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Stewarding technological freedom in agriculture
Michael Stenta, Don Blair, Jamie Gaehring
Farming is one of humanity’s oldest technologies, and while the principles of free software may only seem relevant to the past 70 years of innovation, farmers have been struggling to keep their technology free for the last 12 millennia. In this session, we’ll look at some scenarios of where this truth has been borne out in our work creating free farm management software with farmOS, and deploying free hardware solutions with Edge Collective. These projects have shown us that the principles of free software can and do make a real difference to farming communities, both large and small, across the globe. Whether it’s by preserving the right to repair tractors, sensors and other equipment on their farm, or by enshrining their right to access, store, and share their valuable data when, where, and how they choose, granting farmers with more freedom leads to better outcomes for the communities who rely on them.