human-centered design principles to web-based content for the principle of helping people of all ages backgrounds and abilities to understand and access information online um I'm also a trustee for the transition Network which is a charity that supports the transition towns movement if you're not familiar transition movement is an international Collective of communities that um engage with the Need For Change imagine Alternatives in their localities and support Transformations and address injustices in their towns um but it's my pleasure to introduce almendra um our mendra is an agronomist and a co-founder of bioleft which is a Community Laboratory that works with collective intelligence and open knowledge for seed sustainability uh primarily in Argentina our Mentor leads the buyer left open seed initiative and her work focuses on sustainability family farming and participatory methodologies for the co-production of knowledge she's particularly interested in the new Commons and designing strategies that contribute to Growing fair and open spaces for creativity and collaborative innovation our manager works at Senate which is the research center for transformation at the University of San Martin Argentina where she's completing her doctorate and also lectures on sustainable development she is the recent recipient of a visiting scholarship from canning house and King's College London where she was investigating the relationship between the open seed and fair trade movements working with both Latin America and British movements I think you'll all appreciate that that is a a rich background and I'm really looking forward to hearing almendra talk about bioleft and the new Commons to um seeds that works on the seeds in Argentina almendra please the floor is yours well thank you thank you everyone for being here crazy times uh thank you Becky for your introduction um well I'm I'm Amanda I'm in Buenos Aires it's really hot here so it's really um funny for me to see you also uh warm up and I'm really really hot um I'll start because I wanna stick to the time but in in the chat you had an invitation to answer a quick question what is a seed for you and we have already incredible answers that will lead this small talk that is also co-produced with your ideas so I'm gonna share my screen to see the your answers so it's really interesting that in the center of the of this Cloud that you guys have created it's potential and it's something really important for what we are going to share here because by a left um there is a collective work and I'm really really happy and honored to see my colleagues here Maria pass and Selva because although I am speaking biolet it's a collective construction and and my colleagues are essential in this buyer left is a vision of future so what we are building together it's a vision of how to co-produce seeds that are suitable for different agricultures yesterday I had an amazing conversation with um Kate where she was telling us how this feminist queer feminist approach of Schumacher College tended to pluralize the terms and I think that the term that leads the this talk is agricultures we are co-producing seeds for multiple ways of agricultures so I'm gonna I'm going to start thanking you for this because I'm gonna read other words um potential hope new life cycles and I'm going to use that word so thank you so much growth dream containers of Life the original home breaking barriers it's all really really related so thank you food beginning community so all these meanings of sins are contained in a what we can call a software that is all the knowledge that is embedded in the seeds and a hardware and the motivation of biolift is related to how um this meaning of seeds and agricultures have been enclosed using intellectual property rights but also using certain kind of Technologies Mona gave us an amazing introduction of what technologies are and one characteristic of biolift is that we love technology we love Innovation we love creating something new something different the thing is what kind of Technologies are suitable are caring and at the same time are instrumental for us so I'm gonna lead you to an overview of biolift and then we we can talk deeply and I will try to reflect on the relationships between ecologists Technologies polycultures of knowledge and the relationships between humans and modern humans and to do so I will use them [Music] um okay and to the soul I'm gonna use a metaphor as a metaphor that you used to describe seeds that was developed by our colleagues Thomas McIntyre Martha Chavez and Dylan McGarry that is a living spiral framework and that is a methodology to understand processes and to understand how cyclic the processes are and how full of flowers seeds but also barriers deaths and to recognize the roots of the of the processes sorry I have to admit someone here okay so I'm gonna uh lead you to the through this pile of of biolet and I'm going to start in the roots and to do so I'm going to share a small piece of a video that you can find in our YouTube channel if you wanna watch it completely but just to understand what is the the problem the roots that led to the emergence of of biolift so let's listen please let me know if you can listen with a thumbs up in the world we live the rules are constantly changing today in some countries a person or a company can own different forms of life a seed for example so restrict others access to it and in turn the development of the new seeds the most dangerous form of appropriation is with patterns as they can be used to restrict all forms of access seeds are a source of food but also information for the development of new seeds with the ability to patent seeds we put at risk the exchange of knowledge contained in seeds independent research and Seed Improvement carried out by small farmers today what is in danger is not only food sovereignty but also biodiversity and the survival of Agriculture itself what can we do to protect ourselves and to protect nature what with that question in 2016 We Gather with a policy makers researchers activists Farmers scientists using a methodological framework that is tea labs in the context of a multinational project okay let me show you the tea Labs okay uh in the context of an international project which uh Becky was um part of so in under this framework of tea Labs the idea was to use participatory methodologies to reframe problems to reflect on problems but to go one step further to start experimenting and testing with prototypes solutions to address them so at that moment