Can Open Source Hardware Feed the World?

jfruhlinger writes "When it comes to food scarcity in the developing world, one of the major problems is production capacity: land that could be arable using modern techniques goes underutilized because locals don't have the ability to build or buy equipment. A group calling itself Open Source Ecology is trying to solve that problem. They've developed a set of open source hardware specs for 50 different industrial machines, which they're calling the Global Village Construction Set."

Comments

Well . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

I sure hope the first machine is the one that makes the rest of the machines in the set!

Re:Well . . .

[monkyyy]

no that is the 2nd one, sadly only the first one only builds the 2nd one

Stabilize governments first

[Duradin]

Worry about stabilizing the regional governments first and then worry about upgrading them to first world farming techniques.

Keeping those who know how to farm alive and on the land they know how to farm will be necessary to make new equipment have any lasting effect.

Re:Stabilize governments first

[ArsonSmith]

so your starting the movement to developed a set of open source hardware specs for 50 different revolutionary war machines?

Re:Stabilize governments first

[Shadow Wrought]

I would think giving people the help to be self-sustaining would be the first step in stabalizing the government. It certainly seems like the more corrupt regimes are allowed to flourish because they control what few resources the country has. Take away that control with self-sufficiency and you have a better chance to get rid of the corrupt regimes. It's still going to be hard, but I think the bottom-up changes fare better than the top-down. Especially if the only effective way for a top-down change comes from outside a country's borders.

Re:Stabilize governments first

[Duradin]

"Modern" farming techniques requires infrastructure. If the developing area isn't stable, the infrastructure to support the "modern" techniques won't be there or won't last so the area will still be dependent on outside aid to solve their food scarcity.

Seed suited to their area (ie, local) and conditions (drought,heat,pest,blight, etc. tolerant) would be a better boon than machines they can't support for seed that isn't suited for their area.

Re:Stabilize governments first

[icebike]

Actually, when you dig into it, the problem isn't stable governments or the lack of machinery. The major problem is lack of food storage technology, making seed crops the only thing that can be stored for more than a few weeks.

Food storage (of grain) pre-dates farming. But where is is dry enough to store large quantities of grain without some technology and knowledge, its too dry to grow such quantities. If you don't have river bottoms near much dryer areas (such as in the middle east) you need grain elevators to keep dry crops.

You need refrigeration for many crops, and pest control for all crops.

Once you teach several successive generations that going to the market to buy something wrapped in cellophane is the way food is obtained, the ability to preserve bulk harvests for months or years is quickly lost in the population.

If harvests could be reliably preserved, you would be able to feed the same population with half the acreage. Increasing production is the sloppy way to solve this problem and actually breeds more pests than people. This has been recognized in poorer countries in Africa for some time now.

Re:Stabilize governments first

[Anonymous Coward]

Seed suited to the area and conditions is a far more clever (and desirable) solution that so-called modern first-world agriculture.

Re:Stabilize governments first

[Princeofcups]

Worry about stabilizing the regional governments first and then worry about upgrading them to first world farming techniques.

Keeping those who know how to farm alive and on the land they know how to farm will be necessary to make new equipment have any lasting effect.

And first world lower birth rates. Many refuse to admit it, but births will always stay ahead of available food until any culture adopts modern birth control.

Re:Stabilize governments first

[dkleinsc]

There are at least 2 major problems with your argument:
1. A lot of Third World nations have actually been showing signs of improved government stability and democracy. It's still the Third World, there are still problems, but it's gotten better than it once was.

2. A lack of food is a quick way to create political unrest. Cases in point: Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya. Hungry people will do what it takes to get food and are generally willing to risk life and limb to get it, because it's preferably to starving to death.

Re:Stabilize governments first

[nschubach]

How would you manage to do that if the corrupt regime ran around burning all the fields in order to maintain their control of the food supply?

Re:Stabilize governments first

[GameboyRMH]

The open-source hardware for this already exists and you only need one model, look up "AK-47."

Re:Stabilize governments first

[icebike]

Where does that happen?

After all, the regime has to eat too.

Re:Stabilize governments first

[Anonymous Coward]

Food comes before anything else, which includes fixing their governments. One problem right now in Libya is that the rebels, and civilians around the rebels, are suffering from food shortages. If a country is struggling against starvation to begin with then there is little hope of overcoming a corrupt regime.

Re:Stabilize governments first

[b0bby]

Zimbabwe is pretty close to that. The regime is eating, the rest of the people are too busy trying to stay alive to fight it. And this is a country that used to export food surpluses.

Re:Stabilize governments first

[h4rr4r]

The regime can import food.
Not quite burning fields but almost as bad is what Zimbabwe did. Giving land to the poor landless folks is a noble idea, but it would have been much better to teach them to farm first. Also like when the USA takes land via imminent domain, you should still pay the landowner for it.

Re:Stabilize governments first

[asukasoryu]

Worry about stabilizing the regional governments first and then worry about upgrading them to first world farming techniques.

Why not do both in parallel so that when the former is accomplished, the latter is ready to deploy?

Re:Stabilize governments first

[couchslug]

Some local islands of stability can produce and repair machinery. The solutions can go together. Basic and advanced metalworking is critical to building even "semi-modern" farm equipment like all the horse/ox/donkey-drawn gear used in the US not so long ago.

Equipment to PRODUCE calcium carbide should be added, because its THE useful portable heating and cutting fuel that kickstarted the modern industrial age and allowed the move from forge welding and riveting to gas welding and brazing. Acetylene gas generators to produce acetylene from carbide are already common in developing nations

Re:Stabilize governments first

[icebike]

Thomas Malthus called, and he wants his theory back.

Re:Stabilize governments first

[Anonymous Coward]

I would think giving people the help to be self-sustaining would be the first step in stabalizing the government. It certainly seems like the more corrupt regimes are allowed to flourish because they control what few resources the country has. Take away that control with self-sufficiency and you have a better chance to get rid of the corrupt regimes. It's still going to be hard, but I think the bottom-up changes fare better than the top-down. Especially if the only effective way for a top-down change comes from outside a country's borders.

Absolutely correct. I have experienced the poverty and the inability of humans ( people ) to sustain themselves. First, lets help the starving and provide the MEANS to farm and the equipment, tools and training to do so. But! How do you remove the control of the rich and corupt. The world would be such a different place. Lets dream on. Or is it...YES WE CAN!!!! Swallow that bullshit!

Re:Stabilize governments first

[similar_name]

No no, that won't work. We have to sell them GM seeds, therefore they have to use modern farming techniques. How would local seeds provide us any money? I mean sure you could loan them money once to buy them but then next year they can just use their own seeds. How does your plan help Monsanto's bottom line?

Re:Stabilize governments first

[Unkyjar]

Did you warn him? DID YOU?!!!

Oblig:
http://xkcd.com/875/

Re:Stabilize governments first

[icebike]

Also like when the USA takes land via imminent domain, you should still pay the landowner for it.

Um, where did you go to school?

First, its Eminent Domain, not imminent domain.

Second, by definition, the land is always paid for when taken by Eminent Domain.

Re:Stabilize governments first

[pubwvj]

There have been a number of studies that have shown that the most effective form of birth control is educating the girls. As their education goes up their reproductive rate goes down.

But that isn't the real issue. We need more people. We need a lot more people thinking about how to get off this rock and into space before we face extinction.

Re:Stabilize governments first

[h4rr4r]

Spell check got me on that one. I know it is always paid for in the USA. In Zimbabwe that was not the case.

Re:Stabilize governments first

[Anonymous Coward]

wow, I'm always impressed how articulately people on slashdot can talk complete bollocks - and with references too! As someone who is verging on being self-suffient foodwise, I can assure you there's an awful lot of ways of preserving just about every food you can name. It's not just grains that can be preserved by drying (and they really don't need special equipment, just sun and a barn and a cat to keep rats out): let's see, all the legumes for starters, from the chick pea to the soybean; all the alliums (onions, garlic and the like); every fruit I know of (save for melons and a few tropical ones) can all be dried; all herbs and spices can be dried very easily....and then there's meat. Meat cut thin and left hanging in the sun will dry and keep for years - I think you yanks call it jerky.
And that's merely with the most primitive drying in the sun on a hot day, and it's important to remember that almost no nutrients are lost in this. Other things such as root crops (potatoes, carrots, turnips and other yummy things) can be kept in a hole in the ground or a dry barrel for at least 6 months. And if you have access to salt then there's pretty much nothing that can't be preserved.

I read the same crap from historians who insist that that the European spice trade was built on Europe's need for spices to preserve food. This is bunk. Humans have been preserving food since time immemorial in dozens of ways (drying, salting, smoking, fermenting, candying, pickling, packing-in-snow to name just a few) and with modern techniques (canning, irradiating, pasteurising etc) there is really no reason why any food cannot be preserved (though lettuce is rather pointless to try)

And no, in very dry areas they can still grow masses of crops, just not western ones. Go have a browse of the three volume Lost Crops of Africa - free to view on National Academies Press website - even the baobab tree is all sorts of edible. Don't forget that crops like cucumbers and melons originated in Africa (or other dry areas) evolving to take advantage of the one massive dose of rain theyget a year.
Perhaps you think it's cliche and unsophisticated, but I assure you that the problem really, really is political. I'm not an expert on these things, but it seems to me that in part it's the local corrupt politics of these areas, but much more it's the greed and subsequent nasty politics of the west that has really fucked them up. I have friends from Angola. They tell me when they were growing up there in the 60s, there was food everywhere. You didn't even need to take food with you if you went on a journey, you just ate whatever was growing on the side of the road. Now it's a desert. Capitalism and farming really, really don't go well together for the simple reason that a true farmer/husbandsman/peasant does not treat his land as a resource to exploit, but as the means of his great grandchildren not starving. He cares his land. Capitalism rapes it.

I'm getting off the point here, which is simply that people have survived in extreme climates for millenia. That should be proof enough it's perfectly sustainable and doesn't need access to anything these people don't already know how to do

Re:Stabilize governments first

[Anonymous Coward]

So what you're saying is we need 'moisture vaporators', and solar-powered refrigeration, or develop sub-surface refrigeration techniques.

I'd suggest pesticides, but Monsanto would likely sue them, or withhold next cycles seed order if they did.

Re:Stabilize governments first

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you think eliminating riots over food prices would go a long way toward stabilizing their governments?

Re:Stabilize governments first

[MarkvW]

Worry about stabilizing the regional governments first and then worry about upgrading them to first world farming techniques.

Keeping those who know how to farm alive and on the land they know how to farm will be necessary to make new equipment have any lasting effect.

That's paternalistic nonsense--and an excuse for doing nothing. An open hardware spec doesn't hurt anything, and it just might help some people. Progress is not linear. Oftentimes it requires a combination of things to interact at the right time. These people are helpfully adding to the mix. Besides, change imposed on third world countries from the outside has no good history of success.

I applaud these people for trying to help create the tools that some innovative African users can use.

Re:Stabilize governments first

[Anonymous Coward]

Tunisia, Egypt and Libya revolting because of lack of food? That's just not correct. At all.

Re:Stabilize governments first

[Curunir_wolf]

Exactly. Add to that the recognition of private property rights. No one is going to put in the effort and risk to develop a piece of land when they don't know if they are going to be allowed to keep it or have everything it produces taken away from them by a the next government.

Re:Stabilize governments first

[Duradin]

But it's not going to solve the food problem, like TFS claims. It may be part of the solution but it is not the solution. Solving the problem requires more than idealistic geeks salivating over the word "open".

All these tools for innovative African users will be for naught if they are chased off their land to make room for some other group that has no clue (or intention) of how to farm but has the favor of the current junta running things.

