Hello 2017, you doing anything after work?

Great insight...I'd certainly explore the possibilities

What's the next step with sunless? Also have you heard of Songhai farms? My pops is really interested in sustainable farming combined with integrated living, any way we can rope him in?

@osioneitegboje - Next step for Sunless is to finalise the org structure (responsibilities, user funding & member responsibilities, requirements for starting etc) & proposal so one can pitch.

Yup! Heard about Songhai and going to get some info from them for sure (also interested in their seeds library). Part of planning & research phase (also heard that their installations here are not as successful as the one outside I know of, so I am curious about whether that is true, and if it is, why.)

Once I have finished putting together and compiling the various docs (org design, cash flow templates and calculators, our farm design library and so on), we can definitely bring your dad onboard! Will be more tangible as a program he can be part of and either use our info packs to set up his own farm(s) and connect to the 100 Farms framework or have us set up one for him.

Excellent. I've heard there's a Songhai in Phc and my aunt was just telling that it's as "good" because of "government". I didn't prod but she added that the "policy landscape" in Benin 🇧🇯 is a reason for the success there.

Are you considering any existing or potential policies here that may be relevant to the 100 farms initiative?

@osioneitegboje Part of our business planning is definitely going to take into account any government policies that will be beneficial (or disadvantageous) to the initiative, but to be honest, I am really trying to avoid government input or dependencies as much as is humanly possible.

Beyond ensuring that we can pay our taxes on time, we don't break any laws (regulations regarding agriculture in city environments is something I am looking into - if you know anybody I could talk to that would be amazing!), and we can take advantage of any tax breaks with regards to output or importing/exporting, I don't think we require much from the government.

I believe Songhai operates as a traditional not-for profit in that it depends on donations and direct financial support from government. There are quite a few Songhai farms in Nigeria - including one in my state I will be going to visit soon and even in Lagos apparently - but like most initiatives that involve government buy-in, lack of interest and corruption have sabotaged them. I also believe that Songhai's model is primarily focused on experimentation and skills acquisition, I am not sure what (if they have one at all) their commercial model is.

I'll connect you with Irede, who's at the ministry of Agric. Great guy.

I've had a couple of conversations around agriculture before, and the biggest problems in agriculture seem to be around transport and particularly storage.

Hi @aikomoopemipo and welcome to the Dyad Network :).

You are right that logistics and storage are major problems plaguing agriculture here and everywhere else really. These two issues are partly solved inherently due to the model we are using for most of the farms in the 100 Farms framework.

Transportation issues are reduced or eliminated completely when one is farming close to or right at the point of sale (local urban neighbourhood or close to urban centre where shops and restaurants are) and that is exactly what we want to do with this idea of taking the farm to the place where it should produce is needed.

Secondly, storage is also not as much of an issue since we are planning on using a system of customer stakeholding and preorders to immediately match yield with demand, only growing as required based on purchase. The kinks and specifics are being ironed out, but we will be putting up the business plan, along with the designs for the various modular farms we are designing on the 100 Farms repository and it will be available via a copyfair license (copyfair instead of copyright meaning that our designs will be in the open source domain, and available for free for not-for-profit and/or profit-focused use as long as any edits are also made available via copyfair and advancements are shared; profit oriented private or public companies will need to pay a fee) so hopefully the model will propagate.

The idea is to rethink, redesign and reposition farming methodology to be more sustainable (environmentally and financially), empowering (via democratic decision making, ownership and community structures), a source of food commons (food as a commons instead of a commodity!) in urban environments.

@yegwaukpo We built some basic hydroponics systems, the plans for which I could share with you. Also check out http://farmlondon.weebly.com/ co-founder Paul Smyth is indirectly part of the MLN network.

To your original post:

I am launching a utilitarian furniture label called Meta. We are working on a platform for collective ownership but as of yet do not have an appropriate model.
Any suggestions or rough frameworks would be appreciated - www.meta.thingking.co.za

I am interested in how people engage with the idea of the future and how we might remain optimistic (also about acknowledging the good in ‘now’). Art is arguably almost always created with the intention of influencing the future so I have tentatively signed on to create a mid-year exhibition that discusses/ gathers feedback on some of these ideas. Increasingly I am beginning to wonder whether the way in which the works are created is a prototype or ‘testing’ of collaborative platforms that showcase new ways of thinking about making things.

The value of personal myths; the possibility of creating new sacred rituals out of contemporary life/artefacts and a general endorsement of agnostic approaches (which balances opposing outlooks), will all come into the project in some way. I will be looking for individuals whose works speak to some of these ideas.

@lyall have you checked out Fairshares? They have an interesting ownership model that is open source that you might want to check out. Enspiral also has an interesting model you can check out here which has their agreements doc as part of that.

I have also been very keen on the Open Cooperative framework - i.e. creating not-for-profit worker/customer cooperatives that are focused on the creation of commons. Not sure if this is what you are looking for.

We should continue our conversation regarding personal myth actually. There is an amazing podcast I discovered recently called Gods & Radicals that has quite a bit of old fashioned pagan myth building. This episode in particular was really spine chilling.