we found that there were two main Visions related to the problems of seeds and agriculture a vision that was uh what Donna haraway can call the technofix that was a vision concerned about how important agriculture was for the development of the nation and how technology or certain Technologies could solve the sustainability problems related to the dominant model of Agriculture well there was another Vision that I can call traditional fix but it's something that I have to think about a little bit more that trust in the past in in how the communities and and local communities used to govern improve share and cultivate seeds the thing is that in the material conditions and of of Argentina and agriculture the tension between these two visions represented a lock-in to move forward so we wanted to do something new using the values and rescuing the values of traditional agriculture we wanted to do something new at that point and I will Marine that that is the founder of bioleft thought that open source the one that you know in Linux or in in software was I'm gonna admit someone okay was a bridging idea was an idea that could connect different communities with different perspectives around the future of seeds sorry someone on YouTube maybe I know um so we started to experiment with open source um as a license a pledge that could be added to Siri that guaranteed that this seeds but also the progenies and the improvements made to sits would remain available for future generations and for research development reuse and sharing however as we work with different stakeholders universities among them we found out that this uh kind of romantic Vision that we had of seats and freedom and open access was exclusive in a point because in the context of developing countries universities and public institutions rely a lot on the funding of companies and if they lose that funding they cannot research anymore so like dealing with the contradictions and with the dilemmas we developed and we opened up the scope of the Sea of their licenses and we co-designed three kind of licenses I can go deeper in that in the conversation but I just to give you um a side of how we were evolving as as a group but we had a barrier there that was how can we disseminate apply and enforce stuff those licenses if we are a small group of people at that point we were five people um without any infrastructure without any money without any power how can we share this idea how can we spread disseminate this idea if we are just as a group of people with with volunteer to to change things but not not much than that so as humans as in the soil a colleague of us that didn't work at by your left at that point suggested to create a virtual platform and to use the communication Technologies to decentralize the movement of seeds in that way using a virtual catalog Farmers could upload their seeds characterize them with their criteria and add the license that they wanted to use so in that point or in that moment that was the first Blossom of bileft when we created and we co-developed a virtual platform for the exchange of local seeds the thing is that in Argentina as in many countries uh to be recognized by the formal system seeds need to be homogeneous and stable to be characterized and identified but the thing is that most of the seeds of our ecology and family farming do not accomplish with this characteristic and yesterday I was thinking there's something else why farmers and Maria pass my colleague here will remember that some Farmers just do not want to be in the formal system and and that is because there is a lack of trust in this big institutions that can regulate things so the thing is that the thing is that most of the seeds that were here were informal or were illegal so we started articulating with the with the national institutions of um seats in Argentina to talk to them and to share these concerns we have been in relationships with with them and in talks and and meetings for like five years now and we have had really really great uh improvements that I will I will show you in in a minute but just to know for you to know how this was born but the thing was that although Farmers had seeds and wanted to share them most of the farmers that um cultivate that that are and the umbrellas or or agricultures of organic Agriculture biodynamic and agricology do not find seeds adapted to their needs so we not only had to produce a license to protect them a platform to share them we found out that we needed to produce new seats to create new sets so co-developing with farmers are attending to their criteria we created participatory field books where Farmers could share their knowledge because uh some of you guys said that you are in Barcelona or in Morocco and if I have a seat although it is open and I want to share it and I can give it to you physically if you don't have the knowledge of how to cultivate it how to store it how to multiply it it's nothing it so the idea was to create a platform to share the knowledge of farmers and and breeders so we started co-developing this Virtual Field books where to share information the thing here it was another very second one that was the knowledge and why they think capital letters that there's a struggle of which knowledge was valid which was uh data which was scientific and which one wasn't uh what was valuable and what wasn't was was rigorous and what wasn't so what we did and I'm telling this as it's so easy it sounds as I speak I said no it wasn't that easy um we started to develop a working group of on participatory breeding that is the technique in which our method in which uh breeders Farmers software developers scientists gather together to discuss on how to co-produce seeds and that was so so so difficult because we didn't know what participatory breathing was in practice we read we discussed we attended to seminars but in practice nothing was useful so this is a what the picture that you see here it's a paper that we co-produced and the first author is a farmer in which we share experience and we say or or we share our own definition of participatory breathing so this for us it's a blossom of a flower in which we could share knowledge with Academia but based on formal knowledge um so to overcome these barriers we used art avatars it's a technique developed by Lakshmi Charlie in Mexico we are creating Utopias about how these seeds should look like thinking in a non-restrictive way if if you had your super mace and we use this word how would your super mace look like so we started drawing just