Terran Collective + OpenTEAM Partner on Open Source Community Platform to Support Soil Health and Regenerative Agriculture
Terran Collective is partnering with the Open Technology Ecosystem for Agricultural Management (OpenTEAM) to create a free and open source digital community platform for farmers, ranchers, and the regenerative agriculture movement on Hylo. Together with the OpenTEAM community and input from Regen Foundation, Terran is designing new features to extend the community platform to support people improving soil health and advancing agriculture’s ability to become a solution to climate change.
The long-term goals of this partnership are to activate community among food producers and between producers and the public, to connect people to their bioregions, and to channel a greater flow of resources toward growers who want to engage in ecological regeneration — in order to build resilient local food systems and realize tangible benefits like improved soil health and carbon drawdown.
“As a land steward, it is important to find others working on similar challenges, be inspired by those trying something different, and be able to communicate with purchasers and markets,” said Dr. Dorn Cox, Project Lead of OpenTEAM and Research Director at Wolfe’s Neck Center for Agriculture and the Environment. “When developed and integrated into the OpenTEAM ecosystem, this platform will unlock a lot of opportunities to access new markets, knowledge, and technical support from our peers.”
The Terran team led OpenTEAM’s Community Platform Collabathon series in autumn 2021, where farmers, technologists, and advocates for equity and rights of nature collaborated to identify what community tools are needed most. The focus was to create ways for producers to easily connect with similar growing operations for mentorship, collaboration, and even market opportunities in the transition to regenerative practices, through the design of new features on Hylo. Participants include representatives from Wolfe’s Neck Center for Agriculture and the Environment, Regen Foundation, Regen Network, Terra Ethics, Open Rivers, and the California Farm Demonstration Network.
“As a place-based organizing platform for networked groups, Hylo is uniquely positioned to facilitate the growth of relationships in the agriculture community,” shared Clare Politano, Hylo’s Product Lead. “We hope this platform will connect land stewards and the people who support them to the larger regenerative movement.”
Designed for collaboration within and across organizations, Hylo helps groups break out of silos to coordinate as movements and meet the challenges of our time. The platform offers web and mobile apps with discussions, requests, offers, resources, projects, events, a geographic map, member directories, and direct messaging.
OpenTEAM is a farmer-driven collaborative community of food producers, scientists and researchers, technologists, farm service providers, and food companies that are co-creating an interoperable suite of tools that provide farmers around the world with the best possible knowledge to improve soil health. OpenTEAM offers field-level carbon measurement, digital management records, remote sensing, predictive analytics, and input and economic management decision support in a connected technology toolkit that reduces the need for farmer data entry. This tech ecosystem supports adaptive soil health management for farms of all scales, geographies and production systems.
Founded in 2019 by Wolfe’s Neck Center for Agriculture and the Environment, Stonyfield, Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research, and USDA’s Land PKS, OpenTEAM has since grown to include 250 community members, 45 member organizations, and 15 Hub farms and ranches who are testing OpenTEAM’s suite of tools on the ground.
As OpenTEAM continues to build out its network, interested farmers, ranchers, scientists, technologists, organizations, and businesses are encouraged to connect with OpenTEAM via their monthly newsletter. You can learn more by exploring their website and finding them on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
Interested in learning more and joining with other individuals and networks committed to regenerative agriculture? Get future updates on this Hylo-hosted OpenTEAM Community Platform.
