36C3 - Infrastructures in a horizontal farmers community

36C3 preproll music

Herald Angel: Welcome everybody for our
next talk 'Infrastructures in a horizontal

farmers community'. I guess one thing that
all of us have in common is, that we all

are in special communities. We want to
build better communities. We want to build

better infrastructure. And we want to
build better technology, be it in a little

hackerspace in Sweden or in a theater
group in France or in an NGO in Germany.

That is something that unites us all. And
our next speaker, Andrea, she is giving us

some insights into their farming community
in Italy, because she has 15 years of

experience with that. So I think we can
all learn quite a lot. And Andrea is a

self-taught web developer. She graduated
in communication sciences. She is also a

cook and she is part of a group of radical
farmers. I would say she's a little bit of

everything, a jack of all trades. So,
she's the best person to give us some

insights. So, please welcome Andrea with a
big, warm round of applause and enjoy this

talk. Thank you very much.

Andrea: Well, thanks to you too, everyone,
to stay here. It will be difficult to fit

in a 30 minute to explain the experience
and to explain the interaction between a

lot of different communities, not only
these experiencing Bologna, but okay. I

will speak about Campi Aperti. Campi
Aperti means open field in Italian. And I

come from Bologna. OK, Bologna, if you
imagine that this is Italy, it's here,

Bologna. I'm speaking about the growing
vegetable, growing organic food. This is a

community of a farmers. It's a community
of people that reclaim the rights to grow

our food and decide how the territories,
the land, the countryside is transformed.

And so it is direct action. There are
there are some reclaims to change some

law. But we are not wait that these law in
Italy are changed. But we do directly this

stuff. This stuff is a survival for
farmers, because the problem is that there

exists only law in Italy that are for the
transformed, the food, make pizza, bread,

beer and this stuff and only are made for
industrial production. So, the production

of unmade, of the farmer is, that there
are no law for these. You can't do sell.

You can't do direct sell. But this group
of farmers do this is stuff. And so they

have a political action really, in the
street, in the square. And then they must,

the more visible stuff that they do, is do
these organic markets. But is not only

this. Is political stuff. And these food,
their background and their roots in

radical anti capitalist group and from the
global movement in the 90s. So, where?

Where are these stuff happen? Happen in
places that are free. Because you can't

ask at the beginning. Fifteen years ago
you can talk. But also now, probably is

more difficult. You can't ask the
municipality to start that these kinds of

markets. And they found a good ground in
squat in square in the street, in places

that are managed by human agreement, not
the law. And so Campi Aperti was born in

2003 in XM24 in Bolognina. That is on a
shared, is occupied, public shared space,

self-managed by our community. Is not a
service, is a place where the needs of the

community and the answer to these needs,
find an answer and a solution. This place

is under the threat of eviction and we
support a lot this place. Really, really

important for our life. So I told you
where and I want also told you how. Not

how, only how after. When. The time. The
time, it's important stuff. The time, for

capitalism, is thinking in hours and
money. But, and it's fast, but this, is

shaped on you, on an egocentric idea. But
this is not the only way to think the

time. For farmers is really easy. Think of
the time cyclical, not egocentric, not

human centred way. And so there are habits
to plan the stuff and to take a seasonal

agreement or seasonal planning. And so,
the first stuff to rethink our life and

our community is, take our time. Our time
of to grow relationship and our time to

think how to do this stuff. And our time
when we buy something. Our time to think

where it came from. The stuff that we buy
and the stuff that we eat. In which how

are developed and where it comes from.
Where from, from what the community and

from what territories. OK. This is a gift
that you will find in the slide. If you go

to check after these talk, you can see
also a video in Creative Commons for sure.

And but the now I have not the time to
show our action in video. I want to

explain a bit the infrastructure. The
infrastructure is based on the human

agreement and the group of Campi Aperti
started with five people in an occupied

space, public space and they started with
a small market. After and after they grew.

