Nourishing Our Communities – Rural and Urban Platforms for Food Innovation (en)

Awa Caba, Gustaff Harriman Iskandar, Ivan Sawyer Garcia, Peter
Volz, Yemesrach Tadesse New forms of bottom-up agriculture networks
based on ucd methods and ict tools bringing urban drivers in
dialogue with rural practitioners in order to collaboratively
develop more sustainable technological solutions to small-scale
farming around the world. Get a bigger picture of diverse contexts
by insiders and activists! In this one hour session we want to
showcase different initiatives by our partners in Indonesia,
Germany, Senegal and Ethiopia: Indigenous Culture and Rural
Techies. Common Room Networks Foundation in Indonesia has over
longer times developed a deep relation to the mountain village of
Kasepuhan Ciptagelar, based on mutual understanding and respect.
This unique ethnic community of West Java maintains
self-sufficiency through a complex system of cultural practices
inherited through generations. Together with Common Room they now
experiment and prototype how to best adapt modern technologies to
preserve local cultural knowledge while also improving income. A
basic infrastructure of opensource data center powered by
autonomous small scale renewable energy solutions enables the
community to collaboratively and objectively map their geographic
territory. Community Supported Agriculture in Europe and
appropriate technologies for alternative strategies. A wide variety
of popular movements and activist groups including urban farming,
community supported agriculture, permaculture, transition town,
etc. have sprung out in recent years to develop alternative forms
of agriculture in opposition to the prevailing industrial paradigm.
A current research initiative is focused on supporting these groups
find and self-create their own open source technologies to make
their small scale farming initiatives in Germany both economically
competitive and longterm sustainable. Yeesal Agrihub is a new
organization created by 22 young Senegalese activists from
different professional background to establish a platform of
collaboration around agribusiness and organic food production. To
bridge the urban/rural gap, Yeesal is based both in capital Dakar
and the rural environment of Thies. They partner with local
Universities, NGOs and fablabs to provide a permaculture
experimental garden, co-working/ event space and prototyping
labs.The general aim is to awaken local youth to the great emergent
business and employment opportunities within the agricultural
sector through the use of modern digital technologies Honey or
Money! Techhub iceaddis has partnered with agricultural experts in
southern Ethiopia to explore the potentials of improving the
beekeeping and honey production sector by applying a design
thinking multidisciplinary methodology in close cooperation with
the actual small scale farming community of the region. The result
was an active broad stakeholder network including government,
academic, NGO and private sector partners and an impending start-up
business idea involving a locally accessible crowd-investment
platform for Ethiopian organic honey.   The featured projects
were initially supported by the GIZ Innovation Factory programme in
2015 and 2016. A main aim of the of the programme in the field
of rural development and agriculture is the creation of innovative
concepts of how technology can benefit small hold farmers in the
local context.This initiative is commissioned by the German
Ministry of Economic Cooperation and development (BMZ). The
showcases will be presented by the initiatives and moderated by
icebauhaus.