Archive for the 'economy' Category

Life in a modern village

Published January 15, 2010 Texada , agriculture , community , economy , farming , sustainability Leave a Comment

By Tom Read

Minor ball players and their coaches gather at the ball field in Van Anda, a de facto village commons (firehall in the background). Photo taken a few years ago.

On Texada Island we often speak of Gillies Bay and Van Anda as “villages.” A few evenings ago I happened across a book at the Texada Library entitled Life in a Medieval Village, by Frances and Joseph Gies. Their book describes the evolution of villages from antiquity, and provides great detail about the English Midlands village of Elton as it was approximately 700 years ago. Elton still exists as a modern village, but it is completely different in function from medieval times. To quote the Gieses:

In the modern world the village is merely a very small town, often a metropolitan suburb, always very much a part of the world outside. The ‘old fashioned village’ of the American nineteenth century was more distinctive in function, supplying services of merchants and craftsmen to a circle of farm homesteads surrounding it.

The medieval village was something different from either. Only incidentally was it the dwelling place of merchants or craftsmen. Rather, its population consisted of the farmers themselves, the people who tilled the soil and herded the animals. Their houses, barns and sheds clustered at its center, while their plowed fields and grazing pastures and meadows surrounded it. Socially, economically and politically, it was a community.”

The modern village of Elton still has a few farmers and sheep, but its residents make a living by commuting to jobs in cities, including London, which is about 70 miles distant. Here on Texada, our villages include merchants, craftspeople and artists, but hardly any farmers. Some of our neighbours and almost all of our teenagers commute to jobs and school, respectively, in Powell River. Like Elton, we see gardens and orchards in many yards. A few cows graze on pasture in the centre of Gillies Bay, and chickens, including roosters, seem well represented, too.

Alas for anyone contemplating an increase in local agriculture, our villages appear to be surrounded by temperate rainforest and ocean, not fertile fields. Appearances can be deceiving, however. We may not look like the Midlands, but it turns out that Texada actually has plenty of agricultural land — the island once supported so many farms that we had our own Farmer’s Institute. So where have all the farmers gone?

One of the main reasons our island and its villages lack farmers today is that local farms could not compete economically with government-subsidized agribusiness. Thus, socially, economically and politically, it would appear that our Texada villages have evolved as mere outposts of global industrial life. That’s because we depend on the same life-support systems as mainlanders for our energy, food, transport, governance, communication, etc. Yet our small population (about 500 people per village; 1,100 for the island as a whole) gives us much closer-knit communities than would be possible in the suburbs or cities. We know each other by sight and reputation if not always by name or first-hand experience.

Medieval villages were especially noted for their permanence, according to the Gieses’ research in the book cited above. English agricultural villages often lasted hundreds of years. Through cooperative efforts they were resilient enough to survive war, pestilence and famine. The modern villages of Texada Island are relatively young (about 120 years for Van Anda and 60 or so years for Gillies Bay), and depend almost entirely for their existence on a global industrial system. Maybe someday we’ll see a book about Life in a Modern Village that describes a deliberate return to sustainable village agriculture accompanied by a diverse local economy, albeit without feudal overlords.

Rural illusion, real prosperity

Published January 9, 2010 Texada , economy , urban-rural interdependence Leave a Comment

By Tom Read

This is Gillies Bay on a summer's day a few years ago, looking towards Courtenay-Comox. At night you would see the glow of city lights across the water.

In last week’s post I mentioned that I was getting ready for a trip to Vancouver to fix a troublesome tooth. Because I live on Texada Island full time and seldom travel, I started thinking about the relationship of rural Texada to its surrounding metropolitan region. (By the way, I’m happy to report that the root canal — my first, and maybe last — went quite smoothly, and that Linda and I quite enjoyed our brief immersion in the urban hive.)

Anyway, the leisurely pace of ferry travel while homeward bound gave me time to contemplate the many existing relationships that link Texada to the coastal cities of BC and beyond. To name just a few that came to my mind:

– Biologists from the University of British Columbia and various other universities have been coming to Texada for decades to study our isolated and therefore uniquely evolved stickleback (fish) populations in local lakes;

– Many young men and women who grew up on Texada began looking beyond the island for wider opportunities while commuting to high school in Powell River, and then left the local area altogether after graduation. I’ve met more than a few of these young adults who still think of Texada as “home” even while they live and work in cities around the country;

– Millions of tons of limestone have been mined and shipped from Texada to various urban locations in North America, and hundreds of limestone-based products (including cement, steel, paint, food, medicines and plastics) are manufactured far away, then shipped all over the world. A small percentage of those products find their way back to Texada for use by local residents.

