What is Open Source?
By posting a design on Farm Hack, you are committing to the idea of open source knowledge licensing. This means that your Tool page is accessible and editable by any other member of the community, and can be freely built and shared. Most agricultural tools are built in a framework of proprietary knowledge generation - companies invest money in research and development, and license their design in a way that does not allow others to replicate it, or even know how it is made. The Open Source community believes that everyone benefits from freely sharing knowledge and working together to create new tools to fit our needs.
Who is Farm Hack?
Farm Hack is a community of collaborators interested in developing and sharing open-source tools for a resilient agriculture. We exist as a platform for community-based sharing and collaborative research. Individuals and organizations, non-profits and businesses alike are invited to participate. Our community is comprised of not only farmers but those with common interests: engineers, roboticists, designers, architects, fabricators, tinkerers, programmers, hackers. You don't have to own a farm or have specialized skills to join Farm Hack. Farm Hack is a participatory and cumulative project that is as strong as we make it together.
This same community sometimes assembles offline in the form of meet-ups, workshops, and build events– see the calendar for information about upcoming events.
Farm Hack is an independent 501c3 and was incubated and launched by the National Young Farmers Coalition, the Greenhorns, and GreenStart. Special thanks to our our founding members and partners.
What We Do // Why We Do it
Farm Hack aims to nurture the development, documentation, and manufacture of farm tools for resilient agriculture. We also seek to build a community of collaboration with like-minded organizations. Farm Hack lights the spark for a collaborative, self-governing community that builds its own capacity and content, rather than following a traditional cycle of raising money to fund top-down knowledge generation and guidebook writing.
We believe that greater knowledge sharing will lead to better tools, skills and systems to build successful, resilient farms. Open-source seeds, breeds and technology are the fastest way to accelerate innovation and adaptation, and ensure an equitable, diverse agricultural landscape. By documenting, sharing and improving farm tools, we can improve the productivity and viability of sustainable farming and local manufacturing. The result will be healthy land, abundant food, successful farm businesses and invigorated local economies.