Re:Stabilize governments first

[Savantissimo]

I agree with you, local production can handle building these things - some things will have to be imported, of course - engines, fasteners, chips, tires, hydraulic tubing, paint,.... many things... but the frame, sheet metal, some machining, the integration, and finishing can all be done locally, and these will likely account for a large part of the end value. More importantly, these machines are designed to be fixed locally and cheaply, and provide capabilities that aren't currently available. (Commercial machines are much larger and more expensive, out of the reach of the vast majority of small farmers anywhere.)

Having such a general-capability local industry should act as a seed which grows and increases its capabilities, with a profit motive to undertake more specialized tasks for which imports are expensive. The open-source nature of the designs allows tinkering, and selling the machines with improved design, thus allowing local producers to differentiate their offerings and potentially sell not only to users in various markets but also to other producers who don't want to work out the bugs of the improved product's manufacturing themselves. The quality of manufacturing will also differentiate different producers, even on a standard design.

The people making negative comments here really need to go look at the designs and see the videos and pictures of the several machines which have already been prototyped. This is not vaporware, nor are these machines things that some do-gooder thinks the third world needs but wouldn't actually use himself - the lead man on this project tried to make a go of farming, but fixing his tractor nearly bankrupted him. He's still young enough to keep going for 30-50 years, he's smart (fusion physics PhD), and he's attracting many competent people to work in the full range of different disciplines needed as well as hundreds of donors each month.

This is a hugely important project with a high likelihood of success.

Re:Stabilize governments first

[Anonymous Coward]

And first world lower birth rates. Many refuse to admit it, but births will always stay ahead of available food until any culture adopts modern birth control.

And they will not do that until food is grown in such a way that you don't need to have 20 kids so at least 10 of them survive to help bring in the harvest before it rots in the field. Hence, farming tech.

Re:Stabilize governments first

[Asic Eng]

Worry about stabilizing the regional governments first and then worry about upgrading them to first world farming techniques.

Because these things clearly require the same skill sets?

Re:Stabilize governments first

[eugene ts wong]

Also, all the effort in creating this open technology costs time and money, which could have been devoted to something else more productive.

Re:Stabilize governments first

[TheSync]

Worry about stabilizing the regional governments first and then worry about upgrading them to first world farming techniques.

Ethiopia's Prime Minister has been in office since 1995. What's not stable about that?

Re:Stabilize governments first

[ChromeAeonium]

GMO seeds do not require modern farming techniques. Only the herbicide tolerant ones require additional input. Bt corn, Golden Rice, BioCassava, Super Sorghum, amino acid fortified corn, BXW resistant bananas, none of those GMOs require, by design, modern farming techniques. There are even some projects, like Cornells, Bt eggplant project, that seeks to modify local varieties and teach the farmers to save and improve that seed. Quite spreading misinformation about a topic you clearly do not understand.

Re:Stabilize governments first

[Anonymous Coward]

Birth rates are not determined by knowledge of birth control. In most of the third world, a certain size family is necessary in order for a family to function as an economic unit.

Also, most undeveloped countries lack a social safety net. Therefore it is necessary to have enough children to support you in your old age.

Finally, in places where there is a high infant mortality rate, it is necessary to have extra children in order to ensure that enough children will survive.

Re:Stabilize governments first

[TheSync]

Ethiopia has banned GMO crops.

South Africa's corn is mainly GMO.

In which country are more people starving?

Re:Stabilize governments first

[drinkypoo]

Some local islands of stability can produce and repair machinery.

Those islands don't exist until you get some stability in government. When the local warlord can just wander over and steal everything you have, you're not into building infrastructure.

Re:Stabilize governments first

[similar_name]

I believe many WTO loans require the use of GM seeds. I'm not denying there aren't benefits to GM seed (I don't have a problem with GMO in general). However, many GM seeds have terminator genes requiring that they purchased yearly. The WTO will only (mostly?) give you a loan if you buy GM seeds so it 'pushes' third world countries into perpetual debt to first world countries.

Finances (and politics) play as big a part in Ethiopia and South Africa as the best GM seed vs the best 'natural' reproducing seed. If a big factor in agriculture is loans for seed and supply and that loan requires GMO, then banning GMO will definitely hurt you.

Re:Stabilize governments first

[TheSync]

"I have friends from Angola. They tell me when they were growing up there in the 60s, there was food everywhere. You didn't even need to take food with you if you went on a journey, you just ate whatever was growing on the side of the road. Now it's a desert. Capitalism and farming really, really don't go well together for the simple reason that a true farmer/husbandsman/peasant does not treat his land as a resource to exploit, but as the means of his great grandchildren not starving. He cares his land. Capitalism rapes it."

Well there was the horrific civil war from 1975-2002 between the MPLA and UNITA that might have made life in Angola a bit tough.

But beyond that, the basically victorious MPLA (People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola) that now rules has a Marxist-Leninist ideology.

Let's see how free market Angola is:

"Business Freedom: Despite some progress, burdensome regulations continue to hinder private-sector development. The regulatory system lacks transparency and clarity, and regulations are inconsistently enforced."

"Trade: Barriers to free trade include preferential treatment for domestic companies with respect to government procurement, variable and high customs fees and taxes, import licensing, government import authorizations, the unclear regulatory environment, inadequate customs capacity, and issues involving enforcement of intellectual property rights."

"Business Taxes: The top corporate tax rate is 35 percent, though the mining and oil industries are subject to rates as high as 50 percent, while agriculture benefits from a 20 percent rate."

"Inflation: Inflation rose to an average of 13.7 percent in 2009."

"Foreign investment: Government approval is needed for foreign investments exceeding $100,000 and investments that require a concession (such as oil and mining). The regulatory system is non-transparent and time-consuming, lacks capacity, and is subject to corruption. There are few specific performance requirements on foreign investments, but "Angolanization" of companies and greater use of Angolan suppliers are encouraged...Land generally must be obtained from the state. "

"Property Rights: Angola's legal and judicial system is inefficient and subject to executive influence. Legal fees are high, and most businesses avoid taking commercial disputes to court. All non-urban and some urban land is ultimately state-owned but can be leased to private entities. Regulations to implement the 2004 land-tenure law have not been issued. Property registration is lengthy and expensive. Angola ranked 114th out of 115 countries in the 2009 International Property Rights Index."

"Labor regulations: Restrictive labor regulations hinder employment and productivity growth... dismissing a redundant employee is relatively costly."

Does not sound like free market capitalism to me, but an overly statist & socialist government.

Re:Stabilize governments first

[countertrolling]

The regime can import food.

Yeah really, they can just order in 50,000 tons of egg rolls and Kung Bao chicken..

Re:Stabilize governments first

[TheSync]

"I believe many WTO loans require the use of GM seeds."

The World Trade Organization negotiates trade treaties and adjudicates them. It does not offer loans.

The International Monetary Fund loans to member countries that have a balance of payment need. I don't believe South Africa has received an IMF loan since the 1980's. Ethiopia did receive an IMF loan in 2009, so I guess the who "require the use of GM seeds" does not apply to the IMF.

The World Bank provides loans to developing countries for capital purposes. Both Ethiopia and South Africa have received recent World Bank Loans. So as GMO crops are not legal in Ethiopia, it looks like WB loans don't require GM seeds either.

The biggest political challenge to Africa regarding GMO crops is EU country bans on GMO crop imports. But fortunately there are hungry people in Africa and other parts of the world ready to buy and eat African GMO crops, not just in Europe.

Re:Stabilize governments first

[similar_name]

My rant was over the top, I was in a mood :)

There is however some truth underlying what I said. Terminator genes are used in many GMO crops and as such require that they be purchased yearly. When the money to purchase seed depends on a loan you're putting third world countries into perpetual debt. It is good that there are projects to use reproducing seeds but I do not think that is the majority.

Monsanto's rice is best grown on dry level land and harvested by tractors. I suppose that may or may not be considered modern farming techniques. The use of herbicide resistant genes can also lead to the overuse of herbicides particularly in countries where regulations are weak (not to the fault of the gene but these things happen).

I think GMO can and will help a lot of starving people. As always though we should be careful that for profit motives don't override everything else. Again, forgive me for my OP it was a bit silly and the modern farming was really a non sequitur to my point.

Re:Stabilize governments first

[similar_name]

You're correct, it wasn't the WTO I was thinking of it was the IMF. I do not know what the absolute policy is and I'm sure it changes with respect to each nation involved but there does seem to be some evidence that the IMF has tied loans to GMO crops. Not always for the benefit of the debtor.

I understand that there are circumstances where the benefit of GMO helps justify and return the loan (once preferably) but if it's done just to benefit the patent holders of that crop, the importers of that crop, and the creditors it's not being used to it's true potential. As to the IMF loan to Ethiopia they banned GMO in 2009 so I'm not sure which came first (or whether it was an agricultural loan), but I concede that most likely not every IMF agricultural loan is tied to GMO.

Re:Stabilize governments first

[ChromeAeonium]

Ah, it happens. Hope I didn't sound too snappy either...I've been called evil Monsatan shill so many times that civility is no longer always my first reaction (I gotta work on that).

Anyway, I get where people are coming from when they talk of the issue of saving seed. It's more than just the terminator genes, which by the way were never released after the public backlash. The point of terminator genes was actually to stop transgene spread, not stop seed saving (although, from Monsanto's point of view, don't think they forgot about that little perk) which was a big public fear at the time, still is, so Monsanto developed terminator genes and got an even bigger backlash. The reason farmers of GMO seed don't save (besides the contracts they must sign) is actually an issue that goes back to the 20's. Ideally, farmers would save seed from their harvest year after year and never need to buy any more. The problem here is that there's a reason why most farmers don't. Most use hybrid seed which, even though you need to keep buying it, is better. It's hardier and more productive, even though the second generation has genetic instability that make it less desirable for saving seed.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think the value of stable crops, like open pollinated/heirloom varieties, should be neglected, but at the same time, it isn't so simple as companies taking advantage of people by making them buy seed every year. A lot of gains have come from hybrid seed over the past century, and in the case of developing countries, I think they should have access to the same things that developed countries used to get their food security. Ideally of course they would be producing their own hybrid seed and not dependent on a foreign company though. One really exciting technology breakthrough is apomixis seeds. Basically, some people are working on making a plant that can make seed genetically identical to itself. This could be huge because then you would have the benefits of hybrid vigor and the ability to save seed. You can bet Monsanto won't invest in anything like that though which is why we need more public investment in (and public support for) genetic engineering.

As for any Monsanto rice, I can't say I'm familiar with that. I'm sure they do sell rice seed given that they have a huge market share of the seed industry, but I would assume they sell more than just that variety. There is no GMO rice on the market right now (although China and Iran have each developed their own home grown Bt rice IIRC), and I don't recall hearing Monsanto working on any rice projects, although given how corporations act in secrecy that doesn't really mean much. And I can get worrying about herbicide misuse in developing nations, heck, there are misuses of that stuff even in developed nations. I heard a story once about a guy in Central America, I forget the exact country, who used agricultural pesticides as personal bug repellent. He sprayed himself regularly. Then he died. It's hard to say that it won't be misused. I think working around that, without telling other people what technology they are and are not responsible enough to have (so-called technological imperialism), is an issue.

But yeah, I do agree with you that we should make sure profit motives don't screw things up. Genetic engineering companies are a lot like the pharma companies. You shouldn't trust them, but at the same their products do work (generally) and can serve a useful purpose. But I would much rather see public funds being used. I personally think we could solve a lot of problems for everyone if we used biotechnology techniques on biodiverse crops. Taking the best of what is already there (and there is a lot out there that most people have never even heard of), learning the applications they could have, and basically upgrading them. That could be huge, and it baffles me that there is no GMO prickly pear or chaya or ensete or safou or marula, heck, I don

Re:Stabilize governments first

[Anonymous Coward]

Tunisia's uprising was fueled in large part by high food prices. Once you're at starvation, you're already screwed, but the desire to avoid destitution is fairly powerful.

