My responses . .
1.- One of the OFN values is the awareness of interconnection between all human beings and our environment (Charles Eisenstein).
Does it make sense to you ? What it would be for you the consistent behavior to ¨trade according to the awareness of interconnection¨ ??.
I like what you’re doing here, and think it could add value to the ofn ecosystem, particularly if/as it might tie into things like peer-guarantee systems, shared knowledge improving production practices alongside community awareness / expectation for those improving practices. so i guess that would be where i’d see the interconnection - through the quality of production in the food and the information flow
2.- Don´t you think that open sales information and open production knowledge information would allow customers to choose to buy ¨the best products¨ to the producers that are focused in ¨the community needs¨ (community include farmers and customers). And to the farmers it would allow them to achieve a more accurate production planning and higher efficiencies.
Yes i do. But this may not be in the short-medium term interests of some of our users. The information revelation may be supported (at least theoretically) by the leaders in best practice, but getting the systems right for collecting and making that data available would be another challenge (they don’t usually have lots of time). The not-leaders may also be resistant to revealing where they are at. Attention to what software farmers are using for actually managing farms and collecting data might be useful? Would/should we consider a partnership with something like FarmOS to try and be encouraging data into a form / standard we could then build upon
3.- Do you think that farmers ( in your area) would be willing to share openly (on the web) their production knowledge, commercial knowledge (what do they sell, their price and to whom do they sell), and their financial knowledge (costs, wages, profits etc…) ?? (Some of the benefits of sharing information are explained in the previous point).
hmmm. some maybe. i suspect many not. i know a few who are firmly committed to ‘radical transparency’ and would be open to working with them around this. at a bigger scale I suspect a lot more consideration and attention would be needed to convince both ourselves and them that the benefits to this would outweigh the risks. I can see many risks in the real world to making all this data openly available (like others seeing how much you sell for and to who and undercutting you). I am sold on the benefits of open source development, but I think we need to think very carefully about how this data would be managed and for who’s benefit.
4.- If I go forward with this ¨database aggregate project¨ what would it take for you to encourage farmers to share information and people to use it and encourage them??
careful consideration of best information to start with, examination of potential risks to farmers, gentle agile approach, very clear explanation of the tangible benefits, thoughtful well-designed systems that don’t create burden
@NickWeir @tschumilas @MyriamBoure @enricostn others? any thoughts?