Open as in Farming

OE Sharing Zone
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At the end of one of our meetings this week with Andrés Segura-Castillo (UNED, Costa Rica) we returned to hearing a favorite bit of updates from him. Andrés lives on a rural property in Costa Rica deploying sustainable land practices. I always enjoy asking him stories about his herd of goats.

We focus here much on the opens of education, software, data, science, publishing, but there are more broad uses out in the world, for example in farming and ranching.

An open rectangular metal frame mounted on metal wheels sits in an open field, through the frame is a tractor driving towards the horizon
An open rectangular metal frame mounted on metal wheels sits in an open field, through the frame is a tractor driving towards the horizon800×554 174 KB

Farming Framed flickr photo by cogdogblog shared into the public domain using Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0)

As Andrés described the care of his goats and funny stories of them escaping an enclosure to eat plantains, it reminded me of a message earlier this year from longtime, tech oriented friends in Colorado (USA) who run a ranch that specializes in the breeding and care of a rare black Welsh sheep type.

My friends had developed themselves a technology using RFID chips attached to the sheep’s collars that they had made an Android app for reading data and recording vital health data for each sheep, all very important in their breeding program. They recently shared that their original software was now a more generalized one, and one that is completely open source.

The project is called AnimalTrakker

The purpose of AnimalTrakker® is to provide software and data analysis tools that aid in the management of livestock. Our mission is to bring animal management solutions to all who work with animals, whether veterinarian, small farmer, or commercial rancher. Our goal is to make it easier for you to provide your animals with a healthy and comfortable life, all while they provide food, fiber, and other products for human use. Currently, AnimalTrakker® can track sheep, goats, cattle, horses, donkeys, and pigs.

AnimalTrakker® is free and built from open-source, transparent, easily audited software. We feel that every user should be able to edit and modify the software to suit their specific needs. We believe in a future free from control, overreach, and excessive monetization, and AnimalTrakker® is our commitment to that future.

This is very much the spirit of openness, right? Developed by specialists, using existing open source components and then shared back? The software is available on GitLab plus a very comprehensive set of support materials (that leads me to see this is put on the web using the Obsidian notes platform and published with its built in Obsidian Publish, neat discovery on the side).

I’ve had the chance to visit and stay at Desert Weyr Ranch several times, the sheep are amazing! Okay I can brag that one of my CC license photos appears on the front page of the AnimalTrakker site.

In a field of tall grass, a pair of black sheep stare out to the left, one on the right with a blade of grass in its mouth. They both had ID tags on their ears and more sheep are visible behind them.
In a field of tall grass, a pair of black sheep stare out to the left, one on the right with a blade of grass in its mouth. They both had ID tags on their ears and more sheep are visible behind them.799×533 104 KB

Bahhhhhhhhhhhh Yeah flickr photo by cogdogblog shared under a Creative Commons (BY 2.0) license

While exploring the AnimalTrakker site I found or just got curious about more examples, and landed on FarmOS

farmOS is a web-based application for farm management, planning, and record keeping. It is developed by a community of farmers, developers, researchers, and organizations with the aim of providing a standard platform for agricultural data collection and management.

The farmOS server is built on top of Drupal, which makes it modular, extensible, and secure. The farmOS Field Kit app provides offline data entry via a progressive web app (PWA) at farmOS.app.

Both are licensed under the GNU General Public License, which means they are free and open source. All code is available in the farmOS GitHub organization.

There is a I bet a whole raft of open source tools developed by people who work the land.

So I am curious to hear of more examples of open source or just open practices in other corners outside our usual aim towards education, beyond the open source developer specialists. I know there are many in the health sector.

Where do you see examples of open source in every day practical application?

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Thank you for sharing this inspiring story. It’s always refreshing to see how openness extends far beyond the educational and technical spaces we usually talk about.
The examples you highlighted—especially AnimalTrakker and farmOS—show how open-source tools can make a real difference in daily life, particularly in agriculture and animal care.

I’m especially impressed by how these projects combine deep practical knowledge with open-source values, and then give the results back to the community. This is openness at its best: useful, transparent, and built for real-world impact.

In my own experience, I’ve seen similar open approaches in areas like sustainable development, community projects, and even small-scale environmental monitoring. These tools often empower people who don’t have access to expensive commercial solutions, which makes them even more valuable.

I’d love to see more examples like the ones you mentioned, especially from farming and rural innovation. Thank you again for opening this window into a different world of openness.

Best regards
Wisal Alim
Sudan :sudan:

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I just remembered another example. I have been living with Type 1 diabetes since I was 7, and I remember some 10 years ago reading about a diabetic who had hacked together their own technology as an “artificial pancreas” combining an insulin pump connected to devices the measure blood sugar levels.

The story was that major companies that profit from the money made in diabetes care systems kept pressure on not to allow more devices to come on the market or want to control the prices (that’s just my memory" but organize under the hashtag "WeAreNotWaiting as in “We are not waiting for government or commercial entities to create the health care we need”.

See for example

There is the Nightscout Foundation that supports and organizes efforts by people building their a suite of open source medical devices for diabetes care. NightScout is just one:

Nightscout (also known as CGM in the Cloud) is an open-source cloud application used by people with diabetes and parents of kids with diabetes to visualize, store and share the data from their Continuous Glucose Monitoring sensors in real-time. Once setup, Nightscout acts as a central repository of blood glucose and insulin dosing/treatment data for a single person, allowing you to view the CGM graph and treatment data anywhere using just a web browser connected to the internet.

There are several parts to this system. You need somewhere online to store, process and visualize this data (a Nightscout Site), something to upload CGM data to your Nightscout (an Uploader), and then optionally you can use other devices to access or view this data (one - or more - Follower).

Also related is The Open Artificial Pancreas System project (#OpenAPS)

The Open Artificial Pancreas System project (#OpenAPS) is an open and transparent effort to make safe and effective basic Artificial Pancreas System (APS) technology widely available to more quickly improve and save as many lives as possible and reduce the burden of Type 1 diabetes.

OpenAPS means basic overnight closed loop APS technology is more widely available to anyone with compatible medical devices who is willing to build their own system.

We believe that we can make safe and effective APS technology available more quickly, to more people, rather than just waiting for current APS efforts to complete clinical trials and be FDA-approved and commercialized through traditional processes. And in the process, we believe we can engage the untapped potential of dozens or possibly hundreds of patient innovators and independent researchers and also make APS technology available to hundreds or thousands of people willing to participate as subjects in clinical trials.

These are all efforts using the ideas of open source / open access / open data but also are able to organize and coordinate efforts via the open internet.