drawing drawing and then adding characteristics of these super Macy's that were really fun and really avatars of of what maze is but it inspired a lot on which characteristics Drew mazes in plural need to have to attend this all different agricultures and that was an incredible process the the guy that you will see in the center of the table is a breeder really recognized an unvalued breeder of the public system and he couldn't believe the characteristics that were necessary there was one that farmers needed many branches and he said about all my life I cut it those Macy's because I thought that they used energy in something that wasn't the the grain but it was really important for places where droughts are usual because it creates a shadow so it prevents the the evaporation of the water so all I am sharing resulted in participatory breeding of Maize and tomato which nowadays Maria pass is a coordinator of so during the pandemic we started um we continued sharing and visiting the fields uh testing with con consumers here in the in the picture of the center you can see consumers saying what is it what are the flavors of tomato that mattered so this is our our polycultures of of knowledge and of seeds so to arrive to the end of the presentation because of that time but we can go deep uh deeper in in anything you're interested in nowadays we are in the last cycle that is the hummus and seeds and and why hummus because although we have developed these licenses a platform the experiment what the value of buyer left is that we are a nutritive group a group with differences with ideas with common interests but also with very um different skills the very different Visions very different perspectives and and approaches to life so I don't know if if these things that we have produced will create a big change I I'm not sure about that probably not probably we have to keep thinking about things that as we have been doing for the last five years but the important thing is that we are humans we are we we have the nutrients that we need to create new things and why seeds because uh by your left has spread over different parts of the world and has inspired other initiatives uh we have um a sister initiative in Mexico uh here is Jamie uh a girl that I just met from Morocco we are part of the global network of Open Source seeds that gathers initiatives all around the world so the important thing there is a someone in the chat but the important thing is that we are disseminating our our ideas um is it uh out of contradictions it isn't um one of the questions that um Kate or or Becky asked was how does biolift use technology to help seeds so for us Technologies are bridges and are excuses to think together and and what lessons have we learned in sustaining the project over these years because we have struggled with funding we have had people that had to leave to other projects um so the importance of respecting the cycles and rhythms sometimes we just spend time talking to each other and resisting the lack of funding sometimes we are really creative sometimes we are spread sometimes we don't know where to go and we don't know we don't remember our objectives um and then well negotiating we are not pure we are contradictories we have to negotiate with our values and our needs all the time and I'll also welcoming deaths and conflict and with that I I mean all the projects that we think that we are going to do this and and then something dies and and that's fine accepting that and then using art and and love and fun as for fertilizers so just finishing I was tasked to give you a provocation for the rest of the course that is reflect on your own spiral processes and how it connects to the others and plenty seed to start grounding your your spiral I think I'm finishing yeah these are the resources in case you want to go deeper in in these ideas and these are the social media of bioelect in case you want to check it thank you oh my love thank you so much we will share those resources um out to the the email list and um I love the idea of laughing as a fertilizer so much but I really want to just well celebrate how honest you are about your processes and to just say what a huge collaborative effort that you are representing in I mean there are so many different stories that have come up as we've been talking about the work it is it's so hard to kind of find out how how how to represent bioleft in 15 minutes but it's fascinating to me how you bring together the creative thinking and the practice because so often in collaboration it's like you get up every morning you do all the things you have to do in that day and then you go to sleep at night and then you do it all over again but I am really intrigued by how you think and how the group thinks together about open source approaches and also creating these like maps of your your collaborative time together this spiral map that you draw of the uh the the a way of charting time like an archive contained in that symbol you know you're kind of creating a kind of the history for the group together that is part of its life and part of its myth and it's it's interesting how it feeds uh the the processes that bind you together so yeah first a flag up total respect because I do think um it's a rare organization that works with farmers and Indigenous communities and policy makers governments and universities is it's really it's enormous and I wonder if I could ask one question from uh from my interest how did you begin can you say something over the years about growing these relationships growing these relationships with the wider communities The Wider farming communities who um who you must have shaken up with your ideas about seeds uh ha can you say something about how that unfolded and also when you experience pushback for your creative approaches um yeah how did you manage to to keep on going and to shape your approaches in relation to that well thank you Kate yeah it's our relationship with um rural organizations is really interesting and have been has been evolving over time at the beginning the open source um seem look like um a weird idea and why is that in Argentina and in many developing countries we do not have patents on seats yet so talking of Open Source seemed like um this is the same as we have now why are we talking about this uh in this moment if it's not necessary this is the same as intellectual property rights uh why not to leave the seeds free and that's all why not um so it created a lot of um reactions um protective reactions that that are valid um so one of