[soilhack-announce] SoilHack gathering article

Wed May 17 17:58:12 CEST 2017

For anyone that hasnt seen it yet, here is a slightly reworked version
of the article about SoilHack and the gathering which was recently
published on Permaculture Magazine online.  Registration for the
gathering will close midnight Monday 22nd.

http://www.needfire.info/home/soilhack - there are a number of clickable
links in the text on needfire which are not reproduced in the text below

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Following the launch of SoilHack at the first UK Farm Hack event in
2015, the first SoilHack gathering will be held on the 27th-28th May in
Somerset, England. Details here.

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 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
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 are keen to harness the enormous potential of peer-to-peer (P2P)
learning to increase knowledge around soil.  For those not familiar with
the term, which originates in computing, P2P networks are networks in
which interconnected computers share resources to complete tasks,
without the use of a centralized administrative system.  This structure
was popularized by file sharing systems like Torrents and Napster, the
first of its kind in the late 1990s.  The concept has inspired new P2P
organisations and philosophies in many areas of human interaction,
affording a critical look at current authoritarian and centralized
organising structures.

The challenge is in figuring out how to get across to people used to
interacting with centralised learning structures that for a 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. There are
existing P2P initatives which have aspects that further knowledge and
skills around soil stewardship; within permaculture circle there are
permablitzes, both examples of P2P learning; also in a similar spirit
spirit are La Via Campesina’s ‘Campesino-a-Campesino’ (Farmer-to-Farmer)
communication methodology and John Liu’s vision for Ecosystem
Restoration Camps. What we're trying to create is an integrated effort
based on these principles, where everyone comes together to share
knowledge and make SoilHack into a valuable resource that’s open to all.

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), 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.

Contact: soilhack at openmailbox.org