Re:Stabilize governments first

[Yvanhoe]

Open Source Weaponry anyone ?

Re:Stabilize governments first

[TheSync]

I can't find any examples of IMF loans actually being tied to GMO crops in the google search you linked to. Perhaps linking to an actual article would help.

I would not be surprised if a World Bank loan could be for GMO crop supplies if the recipient government requested it.

Re:Stabilize governments first

[similar_name]

I have to admit I didn't check those results well. I looked at the first one, saw the headline and went with it. Sloppy on my part and defeats the whole reason I love debating.

I'm not sure exactly where I picked up the idea. Well, probably Food Inc. I remember thinking at the time that whether any of their facts were right or not that the presentation was biased. Without ever verifying it it must of slipped into my head unchallenged. This debate has made me research things more (why I love debating :) ).

Anyway, it would appear that most concerns are not well documented. I read one yesterday (that I can't find now, but doesn't really matter) that denounced IMF loans for GM cotton to Ethiopia when they face starvation.

The article also tied the loan to a condition that the cotton had to be exported unprocessed which has a much lower value. As I've taken the time to look more in depth today I could see that while many of the statements in the article were true they were not necessarily linked. It is true they could export textiles at a higher value than raw cotton. But it is also true that cotton producers can export raw cotton for more than what they would get selling it to their domestic textile Industry. Also, I know a loan for cotton does not necessarily negate or have anything to do with a loan for food.

Without knowing more about the specifics of the loans, the negotiations and who requested what it's hard to verify any of the claims I put forth. So, unless I happen to find something more substantive, I will concede. ;)

Can Open Source Hardware Feed the World?

[Anonymous Coward]

No.

Re:Can Open Source Hardware Feed the World?

[noobermin]

Yes, reliable companies like Sony produce better goods that are along the path to feeding the world, or at least facilitating that work. Open source ideas have no place in this.

Re:Can Open Source Hardware Feed the World?

[smelch]

Hey, proprietary goods fed your fat ass, didn't they?

Re:Can Open Source Hardware Feed the World?

[noobermin]

Yes. Look up Monsanto and the good they've done for American society.

And no, I don't eat at fast food restaurants, you insensitive clod!

Re:Can Open Source Hardware Feed the World?

[Anonymous Coward]

We already produce more than enough food to feed everyone. There are several problems with how distribution is handled in that it rarely gets to those that need it. That and greed which causes us to destroy food rather than give it out. Add gas speculation which drives the cost of food up even further.

Monsanto and ADM are part of the problem. When mandated by the IMF they make countries worse off than before. How? When you must buy closed source seed annually instead of saving and reusing open source seed.

We also have the nasty habit of growing things that are not suited for either the environment or the climate. There are plenty of old farming methods that are workable without advanced technology that can and still work today, like crop rotation and tiering. But we burn out the land fast just to make a quick buck.

Re:Can Open Source Hardware Feed the World?

[ChromeAeonium]

When you must buy closed source seed annually instead of saving and reusing open source seed.

Heterosis. Your argument is invalid. It's what feeds you. It's what others need. Did you ever stop to consider that maybe there is a reason farmers in developed nations choose to use hybrid lines? Did you ever consider that maybe farmers did a cost benefit analysis and found that they are better off buying seed every year? And no, that does not mean ignoring locally adapted genotypes. That's a false dilemma.

Re:Can Open Source Hardware Feed the World?

[Anonymous Coward]

or you know what they can afford to eat the failure.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/19/world/asia/19india.html
or secondly could be sued because monsanto blighted their crops with monster seed ruining seed lines that go back almost two decades.
wanker.

Controlled remotely

[Anonymous Coward]

Worth note, Sid Meyer's CIV Reality was announced this week...

Re:Controlled remotely

[microcentillion]

Sounds about right.

Re:Controlled remotely

[smelch]

Its spelled Cid Meier.

Re:Controlled remotely

[macraig]

Well you got the LAST name spelled correctly, at least. If we morphed you and the GP commenter together we might get a critter who can actually spell consistently!

Re:Controlled remotely

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe he needs to change his name so it makes sense.

Re:Controlled remotely

[smelch]

Hopefully the sarcasm wasn't lost on you. Sid has been a hero of mine (my only hero, really) since around 3rd grade. Colonization made U.S. history a breeze.

Re:Controlled remotely

[macraig]

El Cid Meier?

Re:Controlled remotely

[gknoy]

Will he conquer us by airship?

Re:Controlled remotely

[macraig]

Ask Smelch. He seems to have an intimate relationship with him.

It's not the open-source nature that's significant

[dingo_kinznerhook]

What the summary doesn't state is that the tools are 'geared to work together to sustain a village of people anywhere in the world, using locally attainable resources and tools.' This does beg the question of who's going to manufacture the first set of these tools, but the fact that the tools are going to be sustainable is more important than the fact that they're open-source.

Missed an opportunity...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Garden of Eden Creation Kit" has such a nice ring to it.

Re:Missed an opportunity...

[badran]

G.E.C.K.

Re:Missed an opportunity...

[Abstrackt]

Yeah, but thanks to inflation, bottle caps are practically worthless right now.

Re:Missed an opportunity...

[LordStormes]

Is there then a GECKO department in charge of GECK Operations?

Re:Missed an opportunity...

[Anonymous Coward]

Create a Garden of Eden and save money on car insurance. Brilliant!

Re:Missed an opportunity...

[chill]

No,

Garden of Eden Creation Kit - Open Source

G.E.C.K.O.S.

See if you can get the Geico critter as a spokes-lizard.

Re:Missed an opportunity...

[LordStormes]

Can we parachute that damn Brit lizard in to assemble the machines? He can take the AFLAC duck and the Burger King with him.

Re:Missed an opportunity...

[Eudial]

I'm looking for a water chip you insensitive clod!

Re:Missed an opportunity...

[maxwell demon]

"Garden of Eden Creation Kit" has such a nice ring to it.

As long as there are no apples involved. :-)

Grid-Beam

[Bruce Perens]

I really like Grid-Beam for this sort of building. Square metal tubing is not expensive if you buy it undrilled. It's incredibly pricey with the holes in it. I've been thinking about how to build an automated rig to drill the tubing. It would use up drills and cutting fluid, but maybe it would be possible to drive the price down.

Re:Grid-Beam

[vlm]

I've been thinking about how to build an automated rig to drill the tubing. It would use up drills and cutting fluid, but maybe it would be possible to drive the price down.

The thing to google for is "CNC milling machine". I have a (small) one in my basement. Its a load of fun and can do a whole heck of a lot more than drilling holes.

Also high quality steel tools in aluminum basically never wear out. Maybe in a high speed production setting... And cutting fluid is usually captured in a sump, filtered, and reused. Its an unholy mess so I don't use cutting fluid. Doesn't matter if you work slowly, and seeing as its automated and I have no capital loan to pay off...

You'll find dimensional uniformity is going to be the challenge. Grab four random pieces of 80/20 or whatever, will any random integer number of holes have equal spacing on all four bars? Dimensional uniformity, and elegant surface finish for the artsy architecture crowd, is where all the money goes.

80/20 is a commercial version of your grid beamer concept, the website is hilarious, guys making $20 walmart bookshelves using $250 of 80/20 parts...

Re:Grid-Beam

[Bruce Perens]

CNC would be overkill for this project. What I need is something that takes the end of a 1.5x1.5 tube, drills a hole in all four sides .75 inches from the end, and then steps the tube forward 1.5 inches, registering the newly-drilled holes in steel pins to enforce the uniformity of the next set of holes. Step forward another 1.5 inches and repeat the process until there is less than .75 inches of tubing left.

I like my 80/20 catalog, but yes, the demo projects are absurd, and the costs out of the hobbyist range.

Re:Grid-Beam

[kcbnac]

Maybe you have to drill the first set of holes, then the machine can take over? (Might make for a simpler machine, anyway) Alternatively, have a model drilling hole base, stand the piece up, and drill in through the pre-drilled holes in the base - there's your starter holes. Now use the aforementioned machine to automatically drill the rest...

Re:Grid-Beam

[couchslug]

The holes could be through-drilled with two drills at 90 degrees to each other, hand-fed by individual rack-and-pinion mechanisms (see Hougen drills for examples). You'd have choice of electric or air motors.
Make the "motor mounts" quick-change and you could drop in two drill bushings and use electric, pneumatic or even MANUAL hand drills.
Wanna drill tough stuff slowly but without electricity? Make Cole drills! Google for pics.
Feed tubing until it hits a stop (a simple hinged stop you can flip out of the way, you'll only need it once per "stick") drill one hole, then the other.
This is a quickie off the top of my head so bear with me. A manual step-feed could be made to function like a bolt action rifle bolt with a dowel pin or stud to engage the holes. Once the initial holes were drilled, the "bolt" could be cranked and shoved forward 1.5 inches or whatever you wish. Drill the next holes, crank bolt down, pull back, crank bolt up to capture next hole, shove bolt forward. Call it the "Mauser feed". :)

Two pieces of angle iron (one before, one after the drilling machine) would hold the workpiece. Face the Vee of the angle up.

Level the trays with tripod stands. Copy common welding stands like the basic Sumner but simplify them. Telescoping straight or round (doesn't matter) tubes with a tack-welded nut and a bolt as a setscrew would be fine.

http://www.sumner.com/sumner/sub/productb/main.27.7.9.27.0.0.html

It must be easy to level both the machine and the "trays".

If you are building to specific plans, you could save work by drilling "clusters" or patterns of holes so the erector has some range to play with.

Re:Grid-Beam

[ColdWetDog]

You could easily make a drilling guide that can zip along a length of square material. Think of couple of clamps and rollers or slides. The problem will be drilling lots of holes (if that's what you're thinking about). Drilling is 'expensive' in terms of energy and materials if you do it in bulk unless you use a soft material like aluminum as vlm points out. That has it's own set of advantages or disadvantages.

Sounds like you're envisioning a 'pipe clamp' type system that people use for temporary scaffolding. That uses round material (duh) which is considerably stronger (which may or may not be important). The clamps are reuseable. The commercial kits are quite expensive since they are designed to be high use / high strength systems but you could easily come up with a lighter duty design if that fits your engineering parameters.

I think your eventual problem is that it is going to be hard to compete with dimensional lumber and screws. That's about as cheap and easy as you can get. You can backpack in a small lumber cutting kit (chainsaw based). You can buy bulk construction screws for pennies.

Re:Grid-Beam

[rcw-home]

My suspicion is that you're going to wind up reimplementing a good fraction of a CNC machine's functionality, but here's an idea that might save you some time:

Implement the 1.5" increments via a ratchet-like mechanism. Allow the tube to slide down the V of some angle iron placed at a steep (say, 60 degree) angle. The drills are placed halfway down this. In the lower half of the V, there are registration pins (probably bolt heads of the appropriate size, machined to the proper diameter and with some taper for self-centering) every 1.5" for a couple repetitions. The tube is placed into the V, hits the first registration pins, is clamped to the V using electromagnets, and drilled from both directions (you have several options for moving the two drills here, but I kinda like the idea of pushing the drill away from the work with a spring and pushing it towards the work with pneumatic bellows). Once the drilling is done, some electromagnets above the tube pulse for a bit so that the tube pops up and slides down onto the next set of registration pins, and you repeat. The tube falls out of the V when it clears the last set of registration pins. Be generous with the hardware interlocking - at the very least you want to make sure one drill is out before the other drill goes in.

Closed source technology certainly won't

[_133MHz]

...because we can use it for games!

Simple answer? No.

[Mashiki]

I'd say, ask Norman Bourlag how it could be done, but he's dead unfortunately. But he had a good plan, and several other good plans. I'm sure crazy greenies and environmentalists will come out whining now, but 'green farming' will never produce enough food. And unless you're going to shovel off 2/3's of the population to die. His ideas will be the future of farming.

