Farmers Who Code - Part Three

Tim Hammerich

News Reporter

This week we’ve been reporting on farmers who are solving their own problems with digital solutions by programming their own software. But that’s only part of the story. The important component is that they’re not doing it alone. These farmers are forming open source communities to tackle challenges together. Here’s Alberta farmer Brian Tischler.

Tischler… “There's nothing more powerful than a group of humans trying to address a problem or wanting a feature. Everybody in a room together thinking and solving a problem, coming from all these different directions. You know, you have those people working together, but now with the internet, we can make that room as big as we want. And if we have now thousands and thousands of farmers looking at a problem or testing software, whether that becomes weed control, tramlines, you know, like traffic-controlled farming, people do that in Canada because people were doing it in Australia. The collection of ideas and that network of ideas coming together, you know, inspires more and more thought. So when we talk about an open source community, we're talking about a developmental group of like-minded people trying to improve a product.”

Tischler’s open source community is called AgOpenGPS.