this video we created this video is is really old in the history of biology because it's a 2017 or 18. um was trying to communicate the the rationale of Open Source in in seeds that I can summarize that is that in the world there's a global Trend towards patterns and that this may eventually come to to Argentina and with our current regulation uh if we have sorry um if we have um the seeds open access the only ones that will take advantage of them will be those that have the power as it has been across history with the colonies and and how colonizers took seats from from their colonies and and took them to the centers of research and started researching with their interests and then with biopiracy and then with with patents so we started a dialogue and then we were really innocent and naive and we went to visit an indigenous Community with our logo that I don't have it here but um I can show it to you later it was green and and really I don't know since aesthetic and it looked like a pharmacy like a pharmaceutical company and they they had a really negative reaction to that um because they they just didn't like it because they don't trust in institutions so so that was really frustrating for us that that was a really a great death for us because we were really enthusiastic about sharing our project and they didn't like it um so we started thinking about the image that we gave to others but I think that the the the main point that had changed our relationship with social movements that nowadays is really strong is trust and and demonstrating and and showing by doing and being really coherent with what we think um giving Tiny Steps and and building trust as we're doing any any relationship between people and doing humans and more than humans as as I said that you you care you take care you water you collect you select it's a slow um process um so we started creating workshops but also participating of the spaces and invitation from others and respecting other words Works reading what they do I mean going there but I think it has been just um yeah demonstrating with evidence and what we do is we are really regular with our weekly meeting where we make all the big decisions there and our friends of bioleft know that they can join the meeting and and discuss with us but sometimes for example in July last year we really needed to be together to to create energy but also to to think deeply in the roots of BioLife because something that has happened recently is that in in during pandemic a lot of new colleagues joined the core group um colleagues from other provinces you know Argentina is really big so the we needed we we didn't know each other in person and that created a barrier I mean this is incredible and I'm really happy to be talking to you all over the world but it also creates a barrier it's not the same so we really needed the physical contact and and laughing together so we met in a field in an farm for two or three days just to recall the the history of violet and there was when we created the spiral collectively building the story of by a left and remembering all the struggles that we already have that just to know this is not the first time we're fail in something we have failed before but we are still here uh and and sharing the tools and and all that I am sharing with you but creating it collectively I don't know if I answered your question oh yeah absolutely I I'm I what I hear in your description of the practices is is a variety of creative practices and embodied practices that uh weave and grow trust over time um I know Becky you mentioned uh that you you had spoken about music in relation to that so I'll I'll let you ask that question oh well yeah it was um I mean I I have had the great pleasure of of working with almendra and some of her colleagues at buyer left in the past and and an anecdotally uh one of our colleagues Annabelle mentioned um the use of music and bringing musicians into these spaces to help facilitate Trust in in communities and I wondered if you could elaborate a little on that experience because I think it will be interesting to this group yeah I mean many forms of art have had um a big role in my left but remember when I went that moment where we went to this um indigenous community and it was really really frustrating um they were having even parallel meetings while we were speaking because they weren't interested at all in listening us so it was a big tension for us because um we have been organizing it with a representative of this community and some I mean conflict was everywhere so um the last night we invited a musician that is called a pampi to play the guitar and and that was great because it was it was there when they found that they they found out that we were the same that we knew the same songs we loved dancing and um I mean drawing dancing and singing together uh it's it's a way to overcome language barriers um cognitive barriers um expectation barriers because all of us have different expectations so in that moment music saved our trip because we had a lot of fun uh together and in giacomus in this Farm we went in July we laughed a lot we created avatars that are superheroes to know the capacities of the group so we drew and it was so so fun to draw and and to give life of these Avatar that we had um so yeah and then um building on that experience of uh of this community we had to change our image because we really looked like um Monsanto I don't know so um um um professional drawer a visual artist came and she Drew all the the pictures that you saw in the video the mazes with the hands and the the soybean all the seeds uh with it with a visual image that became coherent to our visions well it's so so incredible how uh as you've gone on you've grown the aesthetic to fit your communication to to basically do real work in communication and express the values it just really draws out how vital art and Aesthetics are in in doing that job um yeah and also because I don't know you but I'm sometimes I feel that we are so used to think um to have our thoughts blurred with restrictions with all the things we we can't achieve because of the funding restrictions knowledge restrictions I don't know um and with the exercises of building a common Utopia that we learned from a learning that is a Mexican researcher I can share also the paper um it opens up so many possibilities that uh are really possible and but only when thinking that we are just imagining and nothing else that we are playing and nothing else that we are drawing and nothing else this innovative