Re:Simple answer? No.

[Anonymous Coward]

**but 'green farming' will never produce enough food. And unless you're going to shovel off 2/3's of the population to die**

What makes you say that? Especially in countries which can afford far more labor intensive farming.

As many studies point out, organic farming can get very high yields, but it also maintains very high yields over the long run.
http://www.grist.org/article/organic-farming-cant-feed-the-world-a-myth-debunked

Re:Simple answer? No.

[rrohbeck]

Once the oil price tends towards infinity there won't be anything left but green farming.
Just have a look at http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7767.

Re:Simple answer? No.

[Mashiki]

That's a happy and fun myth but there's still a few thousand years worth of coal sitting in the ground that can be liquified.

Re:Simple answer? No.

[rrohbeck]

At what cost?

Re:Simple answer? No.

[Mashiki]

The same cost when oil was easy to find, and extract. Hell most of the profitable coal mines in the world are sitting with no use.

Re:Simple answer? No.

[rrohbeck]

That is wishful thinking.

Re:Simple answer? No.

[Mashiki]

Not even. We were doing coal liquification 70 years ago.

Re:Simple answer? No.

[ColdWetDog]

The same cost when oil was easy to find, and extract. Hell most of the profitable coal mines in the world are sitting with no use.

Right Coal gasification is easy, simple and low energy. Because crude oil prices running at 100 dollars a gallon you're seeing bunches of coal gasification plants come on line.

Go run around the Oil Drum for a bit and wrap yourself around the concept of EROEI (Energy Return On Energy Invested). It's a crucial concept for synfuels, biofuels and other similar ideas.

Re:Simple answer? No.

[rrohbeck]

1. The cost of coal liquification is several times the cost of pumping oil from the ground.
2. Worldwide and US peak coal in terms of mass is expected in 20-30 years.
3. US peak coal in terms of total energy (BTU) was more than a decade ago.
4. And that doesn't even begin to address the questions of EROEI and CO2 emissions.

Re:Simple answer? No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad for you it's the other way around. Ecological farming is sustaining and keeping the ground fertile. Genetically modified crops and farming mono-culture is destroying the soil and its produce.

Re:Simple answer? No.

[Anonymous Coward]

No. This crazy greenie/environmentalist just realizes you have no idea what you are talking about. First of all there is no all-encompassing agricultural vision called green farming. Secondly, I think you missed the 20th century, where uhh Bourlag WAS THE FUTURE OF FARMING. Now its the 21st century and its obvious we have major issues to deal with no matter what the future of agriculture happens to be.

Re:Simple answer? No.

[ChromeAeonium]

Grist, now there's a reputable source. I've seen so much crap on that site their servers should be considered an agricultural solution.

Global Ecological Construction Kit

[Tackhead]

GVCS? Sounds like a planetwide distributed version control system. Ah, open source product naming.

Might I suggest it be renamed the GECK? It's just in time for Fallout 5:Fukushima. This trailer shows off great graphics, a easily-monitored PIPboy, friendly canine companions, and the Brahmin are so mutated that they only have one head!

non-proxy link

[Crudely_Indecent]

http://openfarmtech.org/wiki/Main_Page

Are headlines that ask questions ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... Indicative of a completely worthless waste of page space or bandwidth?

Yes.

NOT OPEN SOURCE!!!

[jellomizer]

This isn't Open Source but Open Specification. Open Source Hardware would be giving the actually hardware to them and making sure that the hardware is easily accessible so it could be reversed engineered Open Specification is more powerful as it give them the instructions to make such an item, however it fails to actually give them a working original.

Closed Source is giving a Fish to a man.
Open Source is giving a Fish and a Pole, with the hope that he will know how to use it.
Open Specification is showing how to make a pole and how to use it to collect fish.

Re:NOT OPEN SOURCE!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

The trouble is that these are not fishing poles, they are complex industrial machines that they can not build themselves. I do not care how good a farmer or how motivated your community is, with out the capacity to build complex industrial machines the design means nothing. Mass production of food requires machines on a mass scale. Until these countries are stable and able to work as part of the world community, I fear failure is the likely outcome. We have tried wealth redistribution, Giving away Trillions of dollars, but that has not worked either.

Re:NOT OPEN SOURCE!!!

[icebike]

Midwestern farmers in the late 1800s in North America couldn't build farm machinery either.

But they could maintain it. The local blacksmith could repair just about anything, and even when early tractors arrived allowing you plow huge acreages, they were simple machines, and could be maintained in the field (there being no other choice). All of these machines have expired patents. The plans are probably available in John Deere's archives.

But the other part of the story you've misread, is that we are talking about Village Scale production of food. Not Mass Scale. 10 farmers and a guy who read, and another who can wield a wrench and swing a hammer can keep ancient tractors, plows, primitive seed drills, and harvesters running for a long long time with a minimal amount of tools.

Gifting the machines is what this project aims to do. The point is to not give fuel injected, computer controlled devices. Give them something they can maintain locally.

Re:NOT OPEN SOURCE!!!

[Crudely_Indecent]

Apache Web Server is open source, yet the Apache group doesn't give you a working server, nor do they give you the power to turn the server on. They give you source code and instructions to achieve a working server. You must provide the hardware, power and the time.

Your comparison to the fishing proverb isn't appropriate.

Closed source is giving a man a fish (I agree)
Open source is teaching a man to fish (which I believe would encompass teaching the necessary pole technology)

Source is knowledge, not product.

Re:NOT OPEN SOURCE!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Apache Web Server isn't hardware though, it's software. And they give you the software. They don't tell you how to write your own web server software.

Re:NOT OPEN SOURCE!!!

[Crudely_Indecent]

They provide source code, so I would argue that they do tell you how to write your own web server software by providing the source.

Knowledge isn't hardware either.

Re:NOT OPEN SOURCE!!!

[gratuitous_arp]

Closed source is giving a man a fish (I agree)
Open source is teaching a man to fish (which I believe would encompass teaching the necessary pole technology)

I like your analogy. It clearly shows the difference between open and closed source.

Thinking about it now for a while, I may use it in discussions, with this tweak:

Closed source is giving a man a fish
Open source is letting a man watch you fish
Code + documentation is showing a man how to fish

The extent to which code is self-documenting is the extent to which the fisherman gives you hard-won pointers between sips of beer. For technical discussions, this drills home the point of writing readable code and documenting what you've done :)

Why drill all those holes?

[mangu]

Square metal tubing is not expensive if you buy it undrilled. It's incredibly pricey with the holes in it. I've been thinking about how to build an automated rig to drill the tubing

Why drill holes you don't need? If you use steel tubing, you don't need any holes, welding it is quicker and cheaper.

Aluminum is much more expensive than steel, and welding it is more expensive as well, because you need inert gas, so unless you need a very lightweight assembly you should go for welded steel tubing.

Re:Why drill all those holes?

[trebach]

Welding joints are harder to repair.

Re:Why drill all those holes?

[Bruce Perens]

Welding is great for production work off of an assembly line. Grid-Beam is for things you might eventually replace. The welded frames can't be reused, they are mostly recycled at a high energy cost into lower-grade metal for rebar, etc. The grid-beam frames can be dismantled and turned into other working equipment.

Re:Why drill all those holes?

[vlm]

Welding joints are harder to repair.

And harder to reuse the parts in another project once you're permanently done with the gadget.

Cutting steel to a smooth burr free perfectly square exact dimension is a lot harder and/or more expensive than drilling a buncha holes.

Re:Why drill all those holes?

[mangu]

Welded tubes can be recycled too, only they become slightly shorter at each reuse. All you need to do is cut away the welded joints.

For ultimate low-price, use rebar. It will be heavier than tubes for a given strength, but you can even start with recycled rebar from demolitions. Cheap and environment friendly at the same time.

Re:Why drill all those holes?

[gknoy]

Why drill holes you don't need? If you use steel tubing, you don't need any holes, welding it is quicker and cheaper.

Non-welded pieces can be safely assembled by children, too, whereas I'm not keen on my kid (or me! ;)) sitting down with a welding torch. The ease of disassembly/reassembly makes this very appealing.

Bruce, thanks for sharing this. Sounds very much like adult Lego, and that sounds really neat. (And thanks also to everyone later talking about intricate drilling rigs - fascinating!) Now, if only I can get my wife to approve of the aesthetics...

It's poverty, not scarcity

[swbozo]

Sorry, I take issue with continuing to propagate the "scarcity" myth:

• International Forum on Globalization: Seven Deadly Myths and Facts About Hunger
• International Forum on Globalization: Nine Myths About Industrial Agriculture and Hunger
• World Hunger: 12 Myths (There's Simply Not Enough Food)

Re:It's poverty, not scarcity

[MozeeToby]

Doesn't change the fact that if you give them the ability to grow enough food for themselves (and their village, city or region) then they will have enough to eat. It would almost certainly be easier to solve the problem by redistributing where the food that is currently grown ends up, but only if you can convince everyone to play well together, and decades of effort by tens of thousands of people hasn't been enough to make that happen. So why not try something else? Give them the tools to make their lives better on their own terms, rather than just trying to hand them the solution to their problems.

I can't help but thinking that this equipment would just be stolen by the guys with guns though, exactly the same way so much foreign aid is stolen out of the hands of those that need it most. People say stabilize the countries before you worry about feeding everyone, but I suspect reality would make it at least as hard to do things in that order as it is to do it in the other. Unstable governments cause starving populations, but starving populations also cause unstable governments; trying to solve either problem in isolation from the other one is just going to put fuel on the fire.

Re:It's poverty, not scarcity

[inputdev]

It seems to me that the project goals address poverty related issues even more directly than scarcity. They are not promoting higher yields through more "industrial agriculture", they are promoting affordable tools that enable decentralized production with local resources. from the first myth of your first link:

MYTH 1: Industrial agriculture and free trade will feed the world. TRUTH: World hunger is not created by lack of food but by poverty and landlessness which deny people access to food. Industrial agriculture—i.e., large-scale, corporate-run, export-oriented monoculture farming—and free trade agreements actually increase hunger by raising the cost of farming, forcing millions of farmers off the land, and by growing primarily high-profit export and luxury crops rather than food for local people to eat....

the "large-scale, corporate-run, export-oriented monoculture farming" is exactly what might possibly be avoided if individuals have access to the means of production.

Re:It's poverty, not scarcity

[NoSig]

How does farming in a large-scale way increase food prices? Seems to me large-scale farming would be out-competed by small-scale farming in the case, but the opposite is the case.

Re:It's poverty, not scarcity

[polymeris]

So why not try something else? Give them the tools to make their lives better on their own terms, rather than just trying to hand them the solution to their problems.

I can't help but thinking that this equipment would just be stolen by the guys with guns though[...]

The solution? Include a plan for a rifle, of course!
Joke aside, it would be more realistic than 3D printers, scanners & laser cutters.

Re:It's poverty, not scarcity

[TheSync]

"It would almost certainly be easier to solve the problem by redistributing where the food that is currently grown ends up, but only if you can convince everyone to play well together, and decades of effort by tens of thousands of people hasn't been enough to make that happen."

We have a great way to ensure that food is redistributed from farmers to people who need to eat the food.

It is called the free market.

It lets farmers concentrate on farming, becoming more efficient and productive, and freeing up the time of other people to do other things, like program computers.

Unfortunately, Ethiopia does not have a free market in agriculture. The people there cannot effectively create large, efficient farms because they have no property rights to their land. Thus, small land-leasers inefficiently farm small plots, and the mildest drought makes them starve.

The Ethiopian government is creating large efficient farms by kicking people off their land and leasing the land to foreign companies, mainly for the financial benefit of the government.