And now there are more than 150 farmers.
And with thousands of people that come at

the market and are co-producer of the
products. And so we manage ourself by

assemblies and we do this stuff for
consensus method. So the topic are food

autonomy, be independent with the food.
Safeguard the territories, practice

agroecology and we shared, we have a
shared warranty. So the group of farmer

not to take, not upset, decentralize the
warranty about organic food by the state,

but they practice our shared warranty.
Means that everyone, everyone of the

producer at the market, take care of the
product, also of the orders and and the

care of the relationship . But this also
means, that if you break the trust, one

with the other, you go out from the
community. And this looks like difficult

to decide, but is not so difficult,
because when you are local, and you know

the products that you grow and the how are
organic, it's easy to to decide this

stuff. Is a look like that, for explain
some technical people, is like if you not

trust the certification authority, but you
are based on a web of trust. And so we

include also in our relationship, in our
work, the sense of the limit and the

mutualism. So we plan to not grow too much
but to grow only locally. And we divided

the assembly. There are assembly for every
market, that are 8 every month. There are

assembly globally all together, every two
months. And the assembly every two months

locally for our valley, are based on
formal consensus method. This means that

we trained us to stay in the consensus
area. We know that the agreement are based

in balance between a relationship and
knowledge. We come all from a different

knowledge, because we are specialized in
different stuff and that we have to grow

together our relationship, so we can, we
try to stay in this area of consensus

knowing that we are different knowledge,
but I trust. We don't want to stay in

ananomity. We don't want stay always agree
all together, because there are a lot of

risk in that area. You can, in this area,
you grow the diversity. In that area, you

are doing echo chambers and you are doing,
you can do easily mistake in the unanimity

place. In the other, you find the low
trust and different knowledge. So you are

in dissent normally and you have of low
relationship, so low trust. But a full

agreement of what do you want for the
future? The only stuff that you can do is

take a technical agreement together. So
write really specific law. But we don't

want law, so we want the agreement and the
guideline. The other stuff are done by

trust, one with the other. So, told you
that we use formal consensus method, means

that in these distributed meeting, we have
shared agreements. We start with a base

ground that is that every assembly is
reported. So at the beginning of every

assembly, we choose a rapporteur, or more
than one, because sometimes there are

global assembly, that start at the morning
and finish in the evening. And so, we have

a time, a keeper for the speaker. And we
decide to put in our agreement that the

right to listen and to be listened and
that no meta conversation of the topic,

only everyone talk speak for herself.
Okay, we need that to communicate. And

when we started to think about the
communication, we speak with another

community that know better this stuff
about communication than us and we found,

and we know, because we share that same
the same political idea, with hackmeeting.

Hackmeeting is a community in Italy that
is anti fascist, anti racist and anti

sexist, and was born in the 90s also, that
the community and every year they meet in

different space, occupied space in Italy.
They are for the freedom in the

communication, and with a critical view
about technologies. So, we ask asked and

we discover a lot of self managed server,
and for first tools that we implemented in

the 2004, was our website.Yeah. And we
started with a lot of mailing list. The

first tool was mailing list and after, to
communicate outside in the group, we

started with this website hosted
autistici/inventati. That is one of the

older self managed server in Italy near
us, with a strong view about anonymity and

the privacy oriented for the user. The
communication are really, really

important. In group that live in the
countryside you live in different farm,

far from one from the other. And so
happened, that to use the mailing list,

all people need the connectivity. So, what
happened that if you based your

connectivity on a commercial companies and
your are in countryside, you discovered

that you are told: No, you are still far
from the city and we don't earn too much

enough to bring to you connectivity. And
so, we started to explore how to resolve

this problem. And we discovered that
exists yet a community that have thought

to this stuff and that yet existed a Pico
peer (Peer to Peer) agreement. And in Italy, we

meet ninux, ninux community that are
based, that shared us and teach us how set

mesh network. And so I show you a bit of
photograph. Our infrastructure is a small

and grow really slowly, and is based, our
hardware are 15 people that want stay

connected, one with the other, and
understood that the broadcasting

connection is nice, is really lighter, use
5Ghz point to point antenna, to do point

to point connection and so the cost to
stay, to learn and to do maintain that

network is an effort that they can do. And
we found also for people more technician

that help, is like help to install Linux,
but here we install OpenWrt. And after

that people know how maintain and take
care, they in freedom their PC. And in

this case, antenna. We use all super
proprietary hardware that we change the

firmware and we use tp-link ubiquity but
we are switching to an open hardware

project that is LibreRouter, and as
software we use LibraMesh, libremesh.org.