ideas can come up sometimes right others it's not necessary truly you know we started this program with a dream sharing uh and you know you don't have control over what you dream at night but somehow by taking the suggestion off that it has to be immediately useful or you have to uh the first idea has to be absolutely practical and distinct it just opens up a creative breadth through taking those zigzag paths and through like allowing life to just live and I think that is really akin to um ecological reality yeah I agree I am I was thinking um at the beginning of your talk I'm Andre you presented the um a binary that might well be quite familiar to people when we think about technology versus tradition and the the Techno fix and what you tentatively called traditional fix um and how the the concept of an open source um license as a bridging Innovation um to overcome the binaries and and what was interesting to me is the stages you went through to realize you had the license followed by an online platform and then this this third knowledge infrastructure which is just like kind of a social infrastructure that can hold and support and grow and to me that's that's really key and and the perhaps an element of I don't know when we talk about technological innovation perhaps is overlooked sometimes that there is a social to the technological they they're not they're not mutually exclusive they they have to be seen together um and um I wonder if that makes sense to you and whether I've read that correctly yeah absolutely well the the transitions to sustainability Theory talks about social techniques all right sorry social Technical Innovations and I think that the this fragmentation between technology and the rest of the system it is embedded in it it emerges from it's really functional to dominant agricultures to the dominant agriculture system if we isolate the seed and we see and we say no this uh transgenic cities uh GMO seal is prod is produced so it is resistant to Drought we can say oh this is so good but when we see the the whole scheme the the big picture where where it comes from we realize the the contradiction and the challenges that it has embedded so I think that the fragmentation between uh technology and the social infrastructure uh breeding and producing uh consuming and producing uh it has been key for the development of the form of Agriculture that we have dominating our agri-food systems now so Building Bridges integrating and for example in bioleft we don't use the word farmer or breeder we say farmer breeders or Farmers because we don't think that breeders can exist or or can work separated from Farmers because who they breathe for um and and this is happening this is something that is happening a lot in Latin American institutions where public sector leaders produce since that we can see as our ecologically suitable but they do not have the system the the the the system or the links or the infrastructure so they reach farmers and they end up being in seed banks and nobody uses them so this fragmentation is really problematic agreed agree I I could ask you lots of questions I'm conscious that there's been some questions in the chat Kate and I don't know whether we want to bring some of those in while they're still quite vital and absolutely yeah um oh there was a question from Sono would you like to ask this question yourself yes thank you um Amanda first of all beautiful very beautiful work you've been doing um I am interested in how you were able to get that knowledge that's held by the farmers and that very specific knowledge about you know the characteristics of the cultivation and the seeds and what to watch out for how did you get that captured by technology and in a way that could then be shared well um we have the core group of bioleft uh it's um built by Farmers scientists software developers um uh extension workers and um we use a workshops Collective workshops where we um identify the criteria that are important to them in the picture that I share where the farmers are drawing the amazes then we came up with a list of criteria but then so I think that the the that part of the work can be uh divided into two um stages or two phases one of them is the the big creative workshops that are really open and we use uh participatory methodologies and specific techniques to to find these criteria and to um yeah to Foster creativity we could say but then there's um a daily work by Maria past that is here she meets weekly or regularly with farmers and and they work on this criteria and and this information because sometimes they identify that something is really important to know but they don't know how they measure that or how they evaluate that I mean it's and then you say a word that is uh this is really qualitative uh I don't know how I get it but I know that this this plant is better than this one this is really qualitative um so we dig into what is this qualitative means what what do you do what do you look at when do you look at this how do you take notes of that and it's a daily work of of sharing but also with the participatory breathing experiments we have the possibility to do it uh in the ground to do it for real uh so the the evaluate the crops together and this and and Maria pass and and still bus um work is incredible uh on that um so we we dig into what is the meaning of qualitative what is the meaning of and and then we develop and I say way but I don't do that Maria pass is the one that does it um sketches in the in the web platform and the field books and now this characteristics doesn't work because nobody looks at it and and we drop it and it's a and this has uh produced the web platform so we to be really really slow really slow to produce uh because it it's a really really hard process yeah that's a really really commendable effort uh that that would that is the junction of the ecology and Technology right there so thank you yeah agreed thank you for that um Kate how are we doing for time I'm interesting you to cherish you know well we're doing well for time I'd really I think we can open our conversation to anyone who would like to ask a question um you know you can type your questions but I'm much I think we much prefer if you ask it um so we can hear your voice and you know hear where it's coming from um I just have one question I want to be asking ulmendra which is just about um activism and how activated um like the public are about these issues these issues of patenting seeds the financialization of of Nature and um really in intriguing and well-timed