"Unstable governments cause starving populations" I'd say this is a rare case. If you look at hunger rates in Somalia (unstable government) and Ethiopia (strong government), Somalia's hunger numbers are slightly better. North Korea has one of the most stable governments on the planet, but has experienced tremendous starvation.

The current Prime Minister of Ethiopia has been in that office since 1995, and in government since 1991. That sounds pretty stable...

They've got some politics going on too...

[Anonymous Coward]

From their wiki: "The State promotes well-paid incompetence, largely through specialization, such that subjects produce sufficient surplus to pay for their own oppression. "

Locally attainable? Chips?

[mangu]

the tools are 'geared to work together to sustain a village of people anywhere in the world, using locally attainable resources and tools.'

Since several of those tools are computer-controlled, I'd like to know where are the plans for a locally attainable chip fabrication facility.

Re:Locally attainable? Chips?

[grumbel]

Yep, my thoughts exactly, when I saw the summary I thought about simple things, like a generator, a lamp, a stove, maybe a lathe and similar tools, but this goes into building a full blown modern industrial nation, they even include stuff like a 3D printer and scanner. Maybe I am a little pessimistic, but I don't quite see how they could jump start something aimed that high with so many pre-requirements.

Re:Locally attainable? Chips?

[GordonCopestake]

Perhaps if you were starting on Mars you would need a chip fab, but these things can be run off tech the first world throws in the landfill.

Re:Locally attainable? Chips?

[mini me]

Isn't that true of everything shown? Take the combine for instance: You can buy an even more modern combine for just the price of the scrap steel contained within. The resources are going to have to come from somewhere, so why not just utilize an old machine that nobody here wants anymore?

whispered nature documentary voice

[tripleevenfall]

Here we see snooty slashdotter savaging a newer poster while gorging itself on open source pudding and koolaide. Incredible. You almost believe watching this drama of nature that he really is better than everyone and his ubuntu cd will end world hunger. Such fanciful creatures.

How a real FOSS 3d CAD system.

[LWATCDR]

All those CNC machines and such are fine but there still isn't a good 3D FOSS cad system yet. Nothing that can Rival Solidworks, ProE, or AutoCad. Blender sure doesn't cut it. The closest is BRL CAD is still ins't in the same class as Solidworks. I would be happy with one that was as good as TurboCAD 3D.
Getting the design tools into peoples hands would be a big help IMHO and it is software for goodness sakes.
BTW I have used Solidworks and it is very very good and I have tried Blender and BRL.

Re:How a real FOSS 3d CAD system.

[Anonymous Coward]

I second this - as someone who has worked extensively in architecture and design, there is sadly nothing in the way of usable open source software for any sort of CAD work. Blender is an animation package, not a precision CAD package. Very different sort of interface and feature set.

Re:How a real FOSS 3d CAD system.

[gknoy]

I think this may be partly due to the people with enough expertise in CAD to meaningfully distinguish industrial-grade CAD tools from Blender (or similar) are not often involved in (or interested in) building open-source alternatives. I (am naive enough to) imagine that such capabilities could be added to open source tools like Blender in order to MAKE it a precision CAD package, if only we had a clear idea of what's needed. (I say 'we' as if I were involved in its development - I'm not.)

What are the key features that you feel are critical for CAD software? Is it a matter of convenience stuff, or capabilities which just aren't there? What kinds of things would I (as a potential hobbyist) find missing in something like Blender if I were trying to use it for CAD?

Re:How a real FOSS 3d CAD system.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is one of the most critical elements in bringing open source to physical things. In Fab Academy we are using mishmash of open and free-as-in-beer tools to do our design work - EAGLE, Sketchup, Blender, OpenSCAD, etc. Nothing comes close to an integrated design package like Solidworks. An issue that I've run into in this regard is that many fabrication tools require entirely different modeling or other input- one device only takes 2d files, another only uses .stl processed through Meshlab.

If we are serious about people of different education and technical skill levels using and building these devices, the software has to be simple, instructive (Alan Kay talks about "self documenting software") and it has to robust. It should run on PCs of many years ago and the modern i9 quad core, with or without network access.

Re:How a real FOSS 3d CAD system.

[Rufty]

OK, it's got a way to go, but OpenSCAD is a start.

Need a stable government first

[svendsen]

No stable government...no stable food production. While this does not apply to all developing nations it is a huge issue in many African countries dealing with unrest.

Re:Need a stable government first

[Anonymous Coward]

There are stable african nations that could benefit from this.......

Read the fine : Fuel and electricty not included.

[Anonymous Coward]

A device that "extracts aluminum from clay" ... "electrolyzing the resulting compound to form pure aluminum" ... that takes a huge amount of electricity to do. Where is the 'leccy coming from? That wimpy wind turbine?

Look at the others ... where is the fuel to run the trucks and steam turbines and backhoes going to come from?

You can do far more good with lower tech at less cost - fuel efficient stoves, growing legumes, contour plowing.

Missing the cause of poverty completely

[TheSync]

"In a visit to Ethiopia in 2009, I talked to more than one citizen there who said that the arability of the land wasn't so much the problem as not having the machines to farm the land productively. "

This is completely ignorant. Read here:

"In the late 1970s Ethiopia's communist regime nationalised all land, and private ownership remains outlawed. The millions of small-scale farmers work under licence from the state, and most plots are one hectare or less, which has hampered efforts to improve food security."

Now the Ethiopian government is leasing out large scale plots of land to foreign farm companies, which will certainly produce some work for Ethiopians, but your typical Ethiopian still has no ownership of the land and thus no ability to use that capital to get loans for farm equipment, fertilizer, and seed.

As Hernando DeSoto pointed out in "The Mystery of Capital", every developed nation in the world at one time went through the transformation from predominantly informal, extralegal land ownership to a formal, unified legal property system that allowed people to leverage property into wealth. This has not been done in countries such as Ethiopia (Egypt is another country with little rural private land ownership).

Lack of private property rights and over-regulation and government ownership of business causes poverty. Enhancing private property rights and freedom to participate in commerce cause wealth. Even the Chinese have realized this (belatedly, after starving tens of millions of people to death with collective farming during the Great Leap Forward).

Poor people around the world are not too stupid, too lazy, or too ignorant to be entrepreneurs and productive farmers. They are simply kept from becoming rich by government. They can solve their own problems if they are allowed to.

Re:Missing the cause of poverty completely

[Antisyzygy]

Private property rights and limited taxes on the rich's income sources also cause poverty because the end results is 1 percent of the people owning everything. Then us peons have to lease it or borrow it and obey their rules on its use. Its no different than leasing from the government, and frankly I think its worse. It hasn't totally happened here yet but its coming if we don't do something about it. True communism would work out just fine if people weren't people, i.e. selfish, and corrupt. Actually, capitalism would work out just fine if the same wasn't true.

Re:Missing the cause of poverty completely

[Anonymous Coward]

Take a look at Zimbabwe as a counterpoint to your assumption. In the 70's, land was owned by less than 1% of the population there until Mugabe started his regime, yet they had no trouble producing food; in fact, food was their largest export. Fast-forward 30 years, a decade after Mugabe forced the redistribution of land in a misguided attempt to even things out. Now the humanitarian situation is far worse and the country must import food to feed its population but still falls short.

That 1% of the population really was bleeding the population dry. Shame on them for not being more fair.

Re:Missing the cause of poverty completely

[Anonymous Coward]

"Communism doesn't work because people like to own stuff." - Frank Zappa

Re:Missing the cause of poverty completely

[Toze]

Thank you for that last sentence. I agree with your entire post, but too many people leave off the last bit when complaining about the problems with corporatism.

Re:Missing the cause of poverty completely

[TheSync]

"Private property rights and limited taxes on the rich's income sources also cause poverty because the end results is 1 percent of the people owning everything."

Note I didn't say anything about taxes.

But you should know that Ethiopia has above-average tax rates. The top income and corporate tax rates are 35 percent. Unincorporated businesses are taxed at a rate of 30 percent. Other taxes include a value-added tax (VAT) and a capital gains tax.

But Ethiopia is too poor to have these tax rates - they (along with labor regulations) push much of the economy into the black market. The large informal sector does not pay taxes. In the most recent year, overall tax revenue as a percentage of GDP was only 9.9 percent despite the high legal tax rates.

Regarding property rights, the US has strong private property rights. "Property rights are guaranteed" in the USA as specified in the Economic Freedom of the World Index. The effect: 67% of all occupied housing units are occupied by the unit's owner (~60 million homeowners).

Now I can point you to several countries where the government (1% of the people or less) owns "everything", such as pre-1980 China, Cuba until relatively recently, the USSR, North Korea. And of course, in Ethiopia, the government still owns most of the land.

Re:Missing the cause of poverty completely

[Chemisor]

You're missing it too. Property rights aren't going to help them when there's not enough land to own for everybody. The average family in Ethiopia has 5.6 children the highest in the world. You say they aren't stupid, but it takes some serious ignorance to not realize that if you can barely afford to feed yourself, you can't afford 6 children. Heck, I live in a reasonably prosperous US state and know I can't afford 6 children! And then there are the idiots who say the poor there "can't afford" to have smaller families, rationalizing the idea by being bad at math.

In the last 70 years, Ethiopia's population has increased fivefold, and is expected to double again in the next 30. You can send them all the food in the world, give them all the advanced machinery and farming technology, and even provide them with a few trillion dollars of foreign aid; but no matter what you do, they will outbreed all your efforts. Until they learn to not breed like rabbits, they have no one to blame for their poverty but their penises.

Re:Missing the cause of poverty completely

[TheSync]

Take a look at Zimbabwe as a counterpoint to your assumption. In the 70's, land was owned by less than 1% of the population there until Mugabe started his regime, yet they had no trouble producing food

It should be pointed out that even then, Rhodesia was not a shining star of economic freedom and property rights. The acquisition of land from blacks by whites was not done as legal transactions, but often by direct or indirect force, and there were plenty of legal and extralegal restrictions on black land ownership and participation in the economy.

The "land reform" in Zimbabwe is only one challenge to the economy. It also has seen massive hyperinflation, high tax rates (including income taxes that went as high at 47%, now down to a max of 35%), opaque and burdensome regulations on businesses, significant labor regulation that pushes most work into the inefficient informal sector, regulations that limit foreign investment in companies, and high corruption.

Re:Missing the cause of poverty completely

[Antisyzygy]

Yeah. Like I said, we aren't there yet. Don't get me wrong, I like having the opportunity to get rich that capitalism gives us, but I don't like the fact that our version of it makes it so only the lucky and rich can get rich if you know what I mean. Also, I was including money as a form of property.

Re:Missing the cause of poverty completely

[NoSig]

Birth rates are high because of high child mortality and no social safety net at old age: The parents need to have enough children to be certain that some children will survive to support them when they get old, because no one else will be around to do it. Children work on the farm so they are not a drain on resources in the same way they would be to you. The problem is a collective one so blaming each individual Ethiopian for it is asinine. Reduce child mortality to fix the issue. Nutrition is part of reducing child mortality.

Re:Missing the cause of poverty completely

[Anonymous Coward]

What and damage Americas IP on seeds? Hell no bomb em back into the stonage - errr wait.

Re:Missing the cause of poverty completely

[Anonymous Coward]

As a group, what they do is irrational, but from the perspective of each family, it is completely logical. Who, do you propose, is going to take care of you and and your wife when you get older and can not work as hard, or if you get injured? You will simply starve to death, unless you have children.

Re:Missing the cause of poverty completely

[TheSync]

It should be noted that fertility decreases rapidly with increase in GDP.

Having higher returns on child education, equity of return from women's work in a service-oriented economy, access to medical means of birth control, and being able to invest in growing capital markets for retirement are probably some of the reasons.