That is a project, that is a bundle of
configuration open over OpenWrt. And that

use a different protocol like babeld and
batman adv. But yeah, the topic of them is

make easier this stuff for the user, and
they do. So, we have a blog

antennine.noblogs.org. That where we take
the documentation of this stuff. We think

a lot about technology. Also think, why we
are adopt technology. And so we started to

deploy a feminist view about technologies.
Means, that we thinks that every

technologies is an effort. When someone
told to you, that this technology is

smarter, sometime is because is not the
considering the entire cycle of life of

that technologies. And so looking a lot in
the technologies that everyone this moment

is doing advertisement about technologies:
hey use this, is easy. We think: ok no,

stop. Stop. Is better wait and think what
do we are doing. So we think that it's

important not to do the things alone,
because you became the point of failure of

your of your community. To be resistant
you need to do this stuff with more

people, not start if you are alone, and
mix proficient people with newbie.

Contemplated the possibility of making
mistake and so, build the testing

environment before put the stuff in
production. Document everything to explain

the choice that you took, and that give
the time to yourself and to the other to

study, and not to be too much specialized.
Specialized brings people too easily to go

to burnout. It's better, if you trust
yourself in more than one topic and share

knowledge with the other. Not to go too
much in deep in one topic, because you

lost the entire view, and why you are
doing something. You are not pay for to do

this stuff for community, is a need for
community and is a richness of for

everyone of your community, in our view,
in our way that we do this stuff. So, we

start from our needs. We started to speak
about our digital data in 2016. This is a

meeting of a Genuino Clandestino. That is
the bigger network of self organized

farmers in Italy. And there are a lot of
different small communities that do, that

to grow vegetable and do direct sell in
shared public space. And we started to

speak about our digital data and we
decided, that we don't want to put in

Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple
space. We are anti GAFAM. And because

we are against the big distribution of the
food and also big distribution of the

data, we think that in this moment is
really important to take care of our

intimacies and our data. So we decided to
put in server and to run ourself these

services. And we spend a one hour, one
year to find a virtual private server.

Someone that host our digital place that
shared with us our policy, and we found in

France, in Toulouse, the tetaneutral.net.
That is inside of a bigger network that is

federated france data network and are
really important for us, because they, I

thinks that they do a good work, because
of they are for the neutrality, for

freedom of choice to the internet and with
budget based on donation of the community.

We've passed a lot of time to find, inside
our community of farmers, sysadmin and we

found, and we started to use the Nextcloud
as a free software to where host our data.

And we decide to start, we started in
March of this year, and we decided to

start to use only for administrative work.
So, only for 10 people of the group. And

after deciding if these are tool is OK for
our needs or not. If is not we will see

and we are just in time to go back and not
use. But at the moment, the stuff are

running good, and we are store in this
cloud the cards about our farmers. Because

we make everyone to enter in Campi Aperti
needs to be visited by another farmer, and

that to know the, how they grow vegetable
and the how they do organic stuff. And so,

we write dossier of ourself, and it's why
the website was not more enough. We need

private place where store this stuff, also
to decentralize the task that we have to

do. To distribute the task. And so, after
this one year of testing, we are planning

how to grow, okay. If all the stuff are
going good, we decide how to grow. And so

again, we decide to not to do this stuff
alone. We look around in a community near

to us and we decide again to adopt
something that is yet to use the body

(???) of community that is anti-fascist,
anti-racist and anti-sexist. That is

Autistici/Inventati. They change the
infrastructure this year and they moved

container infrastructure to have divided
the configuration, the specific

configuration, the configuration that you
can share with other and the software. All

this free stuff are managed by
minimalistic orchestrator container. And

that is called the FLOAT. And we find this
solution interesting, also because we

started with the other possibility of a
solution, and we saw that in this moment

there are huge software also open source,
that can resolve this problem. But

developed and used by huge open source
company that not really feed our needs. So, we

are interesting in this software, because
give static service allocation, like some

of these feature looks like not real, are
non feature for the needs of the

companies. But for us are, because we have
our community, so we have different needs.