that as we began the course here in Devon there was a huge uh um protest for the rights to Rome on Dartmoor which was a in resistance to a ban on wild camping so thousands of people have been up and standing for the relationships with uh you know their rights to relate to Nature and their rights to see the stars at night on Dartmoor and sleep on the more um something which the government is threatening to take away and make illegal and I wonder what it is like in Argentina now is there um is there is there an activist uh culture growing well uh about seeds particularly um I don't think that now it's um a hot moment of the of activism but this is because um there aren't many visible threats um in in the past when Monsanto settled here and and wanted to develop um an office or something a lab or something like that um it was a great wave of activism and I have it here let me share it to you there's this uh group I recommend you this book because it's a group of mothers that so their children um get sick with the cancer because of glyphosate and the soybean the monoculture of cybernex funding and and that was a great way of activism later on in the first and the 2010 till 2017 the seed law was under discussion and of course that the more the most powerful farmer organizations and when I say Farm I'm not talking about family farming I'm talking about the um as pools and big companies were advocating for the inclusion of patents um and that inspired a lot of activism here nowadays as the series not been discussed um I I don't see that there's um I don't know some organizations that are really active um yeah the thing is that um that we don't see something happening it doesn't mean that it's not happening I mean the the power is really subtle and it goes um under the ground so um but yeah no around six I don't see now um I think that there are other topics that appeal more to people nowadays and the thing the the idea of Open Source is quite complex and quite abstract so it's not really appealing to people um you have to be really involved and to have knowledge of what open source means and what what it meant for sober community and what it means to apply it for seeds because we don't know even us we are not sure of the implications of that and we have to work a lot to understand and to adapt the system so I think did you have a reflection no you you go I was I was just thinking how this is sort of leading on to something that had been percolating in my mind about um I guess my work interacting with the transition movement I always have this question of like how does an idea become a movement uh how does the night how how that progression happens and how these things catch fire from from an idea in one place and and Inspire other groups and you you mentioned and you showed the map of these other movements that have that you've been interacting with and I guess um out I guess I'd I'd be interested to know more about your experiences of of outside of Argentina and it kind of relates to like what Kate was saying about public perceptions and um how the how the idea of bioleft has grown and is growing and and also it's your Reflections on on the future of it perhaps and and Ambitions for it or concerns for it going forward well um how it grew um we first had an experiment in Mexico with the Yunnan laboratory that the lenses the ecological laboratory of the um National Mexican University if I'm not wrong um building a community there then the pandemic stopped the process a little bit but it started there this was our first seed and then the integration with the open source it Coalition was really important because there we are connected to initiatives from the yoga us UK but also Kenya umassipal in Philippines um yeah many initiatives around the world that are having the same concerns my experience nowadays is that there's a although there's not um a threat that we can visualize and act and and create momentum to act uh there is a we know of opportunity internationally that is really interesting and is that in Europe the organic movement has um achieved the possibility to um commercialize heterogeneous seats um after a really long work the government has accepted um the heterogeneous saves us be as part of the formal system and the same has happened really really recently in the UK they are opening a window of opportunity to try what happens with heterogeneous seeds what are the challenges of um commercializing them and identifying them and in Argentina the same we have been part of this regulation that the government of Argentina published in the in October of last year and this has been a great accomplishment for biolev to be part of this regulation of the heterogeneous material and this window of opportunity inspires the the connections because we have been reached by um farmers in the UK and farmers in in Italy to build this community and and because we have the same questions now new questions are emerging in in the framework of this in the context of this that are uh how can farmer breeders be self-sustainable because as activism is really important but they have to leave and and they have to have an income and a good income because breeding is a really difficult task so they need to be self financially sustainable and this is something that is being discussed in the different initiatives and the other is how can we harmonize this is the open source systems that are really different in in the different places they they are experimenting with them because uh for example the U.S uses pledges and then um Germany uses a legal contract and buy a left uses a license but what are the implications uh for the movement of of seats between the countries and so with these new questions um we have gathered in Budapest last year in the let's deliver a diversity forum and there we contacted other organizations that are working with um seed struggles at so this is connected to the future of uh biolift um because we plan to move forward in the uh in in the open source um regulations or licenses but we also want to improve our platform to be um usable in other contexts and to expand our network of participatory breathing experiments but as I said before we have a vision of future of farmers connected to breeders to Consumers to scientists but we are not sure of which is the next Innovation which is the next cycle well we have doubts and every week in the group we say well because we don't know where we are going to London because it's really opened nowadays effective thank you Amanda that um relates to another