Re:Missing the cause of poverty completely

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the problem here has nothing to do with that, but has everything to do with people not giving a damn about their education and being too damn lazy to do anything more than look for a handout, get drunk, high, laid, etc. In the past, these people would die, but now the entitlement systems subsidize the breeding of more of these individuals. That's why we simultaneously have high number of people on welfare & unemployment, yet have millions of others entering the country illegally to do the work the others aren't interested in doing. Why should they when they can get paid to sit around, drink, smoke, and fuck?

Re:Missing the cause of poverty completely

[TheSync]

"I don't like the fact that our version of it makes it so only the lucky and rich can get rich if you know what I mean."

I like the fact that even our "poor" people are rich by global standards. About half the people in the world live on under $2.50 per day, which makes the US poverty line of $63/day look pretty good.

Re:Missing the cause of poverty completely

[Archwyrm]

You see, having that attitude is part of the whole problem. Most people outside the upper class seem to think that one day they will strike it rich too, so there is no real envy towards rich people and forget about taxing them heavily. You wouldn't want the government taking all your money in taxes after you win the lottery, right? How about just being satisfied with living comfortably? Most luxuries such as good food, movies, video games, and whatever else are well within most people's means. But, oh no, someday I want a yacht, three houses, a personal chauffeur, and so on.

Re:Missing the cause of poverty completely

[Archwyrm]

While that statistic has a certain amount of significance, keep in mind that everything here costs more. I would wager that the average vagrant makes more than $2.50 a day to buy his alcohol and smokes.

Re:Missing the cause of poverty completely

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah but the rent the US poor pay is much higher and those poor in the under $2.50 club certainly aren't paying $700/mo for a studio apt. or $3 for a loaf of bread. Here's some comparisons but it doesn't necessarily show poor countries for each. http://www.walletpop.com/photos/food-price-comparison-around-the-world/

Re:Missing the cause of poverty completely

[Antisyzygy]

A homeless person can look at a poor person and think "Hey, they aren't that much richer than I am, I could be that one day". The poor can look at the middle class and think the same thing. The middle class is diminishing. Soon it will be only poor looking at super-rich and they will know they have no chance to get that way. It will end in revolution or collapse. Even though you are right, our poor are better off, the disparity in wealth causes these sort of problems and Id rather not have it in my country.

Re:Missing the cause of poverty completely

[Antisyzygy]

No. Someday I want a self sufficient three bedroom house and I don't like being riddled with debts from school tuition while having to use a credit card or starve. Disparity in wealth causes all sort of problems that will reduce everyone but the super-rich's comfort in the long term. We need to fix it for the long run, not for today.

Re:Missing the cause of poverty completely

[TheSync]

"The middle class is diminishing."

What is your definition of "the middle class", and exactly what do you mean by "diminishing", and where is your data?

Re:Missing the cause of poverty completely

[Antisyzygy]

We have to normalize data across the years since you could define the "middle class" as a group of people that make somewhere around the average wage for the US. I have somewhat of a broader definition in that because the wealth distribution has been heavily shifted from something like a logarithm to something like an exponential function over the last 70 years the middle class is being diluted in with everyone else while the wealthy are getting super wealthy. If you factor in the fact that over the last 30 years the cumulative growth in the top 1 percent's salaries are somewhere around 253 percent, and the middle 40 percent hits somewhere around 5 percent we are barely keeping up with inflation. Its on the verge of a middle class squeeze. Factor in perpetually rising bankruptcies and the fact that more often than not its bankruptcy of the not-rich its not to hard to see qualitatively that there is a problem. If you look at the following link you will see that its pretty clear what I mean. http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html . Unless you define the top 10 percent of all Americans the middle class things look pretty bad.

Re:Missing the cause of poverty completely

[TheSync]

Your statement was "the middle class is diminishing". Increases in income or wealth to the top 1% is another issue altogether. With increasing productivity due to automation, information systems, expansions in markets due to a world becoming richer overall, it is not surprising that those with the right technical or business skills would be achieving higher income, while those with almost no skills are facing enhanced competition from automation and low-skilled foreign workers.

I will concur that US real median household income has been steady for quite a while, however this does not count non-wage benefits that are part of employer total compensation.

I'm not sure we have a good way of measuring median real compensation. But we do know that overall real compensation per hour has been tracking well with productivity increases for 30 years graph here.

There also is a confounder on looking at median household income - household size has decreased from 3.14 in 1970 to 2.6 today, but some argue this has been approximately balanced by the larger number of women with children entering the workforce.

Also regarding "diminishing", these examinations of median household incomes ignore the fact that individual incomes change over time, generally rising over lifetime. I myself have been through every household income quintile over my lifetime.

A study found that from 1996-2005 more than half of taxpayers moved to a different income quintile. Half of the lowest quintile moved up, and overall real median incomes of all taxpayers increased by 24% over that period.

The top 1% is not static either. Less of half the top 1% of income earners in 1996 were still in the top 1% in 2005.

We should also not forget that extremely poor immigrants have come into this country (legally or not), and are now making far more than they could have in their home countries, although many end up in the bottom US income quintile. Their US-educated children are likely to do even better than they did.

Re:Missing the cause of poverty completely

[Antisyzygy]

I don't want to get in the way of progress by banning automation, nor do I want a society without rich and poor people. I just want a society that has jobs for people so they can feed their families and own a house outright one day. As it is corporations are sitting on 1.6 trillion in capital they can spend. There HAS to be worthwhile projects they could finance with that which would increase revenue in the long run. Instead these corporate types are patting themselves on the back and giving themselves huge record breaking bonuses that will be spent probably on foreign goods and invested in a hedge fund. Hell, even the government could try to fund some projects. 1.5 trillion goes to SS and Medicare and 0.6 to defense. The former shouldn't be needed to be so damn high in a well functioning society because there should be work and medical care should be reasonably affordable. The latter shouldn't be so damn high either because we don't need to have such a huge military in comparison to the rest of the world, nor do we need a presence in the middle east if we would actually develop our oil reserves in the states. There is a HUGE amount of oil estimated to be underneath the Rockies and also in North Dakota / Montana / Canada that the Canadians already are tapped into and selling to us. As a young mathematics and engineering educated person with a MS in applied math I feel cheated by our miserable society that I can't get a job.

Re:Missing the cause of poverty completely

[TheSync]

You might want to look at this Quantitative Analyst position, they are looking for someone with MS in Applied Math. Living Social is also looking (but you better be familiar with Ruby on Rails).

Yes open source.

[oGMo]

Open specification is giving the requirements, but not necessarily a detailed plan, for a pole. (And then probably charging licensing fees when someone makes a pole using the spec; "open" is not "free".)

"Open Source" is giving someone the plans for a pole in detail, and allowing them to do whatever they want with the plans, including modification or redistribution (perhaps we could better label this "Free Hardware").

Remember, just because you get can get binaries and happen to have a compiler doesn't mean that "open source" software is anything but "detailed plans" that have to be built in order to actually do anything.

Why does it have to be open source?

[earls]

I have plenty of old propriety hardware they can eat.

Kinda Cool

[Antisyzygy]

This sort of idea actually could be applied to space colonization. Make simply constructed machines that bootstrap the construction of more complex machines that can be built using stuff on the planet you are targeting.

one of the major problems is production capacity:

[oliverthered]

the other is breading and keeping people alive.

Primitive agriculture WORSENS poverty

[mangu]

Your links are typical "green/leftist" propaganda.

For instance, one of the dogmas there says that "70 million Brazilians cannot afford enough to eat".

Propagating that bullshit was one of the reasons Lula was elected president in 2002. One of his campaign promises was his "Zero Hunger" program, to eradicate hunger. Much to his embarrassment after he was elected, the studies he ordered from a federal agency on how to conduct this program was that the poorest in Brazil did NOT suffer from hunger. What they found was that 30% of the Brazilian poorest actually suffered from OBESITY...

Re:Primitive agriculture WORSENS poverty

[Anonymous Coward]

Give someone everything they need to live, and they won't do anything but sit around and get fat. I know I would.

Re:Primitive agriculture WORSENS poverty

[Anonymous Coward]

Obesity is usually caused by eating high carb diets.

Most of the things that are 'high carb' are seriously cheap. Good nutrition and full stomach are not necessarily the same thing. Once governments realize this there will be a change.

Just goto your local supermarket. I would be willing to bet cash that if you buy a set of meals that would feed yourself for a week for 15 bucks it would be high carb. The downside is a huge demand for 'cheap' foods. The cheap ones are the ones we make in mass quantities already. Those are high carb. So people want cheap foods they buy them. So there is demand for the already existing cheap foods. No change in the market.

Notice I didnt say no carb either. You have to have them. Just not as much as most people eat for the amount of work the do. It is seriously hard to keep the balance right.

That and most things that have low carb are not good for you long term or taste like twigs.

Re:Primitive agriculture WORSENS poverty

[Prefader]

. . . and the other 70%?

Re:Primitive agriculture WORSENS poverty

[Anonymous Coward]

Your answer is typical "right-wing" propaganda.

Your idea that there are no starving Brazilians is absolute nonsense. There are plenty of poor people who cannot eat properly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fome_Zero

Re:Primitive agriculture WORSENS poverty

[Anonymous Coward]

"Much to his embarrassment..."

Hardly.. he fixed it already!

Re:Primitive agriculture WORSENS poverty

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. That study. I believe it was sponsored by Frito-Lay, McDonald's, and Pepsi Co. That's the one that said 'a calorie is a calorie' and ignored the fact that the healthy food goes to people with money while the poor eat fat-rich, nutrition poor foods to keep alive.

Yeah, you're right. Fat people are healthy.

Re:Primitive agriculture WORSENS poverty

[Anonymous Coward]

Obesity is often a form of malnutrition; even fat kids in the south commonly got pellegra.

But we all know that 30% is 100% so he's just a commie leftist we don't have to listen to, ergo everything on Fox News is right.

Do they really need to open source the plow?

[brainzach]

Most specifications for agricultural equipment are already known to the public. Developing nations don't have strong patent or copyright protections, so if someone wants to copy a machine, they can copy it.

The real challenge is providing the capital and education needed to implement and maintain modern agricultural methods.

Re:Do they really need to open source the plow?

[nschubach]

I'd argue that it's more about the capital/equipment.

I was never formally taught about tractors as a kid. While it's not "modern" by current standards, I learned from maintaining my grandfather and father's old John Deere tractors. What I learned is that there's probably only one complex part on the whole thing that takes little less than an hour to figure out (if you are slow.) The rest of the tractor is mechanically (and spectacularly) simple in design and operation. The interesting part is that we could still run those tractors on a regular basis and they work just fine even with some of them nearing 80 years old. They aren't extremely high horse power machines (The one I always thought was the most powerful [the 1940-1950s era Model 'R'] is only about 50HP) but they will pull a plow through a field or logs from a forest all day long. Heck, one tractor (a Ford N) was butchered by one of my now deceased relatives who made his own ad-hoc parts. Interestingly enough, the parts he added make it harder to work on than the stock machine. (My younger brother is currently in the process of rebuilding it back to stock.) The old tractors were pieces of art in how simple and productive a machine could be.

Point being: They don't need high end computer controlled machines to farm the land or learn how to maintain high end tractors. They just need simple machines that do the job, and the ambition to do it.

The law of diminishing returns

[blair1q]

So, let me get this straight.

The people at the top of the income ladder are making an ever-increasing exponent more than the people at the bottom, and the people at the bottom are now trying to do the most basic of self-subsistence activities on land that can't be plowed by two laborers yoked to a ploughshare, and we rely on people who work for free to come to the rescue of humanity?

When a politician fronting for those at the top of the income tells you that you have the individual power to make yourself successful, strap them into the yoke.

Just one question

[wcrowe]

What are these machines going to run on?

Re:Just one question

[Toze]

Well, according to Herodotus, Africa is the home of the unicorn. I'm sure they can use them for fuel.