So, how its work, quickly. Because yeah,
we are at the CCC, I have to show you

something of technical. So, we have a
specific genetic configuration, that we

versioning with GIT. We use Ansibel to
versioning our configuration and the

software, so the generic part, is builded
by the continuous integration that we have

on our decision Autistici/Inventati. That
is builded in a... we have a Docker

registry and build the Docker image. And
so, FLOAT deployed, running our Ansible

playbook, deploy the different Docker
image on the different machine. So, why

it's good for us? Because we can
versioning all the stuff, so we can also

do mistake but go back and we can deploy
on virtual machine, where we can do

testing and on the real production on the
real machine. This is, I thinks why we

thinks to adopt. Also, because we want not
use, we don't want to stay on a virtual

machine, we would like move on bare metal
and we trust to the group, these

orchestrator is only 1000 line of Python
code, and is written like, is Ansibl

plugin and we can use the double factor
authentication, universal two factor

authentication. That is good for us,
because if you have for the stuff that

your security is base, could be based on
how to do a token. So you have a security

in something of local, that you have to
keep. And in some integrated monitoring,

like Prometeus and Graphader (???). And
this feature, or non- feature is, that the

services go down when something fail. And
this is, for us, this is important. We are

not a company that have to stay 24 hour
up. We are a community that they want to

know, if something goes wrong with your
machine and if someone put physically the

hands on your machine. Yeah, this is, now
is the time of the question. Slow please,

the question, because I don't speak really
well English Andrea laughs you see now?

But also I don't understand really well.
And these is the long list of thanks and

all the community that I speak about.
There is also EclecticTechCarnival, that

is a feminist community, that pushed a lot
to me to arrive here to explain this stuff

to you. And thanks.

applause

Herald Angel: Thank you very much for the
great talk. It was very, very interesting.

We still have 10 minutes for questions and
answers. If you have questions, just move

to the three microphones in the room, and
then we're going to have you ask your

questions. So, we start with microphone
number two. Very slow in English, please.

Andrea: Yes.
Mic 2: Thank you very much for the talk. I

have a question. The customers, do they
pay in advance for a year or do they pay

at the market?
Andrea: Ok. In Bologna, in Campi Aperti

experience is direct sell in the market.
So the co-producer, the consumer pay at

the moment. But we know that that is not
the perfect model and there are other

other experiment the city, in which Campi
Aperti and this group of farmer is

involved. And so, there is also Arvaia,
that is another group that the customer

pay in advance. And have a place, and also
work in fields, and take boxes every week.

And there is also another project, that is
Camilla and is based on... you are

associated and you have to work three
hours every month in a market. And there

is this market open for all the
association, all the people associated to

these. So, it is a city that is
experimented. But yes, for Campi Aperti,

you not pay in advance it. Only for, in
other projects.

Mic2: Is it okay if I ask something else?
Herald Angel: If it's... Well, I would

first take microphone number three. But if
you just stay there, I feel like there

would be still time for another question.
So, microphone number three, please.

Mic3: Yes. I have a question about
consensus. You mentioned that some level

of disagreement is not only acceptable,
but maybe good, because if everyone

agrees, then there is no discussion,
development and less trust. But what level

of disagreement is acceptable? Have you
tried different models, like how you

achieve this consensus?
Andrea: Yeah, we think that disagreement

is important to not hide problems. So
also, we put attention to not to say at

the end of a conversation we are all
agree, but for example, if someone of more

doubt and we have a formal way of a
consensus. So, to be sure that we are all

agree, we do an orientation, we call it,
and that means that you can divide the

group in three position. Active consent,
consensus with doubts but that you think

that trust is enough, so you are agree,
but you will be not active to do this

stuff. And the active dissensus, that
means, that the decision that are you

taking is against the principle and if you
put yourself in that position, you have to

explain to all the others and you have to
do again an orientation. But if you are

more than 20% of the people that stay in
active dissent, you have to re-discuss

all. So, became block, blocked.
Herald Angel: Great, thanks for the

explanation. That was very interesting.
Microphone number two, again.