another thread that I that I had on conscious Mario has a question in the in the chat Amelia if you're um if you're comfortable saying your question out loud please unmute and and speak up otherwise I'm happy to read it out if you'd prefer this is Maddie hi um yeah hi everyone armandra uh so uh part of the question that I had was already answered just now because I think I was wondering about you know the reach of you know this initiative like not and you know I'd rather just kind of talked about that right now what I was curious about is the number or just you know if you could talk a little bit about like an example of a seed that you've already created through the process and you know what that process has been like and I think you mentioned in this when you were going through the slides uh that people were actually trying the things that you know already came from that seat so yeah if you can just share a little bit about that well um the first seed that that came that um was created in the context of by a left was Ubuntu there was a classic name for it for an open source um that was um further uh seed that was distributed to Farmers um but that wasn't um a really successful experience because to keep the engagement and the participation of farmers is hard and the compromise of giving back the double of seats so we have like a bank didn't work and most of the seeds of Ubuntu were actually lost I want to be honest with this because it didn't came back but then um there's um some seeds of maize some varieties not hybrids that are being tested and that have been obtained by farmers and also by the National Institution of agricultural Technologies uh who in the context of the collaboration with bioeleft and this Workshop that I mentioned before have obtained a seed that is called um tandelaria and Sombra that doesn't matter the name but are various of maize and they have they are being tested now besides that there's one part of the project that we collaborate with that is a creole a Creole tomatoes um in the context of the University of Buenos Aires who have recovered a lot of tomatoes that were in seed banks all over the world except Argentina that have been taken in the context of research but that we didn't have access so this big project that that is really amazing had recovered 150 um seeds kinds of seeds of tomato Creole tomato that wasn't here and together with biolef we distributed and tested them and started to experiment with the with the objective of giving back the flavor to the Tomato um and now there are two of them that are already stable and that the university the Breeders are planning to register them in the formal seed system but besides that these are new seeds we can say in the platform there are currently 350 seats that are Creole is it's from Farmers well thank you so much I have a question okay go ahead tonight sorry I just oh sorry I I just wanted to say I really appreciate the words you use to describe the work you're doing like I loved how you described biolift as a nutritive group and I like art and laughter as like fertilizer I just really like the use of these words and I just had two questions um almendra I know you mentioned seed banks and I was just curious how people how people do get seeds are there seed libraries or like if you want to start a garden do you do you go to your farmer friends um and then I was also curious about like the farmers you work with are they older farmers are they women younger I'm just curious to know like the people really good questions um the first is that um to access seats we have two systems one of them is a platform you can get to the platform and see the seeds that are available and when I say available they are in the Farms or houses of the farmers and you reach them directly I mean it's not a centralized system it's the centralized Farmers have them but they connect through the platform um but then there's a couple of WhatsApp groups one of them it's like an umbrella and many many farmers are there but then there are WhatsApp groups per crop a WhatsApp group of tomato seeds one of and they they are more um frequent than the platform especially because as I said before the platform needs a lot of improvement and is not that um user friendly as we would like to we we really need to to move forward with the platform uh so to obtain seeds these are the two channels that um people have um and then you asked about uh seed banks we do not work with um seed banks um we we think that conservation is in the use and not only in storing seeds um although they are important of course but it's not our main a line of work at all um it's a it's a living conservation it's a conservation in movement not not storing our case I mean there are seed banks in Argentina of course but it's Biola doesn't work with them and then what kind of Pharmacists really interesting because we work with farmers and the farmers are approach us are mainly um in in Spanish there is a word that is jacaretos that is the classic figure of farmer of of the English literature I mean they are not indigenous not family Farmers they have the time and the basis of resources to have the time and the possibility to experiment because Farmers that have a little piece of land or that rent the land cannot have the possibility of losing a crop if if the experiment doesn't work so the truth is that I I think I put it in my last slide of the challenges that is um it is a barrier of Entry because you have to have certain not because of us because of the circumstances I mean the farmers that work strongly strongly with us um have the time to have meetings have the possibility to lose a crop and have the knowledge and the social and cultural capital to join a project like us and and this is a barrier that we are noticing a lot because there's a coincidence in the farmers that work with us um for example in the genus communities do not have internet uh here so it's difficult to work with the platform and these are barriers that we need to strengthen and yeah it's a really good question oh thanks so much I think we've got about five minutes more for questions um yeah if anybody else from The Wider group would like to to ask yeah go for it hi hey thank you very much for sharing all you've done um I'm in interested legal part like I didn't really get the first slides because you were running through great fast what you're opposing to the content situation of you know like um because what I get is that you know Monsanto and all these seats are basically um give um how you say it um and