Designs need a lot of improvement

[Mbala]

I was considering getting myself a LifeTrac, so I looked at the design + videos in more detail. I love the modularity and the fact I can understand every single piece of the tractor and replace it myself (except the engine and the hydraulic parts). At the same time, the design seems to be very beta - the frame seems way heavier than it could be, and the way the screws are used seems wrong - it does not look very strong / durable. The fact that too much weight is on the front part, so hind wheels are raising up in the air, unless you weight them down with used car batteries - that would waste a lot of fuel. I would say that getting an old beat up tractor + maybe another one for spare parts, and learning how to fix it yourself might be the best way. The second best would be if companies stopped cramming AC and GPS navigation and god knows what into skidloaders, and instead optimized their designs for manual serviceability and ensured the equipment lasts a long time. Unfortunately, the manufacturers seem to be interested in exactly the opposite designs.

Re:Designs need a lot of improvement

[GordonCopestake]

The joy of open source means you can improve the designs and then everyone can benefit.

Neat project --- deliverable homesteading option?

[WillAdams]

What could one do to create a small, secure, mass-produced core for a family to live in and w/ which to sustain themselves?

Imagine a portable block filled w/

  - water filtration system
  - sleeping areas for 4 people
  - photovoltaic roof to provide energy to power everything
  - system to capture rainwater from the roof and to store water (of course it arrives fully filled)
  - composting toilet
  - one or more glass walls which function as a greenhouse (and connections to allow such to be expanded)
  - integrated tank for raising freshwater shrimp

How small could such a block be? What would be the lowest price at which it could be delivered on-site? (probably the best technique would be for it to be a metal frame which is then covered w/ locally available materials)

William

NO.

[Lumpy]

Right now most countries refuse American Corn and wheat unless it has been ground up int a meal or flour. Why? because Monsanto has polluted our food stream with it's copyrighted and trademarked products so completely that other countries do not want to allow the lawsuit ridden crops to ever be planted in their countries. Monsanto has sued most USA farmers out of existence that dared to plant a non Monsanto crop by claiming IP infringement when a neighbor crop cross pollinates theirs. and IF you dare to own a seed cleaner and keep part of your crop as seed, they will go after you and bankrupt you. Most other countries, including the ones that have a lot of starving people do not want this problem there. Monsanto owns the USA, they do not want them to own them as well so they refuse crops and seed from the USA.

Want to feed the world? fight for the invalidation of all patents on food crops.

Re:NO.

[Anonymous Coward]

Right now most countries refuse American Corn and wheat unless it has been ground up int a meal or flour. Why? because Monsanto has polluted our food stream with it's copyrighted and trademarked products so completely that other countries do not want to allow the lawsuit ridden crops to ever be planted in their countries. Monsanto has sued most USA farmers out of existence that dared to plant a non Monsanto crop by claiming IP infringement when a neighbor crop cross pollinates theirs. and IF you dare to own a seed cleaner and keep part of your crop as seed, they will go after you and bankrupt you. Most other countries, including the ones that have a lot of starving people do not want this problem there. Monsanto owns the USA, they do not want them to own them as well so they refuse crops and seed from the USA.

Want to feed the world? fight for the invalidation of all patents on food crops.

Yes and Monsanto and mad cows disease!

Re:NO.

[Dr. Spork]

Actually, the patent on the Roundup Ready Gene expires in 2014. It seems to me that the system is working: There is enough money to be made from a big discovery to provide ample incentive to do costly research, but ultimately, the whole world can benefit from that research. In 2015, any farmer can separate their own Monsanto seeds, plant them, or even sell them. I think that overall, the world wins. (And yes, I do think that Monsanto is evil. I think it's nice that we got an evil company to ultimately do good for the world.)

Re:NO.

[robot256]

Call me a pessimist, but that's assuming that Monsanto hasn't developed a *new* patented seed and forced everyone to switch to it just before the old patent runs out, ensuring that there is zero supply of the patent-expired seed and everyone is stuck with the new patented version for the next 17 years. Let's hope there's some rogue farmers saving those seeds so they can export them for a fortune in a few years.

Re:NO.

[Anonymous Coward]

So we want Monsanto et al. to switch to trade secrets for their crops? I agree that we need some legal reform with regard to the suing of non Monsanto farmers, but something simple like restricting lawsuits to those they can prove grew Monsanto crops and saved seeds from that. Monsanto tried (is trying?) sterile crops that avoid this issue, but was (is?) demonized for it.

Re:NO.

[TheSync]

It is true that countries like Zimbabwe and Zaire have basically banned GMO crops, but South Africa, Egypt and Burkina Faso are encouraging the use of the technology.

In South Africa, GMO corn farmers realise more than 15 tonnes per hectare compared to three tonnes per hectare of organic corn. 90% of South Arfican white corn is GMO. Monsanto has recently secured cultivation approvals in South Africa for MON89034 (YieldGard II with enhanced insect resistance) and MON89034 x NK603 (stacked trait with insect & herbicide resistance).

From The Economist: "More than three-quarters of the soyabeans grown around the world are now genetically modified, as is roughly half the cotton and over a quarter of the maize (corn). Crucially, developing countries now account for nearly half of the world's 134m hectares of transgenic crops, with Brazil, Argentina, India and China in the vanguard (see chart). Of the 14m or so farmers now benefiting from the technology, perhaps 90% live in poor countries."

Re:NO.

[ChromeAeonium]

Right now most countries refuse American Corn and wheat unless it has been ground up int a meal or flour. Why? They can get around WTO laws by claiming they don't want GMOs when in reality what they want is goold old fashioned protectionism.

Fixed that for you.

Monsanto has sued most USA farmers out of existence that dared to plant a non Monsanto crop by claiming IP infringement when a neighbor crop cross pollinates theirs.

Citation needed. The only farmers I've heard of them suing are the ones who knowingly attempted to get the transgenes. Not that I'm saying that's right, but that is a far cry from your claim.

and IF you dare to own a seed cleaner and keep part of your crop as seed, they will go after you and bankrupt you.

You should read up on contract law. And heterosis.

Re:NO.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice try, but ground corn is easier to ship. Why? All those little air spaces between the kernels go away, making a more compact and easier to ship product.

Besides, few people really need to use kernel-corn, anyway. People don't eat "dent-corn" kernels.

Re:NO.

[Lumpy]

MY answer is to allow farmers to sue Monsanto for polluting any of their non Monsanto crops. If a farmer plants non GMO corn and the neighbors corn pollutes it, then Monsanto must pay the farmer 3X his harvest yield that year. It's a lot more fair than what Monsanto does to farmers that dont plant their products.

Open Source Hardware is "way too expensive"

[Theovon]

I founded the Open Graphics Project. Our objective was to develop an open source graphics card. At the time, no GPU maker was releasing specs that would allow FOSS developers to write good drivers. This started in 2004, with a lot of attention and excitement. Being the sort to DO, rather than just complain, and also being a graphics chip designer, I decided that the open approach might be the solution. There were multiple slashdot articles, interviews, and a good deal of hardware design and software was developed.

It's now 2011, and you most likely have never heard of the Open Graphics Project. Also, it's 2011, and most other open hardware projects have come and gone or are just limping along.

Why is this? Because nobody wants to provide the one thing that makes or breaks an open hardware project: Money.

Building hardware costs money. Designing it is hard enough, but we got that accomplished. It took until 2009 before the OGP managed to actually build our prototype hardware in quantities that we could lend and sell, and this was because we got donations from the Linux Fund.

Why does no one put up money? Because it's (rightfully so) too much of a risk. If you could predict that one project or another would succeed, you might invest, especially if you knew that you'd get some kind of return on your investment (besides "sponsor"). But you can't make that prediction, and it's foolish for you to throw money at every fly-by-night project that comes along. And thus, open hardware projects die, except those that are backed by someone who already has money. The problem is that most of THOSE people aren't willing to "give away" their designs. Conundrum.

Some friends and I have some solutions we're working on. Watch this space for late Summer 2011. :)

Re:Open Source Hardware is "way too expensive"

[WATist]

Your Open graphics project was in a rapidly changing field and dependent on IC fabricators who want and are geared toward large batches. Most of the machinery they want to make is established technology and they are attempting to use only generic materials to make these machines.

John Deere T-800

[Thud457]

I'm totally on board with the idea of kick starting an open source project to build military robots to prevent warlords from using hunger as a weapon. Hunger isn't (in most cases) an agricultural problem, it's a social & political problem.

Re:John Deere T-800

[couchslug]

Kalashnikovs and RPGs are already made in simple machine shops.

If we actually gave a fuck about the folks in Darfur etc, we'd arm them decisively and the Janjaweed would be dead on the spot.

That's too controversial so we protract their agony instead.

Re:John Deere T-800

[Anonymous Coward]

We need to figure out a way to provide people everywhere with highly potent weapons that are locked via GPS to only function within their own borders.

Hm. I was kind of joking, but if we could pull that off...

Re:John Deere T-800

[maxwell demon]

We need to figure out a way to provide people everywhere with highly potent weapons that are locked via GPS to only function within their own borders.

Hm. I was kind of joking, but if we could pull that off...

And if the U.S. want to invade a country, they just manipulate the GPS in that region, and all weapons cease to function ...

Of course, those weapons would have the same problem as any other form of DRM (and yes, that GPS lock would be a form of DRM): You cannot effectively protect something which the person you want to protect it from has full access to.

Re:John Deere T-800

[ArsonSmith]

Yea, we should arm them and train them to fight. It's worked so well in the past.

Colonizer Toolkit

[macraig]

This GVCS is exactly what a colony ship would want to take along on a one-way trip to a new home away from home (be it Mars or some idyllic exoplanet). There's another partnership opportunity for them....

Watch the TED video

[wisebabo]

There is an entertaining video on this from a presentation at TED (Technology Entertainment and Design) that is only 4 minutes long. And no I've never been.

http://www.ted.com/talks/marcin_jakubowski.html

Re:Watch the TED video

[Anonymous Coward]

I've spent the last four years developing open hardware, almost full time. This year I could even make it into my (paid) job by founding Ultimaker, an open hardware company. I'm a real believer of open source hardware. Open sourcing technologies can have a democratizing effect. Also, while it makes economic sense too, the real driver is an even more pervasive one. There's a major demand for these tools that drive a fundamental human need, autonomy. People want to create objects without being dependent on manufacturers. People want to be able to change the things they could so far only consume. When technology is open, you can hack it in all sorts of ways. When open source manufacturing tools develop, many more people can start interacting with the designs of things that they own. The physical objects that we currently use can get a major upgrade by all the new innovators that challenge the assumptions of small design teams that traditionally design items before they are produced.
Also, economically it makes sense. I'm really starting to make a living off of selling open source hardware (by selling the http://Ultimaker.com 3D printer), there are already several derivatives (http://www.thingiverse.com/tag:ultimaker) of the 3D printer that we developed showing both that our design this is promising (otherwise people would not base their work on ours) and that we can access talent by seeing what people do with it and recruiting great developers from the community. A small group tends to get locked into a certain way of doing things, involving many more people is a great way to prevent this from happening.

I also did research on the economic viability of open source hardware. Within the RepRap project alone, people have been investing over half a million dollars (collectively) on innovations alone (http://thesis.erikdebruijn.nl/master/MScThesis-ErikDeBruijn-2010.pdf - PDF warning!)). The community is steadily doubling every 6 months,

all that remains

[Anonymous Coward]

is for the village of Aroyo to send the chosen one on a quest to find the GECK ..I mean the GVCS

Education is the key

[mangu]

I would think giving people the help to be self-sustaining would be the first step in stabilizing the government

That's correct, but the resource most sorely needed by the poor all over the world is education. The only way to make a democratic regime work is by giving the people enough education to see through demagoguery. Otherwise, votes are too cheap, a new t-shirt or baseball cap is enough to buy a vote in many poor regions.