Mic2: Thank you for your talk. I wanted to
ask whether you have any mechanism to help

people that want to become farmers,
especially to acquire new land.

Andrea: Hmm. Existed a project and now is
not the more active. We are sad, because

it's not more active and because this
project started from people that had these

need. And after they found the land and
say: ok, we have not more the time. And we

have, we not find again who put the time
in that project. And so, there is not a

real... process in which we help people to
became farmer. But, for example, the

mailing list is open. Everyone that
participated to the market can be says can

join the mailing list and also the
assembly and the meeting and so happen a

lot of time and that the people asked for
space in countryside so find information.

And the other stuff, that really change,
make the change is, that a lot of people

come in Campi Aperti asking us to do
transformation, to transform only the food

and this fact is not acceptable in Campi
Aperti. The people are not can only

transformate the food. We are, we do
practice for be independent from

capitalism for our food. And so you can't
ask only to transforme. So they... we ask

to these people to start a project to grow
vegetables and became a farmer. And so...

or started an active collaboration with a
group of farmer yet exist. And so in this

way started more people to live in
countryside.

Herald Angel: Thank you very much. Next
up, we have a question from the Internet.

Signal Angel: You seem to have gone really
far in doing a lot of things yourself. Do

you still rely on a lot of mainstream
technologies? Or did you re-implement

everything yourself?
Andrea: Do you...?

Herald Angel: Is everything self-made? Or
do you still rely on some mainstream

technologies? Is there something that you
use, that is mainstream capitalist, that

everybody else uses too? Like, you
mentioned that you don't use Google or

Facebook or something like that. Apart
from that, is that something mainstream

that you still use that you rely on?
Andrea: Yeah. We are not monopolistic.

Like, we have the basic communication
independant infrastructure, but yes, some

of them are, we are not the direct running
Autistici. We are based that on self-

managed servers. So, same community that
the shared with us a political topic, but

in that way we are not running the
service. We are not running the service.

To communicate that we use the Website and
the mailing list, so we have our

independent communication, but there is
not... we not avoid people of us that use

also commercial instrument or commercial
such network. All this stuff is only that

we don't trust that too much, that way of
communication will be really useful when

when we need. Or...
Herald Angel: All right. Another question

from microphone number two, please.
Mic2: Hi. Thank you for your presentation.

In your presentation, you mention dossier
written by farmers about the other

farmers, and farmers visiting other
farmers. I wanted to ask, these dossier,

what kind of information do they collect
and how are they used? I mean, what's the

purpose of the dossier and what
information do they collect?

Andrea: Okay. Is the protocol of shared
warranty. And so, a person that want enter

in Campi Aperti from the website, can ask
to be visit and starter to fill a form and

fill dossier, these cards. And after,
these cards go to the people, assembly of

that valley, the valley where this farmer
come from and decide when do the visit. So

this visit is reported to the next
assembly. And who did the the visit say,

what this person wrote in the card is a
true or not true. And so, also here you

have a, you have the weight of trust, of
the whole much trust of the words of a

person that asked to enter, and we
store this card, this dossier and we

print. We print and we put physically on
the desk when people do the market.

Because it's really important that people
that come to buy the stuff, know where and

if we want to go also to visit the
producer. And also, because I told you

that the some of that organic stuff are
organic, but not that with the

certification by the state. And also a lot
of the stuff that are transformed are

inside of the campaign Genuino
Clandestino. That means that are

transformed, handmade, but the out of the
law. And so you need that, that people are

well-informed, who buy this stuff.
Mic2: Ok, so...

Herald Angel: Sorry. Sorry. I'm very
sorry. But we don't have time for a back

up questions. Also, I'm very sorry, I
would have loved to have the person who

ask the first question also have like,
asked the last question, but we ran out of

time. But I'm sure that you can still
catch Andrea after the talk and ask

whatever questions were not answered. So,
first of all, thanks for all of your very

interesting and clever questions and also
thank you very much, Andrea, for the great

presentation. Please give another big,
warm round of applause for Andrea. Thank

you very much.
Andrea: Thanks, see you.

applause

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