Workshop Cycle « Innovations for Resilience » - March session: "Making, experimenting and documenting low tech. The Farmer fablab case" / "Fabriquer, expérimenter et documenter les low tech. Le cas de l'Atelier Paysan."

2^ND PART OF THE CYCLE:
INVOLVING USERS ? NEW TRENDS IN DESIGN METHODOLOGIES

WORKSHOP #5: MARCH 20^TH, 2023

Making, experimenting and documenting low tech. The Farmer fablab case.
Fabriquer, expérimenter et documenter les low tech. Le cas de l'Atelier Paysan.

by Morgan MEYER (Mines Paris Tech, France)
Language: French, English material
Paper:  Meyer, M. L’Atelier Paysan: Reprendre la Terre aux Machines: Manifeste pour une Autonomie Paysanne et Alimentaire [taking back the land from the machines: a manifesto for peasant and food autonomy]. Agric Hum Values 39, 1161–1162 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-022-10323-4

Festival Low Tech of Concarneau © Morgan Meyer, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA

Research paper’s abstract
Several collectives have been created in recent years to promote the self-construction of agricultural machines and equipment. We have seen the creation of the Farmhack network in the US (in 2011), the UK (2015) and the Netherlands (2016). And in France, self-construction workshops have been organized since 2011 leading to the creation of the cooperative L’Atelier Paysan [literal translation: peasant workshop] in 2014. The latter has just published its first book for a large audience, Reprendre la terre aux machines: Manifeste pour une autonomie paysanne et alimentaire. In this book, Atelier Paysan provides a critical analysis of the contemporary agricultural world, while focusing on its pet subject: agricultural machinery.
The list of observations and criticisms drawn by Atelier Paysan is long: an increase of the average surface of farms, a decrease of the active agricultural population, over-indebted farmers, a decline in biodiversity, a strong dependence on private actors, a devaluation and disappearance of know-how, environmental and sanitary damages, the degradation of soils, an increase in the use of pesticides, excessive and oversized machinery, poor nutrition, too high reliance on digital technologies and robotics.
For Atelier Paysan, agricultural production and food must be reconnected. “Just as we must ask ourselves what kind of food we want, we must ask ourselves what kind of machines we want [...] There will be no food autonomy without technical autonomy” (p. 227).
While detailing in an alarmist and pessimistic way the problems of contemporary agriculture, Atelier Paysan proposes certain ways forward: establishing a social security for food (a project carried out with other actors); installing one million farmers in France; creating a minimum price for entry into the national market. This last proposal is particularly problematic, as it would be incompatible with the principles of free trade and would require “disobedience” to the European Commission.
Full paper

WORKSHOP CYCLE 2022-2023 - FULL PROGRAM

1^st part of the cycle: The digitalisation of essential services

. October 17^th, 2022
The digitization of public action / Citizens inclusion issues
Périne BROTCORNE, (Louvain University, Belgium)
(FR - English Material)
. Postponed to January 30^th, 2023
E-Health & Health Crisis: Teleconsultation Devices - Caregivers’ perspectives
Marie BERTHOUD  (Lille University, France)
(FR - English Material)
. December 5^th, 2022
Mobile (for) development : when digital giants take care of the poor.
Marine AL DAHDAH (CNRS, CEMS, French Institute of Pondichery, India)
(English)

2^nd part of the cycle: Involving users? New trends in design methodologies

. February 20^th, 2023
Digital fabrication and resilient manufacturing
Lucia CORSINI (IFM Consultant) and Valeria DAMMICO (Cambridge University & Polytechnique-Paris, France)
(English)
. March 20^th, 2023
Making, experimenting and documenting low tech. The Farmer fablab case / Fabriquer, expérimenter et documenter les low tech. Le cas de l'Atelier Paysan.
Morgan MEYER (Mines Paris Tech, France)
(FR - English Material)
. April 3^rd, 2023
The participatory patient in the geriatric health living lab
Dimitri VOILMY (Université de Technologie de Compiègne, France)
(English)
. April 24^th, 2023
Innovations in Crisis Management and Response: digital humanitarians and early warning, early action systems
Kees BOERSMA (University of Amsterdam, Nederland)
(English)

3^rd Part of the cycle: Innovations, vulnerabilities and territories

. Thermalism, vulnerability and territories
Adrien SONNET (LACES Lab., Bordeaux University, France)
(FR - English Material)
. Innovations for vulnerable territories: sustainable development as an opportunity for new patterns?
Nicolas BUCLET (PACTE Lab., Université Grenoble Alpes, France)
(English)

Workshop cycle conclusive conference
Gérald GAGLIO (sociologist of innovations)
(English)

RISK INSTITUTE: THE “INNOVATIONS FOR RESILIENCE” CLUSTER OBJECT

Coordination: Jean-Luc Bosson (TIMC-Imag), Jean-François Boujut (G-Scop), Céline Cholez (PACTE)

The cluster Innovations for resilience is a multi-disciplinary research group (sociologists, geographers, historians, engineers, climatologists and geo-scientists, hydrologists, architects, physicians, managers, communicators...) involved in undesrtanding the spreading of "people-centered innovations" to make them actors of crisis management and enhance their resilience.

Actually, in a few years, many “smart” innovations explicitly dedicated to different types of crises management or vulnerabilities reduction have been developed by public and private players worldwide in order to integrate public concerned or recognized as concerned. The cluster research mainly tackles smart, decentralized, often small, and “easy-to-use” innovations that for some, benefit from the recent progress of microelectronics and digital industries, from the trend of artificial intelligence and the internet of things. This contributes to widespread agile and economical solutions (small sensors, mobile apps, for example) that, coupled with institutional innovations, are expected to complete or replace institutional and experts centered traditional responses.

Many of these innovations originate in a public-private partnership; they concern many different geographical and political territories; some are market-driven, some are “bottom-up” (emerging from a grass-root innovation process).  The public concerned, the “end-user,” can both appear as a target and a producer of information (Al Dahdah, 2019), sometimes through a community commitment but also as a human virtual or physical sensor (Goodchild, 2007).

A significant issue the cluster addresses is analyzing the extent to which these innovations drive a change in the risks’ governance with a more inclusive perspective.The cluster’s program mainly addresses issues related to:

1. change in design methodologies (users’ centered, frugal, grass-roots innovation) at all stages from idea to prolonged usage with a challenge about the integration of learning from crisis and vulnerability experiences approaches (as recommended in risk cycle management) and long and ordinary existing practices regarding risk phenomenons;
2. legal and public policy dimensions especially privacy regarding data capture, responsibilities’ transfer, and insurance regime implications, market regulations for public stakes (health, natural and industrial risks) and sustainable economic model;
3. change in risks’ expertise role, in experts’ position and capacities of action confronted to the emergence of new actors and possible change in institutional and power relations.

The cluster Innovations for resilience lead research projects (master, phd, seniors researchers), in partnerships with different territories, foster new partenerships and provides scientific animation on these topics toward Grenoble research communities but also internationally: Kyoto University-Japan, Swansea University-Wales, Denver Colorado University (USA), the International Center for Frugal Innovation (Delft, Leiden et Rotterdam Universities, Nederland).