Re:Education is the key

[curveclimber]

"by giving the people enough education to see through demagoguery."

We haven't even achieved that here in the U.S.

Re:Education is the key

[Shadow Wrought]

"by giving the people enough education to see through demagoguery."

We haven't even achieved that here in the U.S.

Some would even argue we're running the other direction, too.

Which parts in the system are missing?

[JumpingBull]

Um, I think we are forgetting something here. Throwing hardware at a problem - without understanding the problem - will not be as effective as hoped. Consider the context first - what is the environment, how much bio-diversity, is there a way to arrange things to increase fertility? Consider Haiti, a small country, where the dictator "Doc Duvalier" cut down all the trees. He didn't have to be worried about snipers in the tree tops; the unintended consequence was the arable land was washed into the ocean, beginning a cycle of poverty that continues to this day. Breaking the cycle of poverty takes insight, and small changes - composting, small bushes and shrubs to act as soil anchors, understanding how to make real wealth, and not something that is a photo op - only to rust unused.

Aeroponics

[z3nwizard]

Would be nice to have a standard design for Aeroponics or similar setup that scales. 6 to 7 times better output then standard gardening.. Maybe something like this design http://viewer.zoho.com/api/urlview.do?url=http://www.synergyii.com/aeroponic/VAP.pdf Vertical farming also.. This design uses the red & blue led lights but for some reason didn't use aeroponics or hydroponics... just that mud stuff ;) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ct3dK2_ksvk

Seriously?

[cthlptlk]

Does anyone really believe that people are going hungry because of IP restrictions on 3D printers? I have nothing against open source or building cool stuff, but the idea that this stuff is practical for solving problems is just a fig leaf of respectability for people who like to play with very big toys.

Here is a group that is providing IP-free technology that is at the right scale (sub-industrial) and uses the right power source (animals, human muscle) to increase farming productivity where it is needed: http://www.tillersinternational.org/farming/tools.html

Re:Seriously?

[robot256]

They are basically back-porting the last 100 years of farming improvements to the pre-petroleum install base. Awesome!

Yes, and yet...

[SoftwareArtist]

I think this is an awesome idea.

Yes, I agree with everything that people are saying. The main causes of poverty are sociological, not technological. Corruption, archaic legal systems, etc. do far more to keep people in poverty then lack of access to tractors. And yet...

Think about the possibilities of this. Create open source designs for a ton of useful industrial devices. Build up a community of people making steady improvements to them. Sure, the initial users won't be impoverished farmers in central Africa. But think of all the people in the developed world with the interest and resources to make use of this. And it can grow from there. Want to start a company to manufacture industrial equipment? Here are the detailed plans, all ready to go. This is where open source software was in the mid-80s: only useful to a handful of people, nearly all of whom lived in wealthy countries. So no, this project isn't likely to cure poverty on its own, but it can still grow into something incredibly valuable.

it's a nice idea, but has at least one major flaw

[Anonymous Coward]

And where are poor nations going to get the fuel to run these machines? With borrowed funds paid to OPEC nations? Even if they can get those funds and fuels, how long will that fuel last? There are already analysts (respected from all political viewpoints) saying global peak oil is either imminent or already passed. And growing fuel is really not viable, as the Energy Returned on Energy Invested is negative.

I'm sure this effort is well intentioned, but it misses the boat. Not to mention, all the emerging research about the adverse health effects of mono-culture diets, and the devastating effects that monoculture agriculture has on the landscape. There's a reason the "Fertile Crescent" was once named that, but now bears no resemblance to its name. The good news is that there are viable techniques to feed far more people, increase health, decrease energy usage and sequester much more carbon. Just google "permaculture".

The Standard (Circular) Argument

[Comboman]

Do-gooder: Let's develop a cheap laptop so people in developing countries can educate themselves.

Critic: Those people are starving. Worry about feeding them first before you waste money on toys.

Do-gooder: Let's develop cheap agricultural technology so people in developing countries can feed themselves.

Critic: Those people are trapped in despotic regimes. Worry about freeing them first before you waste money on agriculture.

Do-gooder: Let's send peace-keeping forces in to stabilize those developing countries.

Critic: Those people are uneducated, they wouldn't know what to do with political freedom. Worry about educating them first before we waste money on regime change.

Stop worrying about what to do first and just do something. Anything.

Re:The Standard (Circular) Argument

[Duradin]

"Stop worrying about what to do first and just do something. Anything."

Which is exactly how you get into knee-jerk reaction based crises. I hope you've never complained about Iraq II or the TSA.

Re:The Standard (Circular) Argument

[Anonymous Coward]

Anything?

In that case exterminate them! Hey, it's something..

No, open sores food can!

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I25UeVXrEHQ

Wrong Answer

[Mr. Foogle]

because locals don't have the ability to build or buy equipment.

These people don't need open source hooraw: they need good government so can own their land, keep the fruits of their labor, and not kill be slaughtered when the generals are feeling impetuous.

Re:Wrong Answer

[couchslug]

Political power always and without exception flows from the barrel of a gun. If you want to liberate people you must help them overthrow and kill their oppressors.

That can be awkward so it doesn't happen very often.

Re:Wrong Answer

[Mr. Foogle]

Political power always and without exception flows from the barrel of a gun

That's what I said.

Re:Neat project --- deliverable homesteading optio

[nschubach]

For some reason I just imagined rows upon rows of "slave camps" (drone camps?) made of your blocks. No individuality, everyone packed into blocks like sardines...

Re:Neat project --- deliverable homesteading optio

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=storage+container+houses

too high tech

[CodeShark]

While this list is interesting, it requires an excessive amount of two commodoties: precision cut metal engines and "green friendly" fuel /energy sources and doesn't address three issues: lack of ground source water, lack of non-mosquito generating water purification, and what we could simply call the 'community cost of ownership". Because if there's not enough groundwater available, all the wells drilled by the machine simply compound a problem. If you have sufficient ground water but it is not pure, or mosquito free, you generate another set of problems. Finally, every member of the community needs to have the economic ability to participate in both the work requirement AND the benefit of large scale farming, which, to my knowledge has never been accomplished in the history of the world, including in the so called "first world".

Open source machine designs are cool. Making something work for 3,4,5,6 or ten family units on a reasonable amount of land with good clean water will do a lot more because after that it's mostly fertilizer, seed, and sun.

More Grid-Beam

[couchslug]

Lubrication is necessary or this will gobble drill bits. A manual pump or squirt can and a drip tray for recycling would be good additions.

Waste oil is acceptable drilling lube, been there/done that, but it pollutes. Castor oil was used in racing long ago (the name "Castrol" is famous!) and it or similar oils could work in a pinch. They gum up though.

Re:More Grid-Beam

[Bruce Perens]

Thanks! How does one lubricate the second hole when through-drilling? Is it enough to dribble oil down the drill through the first hole?

Re:Neat project --- deliverable homesteading optio

[WillAdams]

My thought was that such blocks would be used as the central core of a home and expanded upon outward (and surrounded by a yard w/ room for a garden, some trees strategically placed so as to maximize shade for cooling in the summer &c.

Re:Read the fine : Fuel and electricty not include

[h4rr4r]

Depends on what you have on hand. If you have wood, you can build a gassifier. If you have oraganic waste you can make methane or biodesiel.

AWESOME!

[Anonymous Coward]

I want to write a book: "How to rebuild civilization" and all of these tools would go in there. I am very excited about this project and who knows, maybe these tools could become the defacto standard if the right heads are brought together! I love slashdot!

Re:it's a nice idea, but has at least one major fl

[Savantissimo]

The truth is farming takes energy, distributing food takes transportation and nothing is better at storing energy than hydrocarbons. We can't just throw up our hands and say the world needs to go back to scratching in the dirt with a stick and harvesting with a sickle without effectively mandating the deaths of billions.

One of the 50 machines that the project is building is a 50kW wind turbine. Modular high-temperature solar troughs are proposed, too, along with steam generators. Another machine is a proven super-long life nickel-iron storage battery. When the research is in and the process really works, they might add equipment for converting solar-thermal to fuels, or cellulosic ethanol production, but in the meantime IC engines running petroleum are the only practical alternative to starvation. Also, the equipment being made is often far more energy efficient - take a look at the micro tractor, for instance.

On monoculture and soil health:
Their proposed 3-foot swath combine harvester will encourage small fields with a variety of different plants, narrow terracing for erosion prevention (further enabled by the earth-moving equipment) and local grain production. While they have built a rototiller that isn't good for the soil, a spading machine that has low-impact on the soil is in the works. Their seeder is designed to handle all sizes of seeds from clover to potatoes, further enabling multiculture and crop rotation.

We are eating oil

[HotBits]

Stabilizing governments doesn't matter in the least, and open source hardware is too little too late. We are literally eating oil (fertilizer and pesticides, and to a lesser degree irrigation, the machines and transportation). We can't make enough food to feed the growing world population without oil. When we begin to run out people will starve. Followed by global chaos and wars. The first thing we need to do is cut back on burning oil so that we can eat a little longer. We are fast running out of time on this...

Not going to work

[Khyber]

If you can't afford the equipment, how in the hell are you going to afford the resources to build said equipment?

Did these people bother thinking about logistics or a supply chain?

umm...no

[Anonymous Coward]

Professional farmers in the US and other developed nations plant hybrid crop varieties which produce sterile seeds. The ones that don't (aka registered seed growers) grow crops FOR the seed companies and/or agricultural colleges. It has been this way for several decades before RoundUp Ready varieties were even grown on test plots. Since the grain is sterile, anyone attempting to plant it would be wasting their time and resources. Also, a very large percentage (if not all) of the grain leaving a grain terminal in a port is certainly NOT ground up. Doing so would reduce the ease of which it could be transported, shortening the useful lifespan as well as limiting the uses of the product. There are also several other companies involved in this market segment in addition to Monsanto. They include Syngenta Dow AgroSciences, Bayer CropScience, DuPont, as well as other smaller, regional companies.

It is clear that you (and the moderators who flagged this as Insightful) have spend more time reading/watching propaganda than gaining any actual knowledge of the topic at hand - agriculture.

Do what you CAN

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't bite off more than you can chew.

Sometimes, solving the smaller problems makes the bigger problem themselves smaller.

OSHW makes economic sense AND fuels a human need!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've spent the last four years developing open hardware, almost full time. This year I could even make it into my (paid) job by founding Ultimaker, an open hardware company. I'm a real believer of open source hardware. Open sourcing technologies can have a democratizing effect. Also, while it makes economic sense too, the real driver is an even more pervasive one. There's a major demand for these tools that drive a fundamental human need, autonomy. People want to create objects without being dependent on manufacturers. People want to be able to change the things they could so far only consume. When technology is open, you can hack it in all sorts of ways. When open source manufacturing tools develop, many more people can start interacting with the designs of things that they own. The physical objects that we currently use can get a major upgrade by all the new innovators that challenge the assumptions of small design teams that traditionally design items before they are produced.
Also, economically it makes sense. I'm really starting to make a living off of selling open source hardware (by selling the Ultimaker 3D printer), there are already several derivatives (search for Ultimaker on Thingiverse) of the 3D printer that we developed showing both that our design this is promising (otherwise people would not base their work on ours) and that we can access talent by seeing what people do with it and recruiting great developers from the community. A small group tends to get locked into a certain way of doing things, involving many more people is a great way to prevent this from happening.

I also did research on the economic viability of open source hardware. Within the RepRap project alone, people have been investing over half a million dollars (collectively) on innovations alone (http://thesis.erikdebruijn.nl/master/MScThesis-ErikDeBruijn-2010.pdf - PDF warning!)). The community is steadily doubling every 6 months,