um how like do you see yourself as a player that could um support or get more support to cleojo seeds or is that not part of your work okay yes yes of course I I didn't get the part of monsantos just about the soup Anders like they're they are like maybe they are more affordable for Farmers no they are made more ah yeah yeah um well the thing is that that legal part um in Argentina patents are not allowed uh you you can't patent a seed we have uh breeders right system that allows the ReUse of seats in farm at all and also the ReUse of seeds to create a new seats I mean for research and and development of new seeds um here uh the bilateral contracts are legal so the open source clouds the open source license that we use work as a bilateral uh contract as a private contract and it's enforced by the civil law in other cases as Germany um they are they enforce their contracts by the Nagoya protocol that is an international regulation that states and makes a compulsory the recognition to Farmers knowledge and seeds and you have to ask for permission to use for their seats um in the case of Argentina regarding prices the seats that that have a GMO traits are really expensive and so it's really easy to to support for example Maize varieties because the difference between a variety and the hybrid is that with the variety you can reuse the seed in the next in the following year in the hybrids you can't because um so we we are not having um problems with the affordability I don't know if that's a word in English of the seeds they are really really affordable and most of the farmers give them for free others sell them but the prices are really really accessible um so and and in the legal part well the contract is allowed and now with the new regulation the the heterogeneous seats are legal so um yeah that's that's illegal status thank you oh it's so deep I I should flag that you know we'll have time next week a open um Zoom just for people to turn up in community and talk about some of the ideas that almendra has shared because wow it takes a while to really understand all the complexities of this amazing work I think we have time for one more question if there is if there's one out there I think Amalia had has a question about um if the video is going to be posted somewhere there's also some really great Reflections and resources people just posted oh fantastic yes we will put it up on the YouTube so uh this will send out the link in our email that goes out to participants uh in the next few days for sure and also so that uh some of the people who are involved in uh in Australia can actually see this presentation they're very interested but it is 3 A.M there so it's not so

not so easy to wake up but like I'm still very impressed that Mandy you got up in aotearoa thank you so much um thank you Mandy and thank you everyone I just yeah almendra thank you so much for sharing this work I think that um one of the things doing a a project in Schumacher College where you mentioned the word technology uh you you kind of uh I I guess I have experienced this has been quite off-putting for for people that that word for they have a sense that it is not in relationship with the soil that it is in some sense um uh affiliated with technological capitalism but absolutely your projects is one of the very best examples of how you grow solidarities of people uh working in such complex ways um through collaboration to resist some of the uh the really deathly uh moves of technological capitalism and I really I really such admiration thank you to you thank you to Becky for for turning up to ask these questions and all your Rich Knowledge from your work in Transitions and your historical connection through the step center with almendra thank you to Mona and to Schumacher an ecological design thinking um and to to Cassie who is on the call to Cassie Robinson who has been one of the instigators of this program to learn there for your incredible work and this beautiful look at this beautiful Zoom background thank you so much and um we will meet again in two weeks time to actually hear from Lena and Eric who are both here um on the call now and they are going to be speaking about the sphere which is a uh incredible and complex project um looking at web 3 Technologies and rethinking value to put improvisation and live art and performance at the center in really inventive and poetic ways but it is a real honor to speak with with all of you when you're using uh techniques and collaboration and Technologies in these relational artistic poetic vital ways you have you have something to say I'll Mentor I'm not going to cut you off don't worry oh yeah yeah I was worried because it's something very important um no I was thinking and now I I remembered it that the month talk about them the words and then and how this um um I don't know um monoculture friendly monoculture like uh um ways of producing seeds had appropriated of seeds of knowledge and also of worse because biotechnology is what we do is biotechnology I mean well farmers do when they select plant it's a biotechnology too it's it's the application of their knowledge to create new seeds but they have appropriated it in some way that when we say biotechnology we think of GMOs and this is something that it's a it's a field of contest and it's a field of struggle to take back our words again um oh a hundred percent you know you reminded me that you actually presented this provocation to the group I will just emphasize that um well actually maybe you could give that give give the provocation one last time as we depart me yes well uh um I'm gonna share my screen then um okay my provocation was to reflect on on our own on your own spiral processes and how it connects to the others to the spirals of of the others of your classmates and to plant a seed to start grounding your spiral and you can plant a seed in a real way in the soil or in a metaphorical way it's is the provocation open of course I thank you so much and thank you to Simone for your um your wonderful help with looking to the questions and for the support of the dreaming the collective dreamings we'll have another session of dreaming next week and um again you can link up on the Discord if you need to connect ask questions and feedback we want to keep growing as we are going and we will resolve this Zoom issue about the transcripts for next time and really please tell us anything that is missing so that we can we can evolve thank you so much everyone t

2023-02-05 08:41

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