Rewilding the Field
GrowGood as a Digital Commons
There are paddocks in Western Australia’s wheatbelt — tens of thousands of hectares — where the soil crusts white in summer. Salt. The farmers who cleared the mallee scrub for “improved” pasture in the mid-20th century didn’t intend disaster. The short-term arithmetic made sense: clear the deep-rooted native vegetation, plant shallow-rooted annual crops, harvest, repeat. For a generation, it worked. Then the watertable rose. Without the native root systems drawing it down, the groundwater — laden with salt from ancient seabeds — climbed toward the surface. It poisoned paddocks. It killed trees. It sterilised soils that had grown native plants for millennia. Roughly two million hectares of Australian farmland carry this legacy. Not from malice. From simplification.
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Logos & GrowGood: Community Owned Economies
Guest Podcast with Host Sterlin Lujan
Introduction What does a post-capitalist economy look like, and where does value actually live? In this deep-dive session from the Logos Thursday X Space, heterodox economist and monetary theorist Leanne Ussher joins host Sterlin Lujan to explore the frontier of community-owned economies. The conversation traces a fascinating lineage of economic experimentation—from the Wörgl “miracle” during the Great Depression and the Sardex network in Sardinia to modern-day implementations like Will Ruddick’s Sarafu currency in Nairobi’s Kibera slum. Moving beyond theoretical frameworks, this discussion focuses on practical applications: mapping material, ecological, and human flows to reclaim value that mainstream economics is built to ignore.
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GrowGood Mycelium
Part 1: Economics of the Digital Commons
GrowGood is an ambitious open-source digital platform built to empower farmers to reorient their practice towards regenerative agriculture. We are part of a movement and a broader shift toward planetary civics grounded in what Zehra Zaidi & Indy Johar (2024) describe as two defining realities: Firstly, there is an awakening of planetary consciousness regarding the scale of planetary challenges. Groups of stakeholders have recognised that there is finite time to correct destructive pathways and have begun to experiment and generate new propositions. Secondly, in computational advancements we may finally have the tools to match the scale of planetary challenges and build bold, ambitious models of care to repair and sustain our planet which can provide new insights and ways of thinking, being, learning and self-learning.1
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Breaking the Digital Fenceline: A Smarter Foundation for Farm Operations
How Open Standards and Trust are Reshaping AgTech
Part 1 - How Open Standards and Trust are Reshaping AgTech There’s a buzz in the air, a hum of servers mingling with the smell of rain on dry earth. The conversation, happening everywhere from investment boardrooms to the local pub, is about the “Agricultural Operating System”—the Ag OS. It’s a slick vision, often painted by venture capital, of an AI-driven, seamlessly integrated technological revolution that will finally “solve” the farm.
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Doughnut Economics and GrowGood
Aligning Farm Management with a Thriving Planet
Introduction Kate Raworth’s “Doughnut Economics” presents a compelling model for 21st-century prosperity, one that rejects the endless pursuit of GDP growth in favour of a more balanced goal. The “Doughnut” itself is a visual framework representing a safe and just space for humanity. It consists of two concentric rings: The Social Foundation (Inner Ring): This outlines the basic standards of living—such as food, water, housing, and political voice—that no one should fall below. The Ecological Ceiling (Outer Ring): This represents the nine planetary boundaries, such as climate change and biodiversity loss, that humanity must not overshoot to protect Earth’s life-support systems. The goal is to operate within the Doughnut’s green ring: the space where we can meet the needs of all people within the means of the living planet.
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A New Future for Farming: How GrowGood Measures What Matters
How open data and ValueFlows are cultivating collaboration, sustainability, and fair economies
The sun is rising over Barb’s market garden as she plans the day’s work. With a cup of coffee in hand, she knows today’s harvest is more than just fresh produce. It’s about getting good food to local families, improving the soil for next year’s crops, and building a business that will last. This isn’t just a romantic ideal; it’s the future GrowGood is being designed to help build, one where every action on the farm contributes to a verifiable, transparent, and fair economic and ecological story.
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