“Schumacher Conversations: Envisioning the Next 50 Years” continued in July with a focus on the role of human-scale technologies in community economic development. Video of “Developing Convivial Technologies for Right Livelihood” is now available on our website and YouTube.
John Chettleborough of Practical Action joined Dorn Cox of Wolfe’s Neck Center and Toby Hammond of FuturePump in conversation. Sebastian Wood, Managing Director of Whitby Wood and grandson of E.F. Schumacher hosted this trio of change-makers.
Introducing the panel, Sebastian began by invoking that great advocate of human-scale technologies, his grandfather. Fritz’ remarkable gifts, he said, made him a fount of hope “real hope, not wishful thinking—practical, decent, human-scale ideas that give us hope for better lives and a better world…”
Drawing our attention to inspiring innovations in the here and now, our participants met their mark: revealing hopeful paths worth treading, uncertain as the way ahead may appear.
Highlights from our July Conversation
John Chettleborough shares a systems approach to appropriate development
Our first speaker provided an introduction to the inspiring work of Practical Action, the organizational descendent of E.F. Schumacher’s Intermediate Technology Development Group. Over decades of work across Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia, he explains, Practical Action’s approach to development has evolved. Intermediate technologies, such as light-weight solar generators, remain a kay piece of their interventions. But as John said, there is a need to “go beyond tools alone to address interrelated challenges.”
This whole systems approach also calls for “soft” skillsets, such as human geography, group facilitation and market development. John’s illustrative examples included a project in Kenya concerning the marketability of tomato crops, which he called “the most exciting thing I’ve done in my time at Practical Action.” The tech—in the form of solar-powered refrigeration—forms part of the solution. But he also highlighted an innovative “rent-to-own” infrastructure model as well as diverse stakeholder engagement, bringing various local interests together in a way that builds collaboration and trust to bridge market gaps.
“What you’re starting to see… is a system in which there are incentives for different actors—government, the private sector, farmers— to adopt a different form of economic development: one that’s good for the planet, and good for people…
That’s when you really start to see how we can achieve Schumacher’s vision.”
Dorn Cox on Cultivating Our Shared Intellectual Commons
There are many voices today decrying “run-away technology,” but comparatively few critics offering an alternative pathway grounded in practical realities. Dorn Cox is one of the exceptions, and his remarks convey his vision and experience in building tools with liberatory potential— what he calls “technologies for autonomy.”
Dorn and his collaborators have channeled their energies into two unique projects that respond to problems in the field of regenerative agriculture. First came Farm Hack: a worldwide community of farmers that build and modify open source tools, building a commons of blueprints and associated best practices for do-it-yourself equipment, such as a pedal-powered thresher. Next came FarmOS, building on the open-sourced concept to provide a web-based application for farm management, planning, and record keeping. This “commonwealth of tools and access to information” enables cross-pollination among local experiences within a decentralized learning network. “It’s about linking this global knowledge to local production and food sovereignty,” he says.
“As Howard Buffet said, each individual [farmer] has 40 seasons to learn…but if we connect with another thousand individuals, we have 40,000 seasons to accelerate our learning…
What does it look like to create a platform for multi-generational learning and endeavor for environmental stewardship?”
Schumacher’s vision for independence, Dorn emphasized, continues to be relevant: calling us to renewed action and recovery of our collective capacities for self-governance.
Toby Hammond provides a look inside a convivial technology startup
Silicon Valley has popularized one idea of a technology startup founder: as one who “moves fast and breaks things.” The founder of Futurepump—a mission-led manufacturing firm which has distributed some 16,000 remote, solar-powered water pumps for farmers, mostly in the Global South—defies that convention.
Part of the firm’s success, Toby explains, is thoroughly Schumacherian. The product’s design, for example, is deliberately simple, enabling the pumps to be self-servicable in the field. In their experience, he explained, “making something simple is much harder than making something complicated.” Manufacturing is located in India, where workers are also able to have a stake in operations through an employee-ownership scheme.
There are aspects that don’t fit the “classic” criteria of appropriate technology. Early on, Futurepump attempted local production in multiple countries where the pumps are distributed. Yet, as Toby details, modern advances in precision manufacturing have made a single-factory focus too valuable to pass up—at least in the firm’s current stage.
Still, supply chain vulnerability is a lesson Toby has not lost sight of since 2020. In a warming world, he warns, “we should expect shocks…[the] complexity of everything is an increasing problem.” Perhaps at some point, he mused, final assembly of the pumps might take place closer to points of end-use.
The next 2023 Schumacher Conversation, “Implementing U.B.I.: Meeting Needs Unconditionally,” will take place Thursday, August 17th at 2:00 PM Eastern time. Featuring:
- Peter Barnes, author of Ours and Who Owns the Sky?
- Herb Stephens of Democracy Earth Foundation
- A third participant to be announced
The Conversation will be hosted by Agatha Bacelar, member of the Schumacher Center’s Board of Directors and a former Congressional primary candidate. Additional participants will be announced soon. Register for this upcoming event below.