[soilhack-announce] SoilHack Gathering: 27 – 28th May, Somerset

Fri Apr 28 16:28:20 CEST 2017

Right then,

If you're planning on coming, and haven't told us yet, then kindly send an
email to: eat at feedavalon.org.uk

Also, do help us promote the event if you haven't already.

Full details (including flyer) are here:
http://www.feedavalon.org.uk/soilhack2017/

Facespook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/1835948839977901/

And finally, below is the latest iteration of our vision, which gives more
context of what we're trying to do than anything else we've ever put into
text(!), so I do recommend reading it (800 words).

Looking forward to seeing you...

Best,

Adam

***

Following the launch of SoilHack at the first UK Farm Hack event
<https://landworkersalliance.org.uk/farmhack/> in 2015, the first SoilHack
gathering will be held on the 27th-28th May in Somerset, England. Details
here <http://www.feedavalon.org.uk/soilhack2017/>.

Farm Hack is a worldwide community of farmers and growers who build and
modify their own tools, sharing their hacks online and at meet ups -
improving their practices through open-source collaboration. SoilHack was
set as a subdivision of Farm Hack to provide a space for people to share
their understanding of soils and help each other get a clearer
understanding of how to improve their health. We have a wiki page
<http://farmhack.org/wiki/soilhack-wiki> on farmhack.org, to which anyone
can contribute. So far, we've been collating good resources, running a soil
events email list, a Twitter account, and giving presentations at events
(including the Scottish FH
<http://www.commongoodfood.org/blog/farm-hack-scotland-film> last year).

We’ve been motivated to do this by hearing an increasing number of people
sharing stories about how they've transformed their soils (and sometimes
also yields, financial overheads, and/or workloads) through applying novel
methods such as no-till/no-dig, cover cropping, biochar, agroforestry, etc.
- all of which seems highly significant given the current horrendous rates
of soil depletion and the game-changing role that soil carbon has to play
in regenerating the biosphere. The question, especially for those of us who
aren't full-time soil scientists, is how to gain an overview of the ever
growing body of soil research which helps in understanding why these
practices work; as well as, more importantly, seeing how they'd be relevant
to our own situations. Our response to this has been to attempt to catalyse
a self-organising network for sharing such knowledge, since we felt that it
needs to become much more accessible if we’re going to be able to transform
our relationship with soil into a symbiotic, rather than an extractive one.

We feel that this calls for the harnessing of the enormous potential
of peer-to-peer/P2P
learning <http://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Category:Education> to this end.
With the concept of peer-to-peer, computer technology has provided us with
a template for the powerful sharing of knowledge; the time is ripe for the
spread of new ways of learning. The challenge is in figuring out how to
across to people used to interacting with top-down learning structures that
for a horizontal P2P network to work, they need to be involved in
supporting it. Instead of working to earn the money to attend a course or
workshop, P2P learning needs people to put efforts into creating and
maintaining the means to share knowledge, as well as seeking out and
sharing information. Within permaculture cirlces, most people are already
familiar with the idea of skillshares and permablitzes, both examples of
P2P learning. What we're trying to create is a more integrated effort based
on these principles, where everyone comes together to share knowledge and
make SoilHack into a valuable resource.

The evolution of the internet has made knowledge sharing increasingly
easier to do over time (and simultaneously more overwhelming with all of
the available options). With the development of newsgroups, email
discussion lists, forums, social media, online videos, and the now
ubiquitous MOOCs (massive open online courses
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_open_online_course>), there is now a
large and growing body of information available online, of varying quality.
We feel that there is great value in having a curator to guide you through
these resources; hence, the idea of SoilHack is to have collective, open
curation of knowledge around soil; nobody knows everything (soil scientists
have only identified a small fraction of soil life), and there is always
much to be gained from the input of different perspectives. The image of
mycelium, being a 'fungal internet' through which both nutrients and
chemical signals (ie information) are transferred between plants, seems
particularly appropriate to what SoilHack is all about - both creating and
nourishing real-life networks of people, and supplementing the real-life
relationships with useful information.

And so, to the SoilHack gathering. While we’ve not yet finalised the
schedule (and a number of spaces will be left free in the programme to
allow for spontaneous sessions), at this point we have people booked in to
run sessions on: soil evaluation, biochar, building soil with fungi,
aerobic composting, the politics of soil carbon, indigenous and youth
oriented ways of relating to the soil, microscope soil analysis, cover
crops, soil education, and aerobic compost teas. Some sessions will be
practical hands-on demonstrations, others theory and debate. There will be
parallel streams running to give a choice of activities. We warmly invite
you to come to the gathering or, if you can’t, to get involved online.
Please contribute your experience, insight and curiosity to this effort, so
that we can begin to rapidly grow our collective intelligence, and in turn
all be able to benefit from it. This knowledge needs spreading and putting
into action fast.

--
*In order to change an existing paradigm you do not struggle to try and
change the problematic model /* *You create a new model and make the old
one obsolete /* *That, in essence, is the higher service to which we are
all being called. //* Buckminster Fuller
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