Roman is CEO of UrbanFarmers AG, a pioneering Spin-off from the University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW) in Wädenswil that aims to bring sustainable urban agricultural practices into cities of the 21st century.
Using wikis and digital fabrication tools, TED Fellow Marcin Jakubowski
is open-sourcing the blueprints for 50 farm machines, allowing anyone to
build their own tractor or harvester from scratch. And that's only the
first step in a project to write an instruction set for an entire
self-sustaining village (starting cost: $10,000).
Declaring that, "We can lead self-sustaining lives without
sacrificing our standard of living," Marcin Jakubowski believes that
only by opening the means of production can we achieve abundance for
all. Though he has a Ph.D. in fusion physics, he became dissatisfied
with its remoteness, and turned back to the earth as a farmer and social
innovator.
He is the founder of Open Source Ecology,
which is creating the Global Village Construction Set — the blueprints
for simple fabrication of everything needed to start a self-sustaining
village. At Factor e Farm in rural Missouri, he's been successfully
putting those ideas to the test. www.opensourceecology.org.nyud.net
"It's not reinventing the wheel; it's open-sourcing the wheel."
Roman is CEO of UrbanFarmers AG, a pioneering Spin-off from the University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW) in Wädenswil that aims to bring sustainable urban agricultural practices into cities of the 21st century.
