rizomanet
Connecting people who look after land with people who would like to help
Small farms and land projects often need more hands than they have at particular moments of the year, and many people would love to help, learn and spend time on the land but don't know where to start or whom to ask. rizomanet brings them together.
Hosts — farms, orchards, market gardens, woodland and community projects — post work days, such as a harvest, a planting day or a building weekend, and keep a list of jobs that need doing whenever someone can. Volunteers say what they can do and when, sign up, and get in touch. Along the way, everyone shares food, knowledge and company.
Mutual aid, built on trust
rizomanet is mutual aid, not a marketplace: no money changes hands through the site, nothing is sold and there are no adverts. It is built on trust rather than strangers and ratings. Membership is by invitation from someone who knows you, you can see who has met whom in person, and your contact details stay inside the network.
No central server
There is no company behind it and no central server. rizomanet runs on a few small computers at the farms themselves, each holding a copy of the network. When a farm's internet is down, people there can still use it, and changes travel between farms later — over the internet, on a USB stick, and in future by radio. There is no tracking, and members can download or delete everything about themselves at any time. It is free and open-source software, so any group can run it for itself.
Who
rizomanet is part of Zavod Rizoma's Permatech initiative, instigated by Maja Pan and Rob Canning.