We are connected to cities so intimately that it’s a challenge to find specific instances of our rural island being entirely on its own. Yet because it feels so remote most of the time, I think that many Texadans, myself included, can get lost in an illusion of local independence. The illusion is fed by Texada’s abundant natural beauty; it seems like we are living in a coastal rainforest wilderness thousands of miles from cities like Vancouver.  In fact it’s literally on the horizon, and on a clear night you can see the glow of city lights to the south, the west (Courtenay-Comox) and the northeast (Powell River).

For the entrepreneurial-minded, there are economic opportunities inherent in our close proximity to cities.  City people need our natural beauty, safety and solitude, which is why various forms of tourism have played an important role in our economic life here for many decades. City people obviously need our industrial raw materials, particularly minerals and timber. If we could add value to those gifts of nature ourselves, then city people would find good use for made-on-Texada manufactured goods. And my special favourite is food, which is something everyone needs, and that we could produce a lot more of on Texada should we so desire.

Even in the midst of global economic changes, Texada is well-positioned to serve the needs of surrounding cities. We are certainly close enough, and water transport is the most energy-efficient on the planet. Once upon a time some Texadans even routinely rowed small boats across the Strait to visit Powell River. Many valuable relationships are built on such physical proximity. I believe that if we look beyond our rural illusion, a systematic review of existing and potential off-island relationships could point the way toward a new, very real — and possibly more sustainable — prosperity here.

What are you fighting for?

Published October 26, 2009 City of Powell River , Lehigh , Texada , community , conflict , conversation , economy , planning , public meeting 1 Comment

By David Parkinson

Waves

There are people wearing frowns
Who’ll screw you up
But they would rather screw you down.
(Arthur Lee, “You Set the Scene”, 1967)

A couple of recent events have got me thinking about how we’re supposed to start working together as a community in order to produce positive changes in the way we consume, travel, eat, and generally live our lives here in (possibly) the final hurrah of the growth phase of industrial civilization.

The first was the City of Powell River‘s public consultation meeting last Monday evening (October 19, 2009) at Dwight Hall in Powell River. This was an Open Space event where those present got to determine the agenda in the context of a shaping question, which in this case was something to the effect of “Given Powell River’s future economic uncertainty, we need to pay attention to…”. Attendees were invited to fill in the ellipsis at the end of that sentence, until we had gathered up three sets of twenty-five potential things we needed to pay attention to as we move into an uncertain future. Some of the subjects for discussion were very much on the economic side of things (e.g., taxes, rates of pay for City employees, the cost of transportation and shipping), while others were much more concerned with the general livability of the region (e.g., accessibility for people with physical disabilities, green space).

Once we had created the ‘agenda’ of topics for discussion, we had three sessions of about 20 minutes during which we were free to find the group discussing the topic we found most interesting and contribute to that conversation. At each of these groups someone was documenting the main threads of the conversation as a record of the event.

The subjects which struck me as most interesting were those which were oriented towards the creation of a resilient region: food security, local currency schemes, micro-credit and the spawning of many small businesses, better transportation options, and so on. Of course, as always happens at an Open Space event, there were more things to talk about than time in which to talk about them, so the attendees had to focus on the three conversations of greatest interest or urgency to them.

The first of the three conversations I took part in was on the topic of “focusing on where we are now rather than where we have been as a region”, and this drew a group of about ten people. It was clear that the person who had originally proposed that topic intended it to spark some creative thinking about how this region can move forward and prosper economically, even if we lose the large employer which has traditionally defined this community (i.e., the paper mill).

I was the designated note-taker for this group, and I quickly became overwhelmed as the conversation spiraled off into a heated debate over the best way to create wealth in the community: by bringing in a small number of large employers from outside the region, or by encouraging a large number of smaller employers to spring up from within the region. Then we went off into a tangent focusing on the merits (or not) of Plutonic Power‘s run-of-river project in Toba Inlet, and things got a little tense for a few minutes.

The thought that came to me, as I sat trying to distill the conversation into notes, was that in this culture we have very few good methods for identifying the challenges we face, for talking about these challenges honestly but respectfully, and for working together on good solutions even in the face of disagreement. Obviously, a group of ten random strangers are not going to solve the problems of the world — or even those of their own region — in a few short minutes; but what is always slightly sad to observe is how quickly we harden our positions and defend them against all contrary opinion or facts. We thrive on controversy and conflict, to the extent that many of us would rather rail against the wrongs we see than imagine a better future and work backwards to figure out the positive steps we can take now that might get us there. Opportunities for genuine dialogue tend to hit dead ends quickly and dissolve in mutual distrust.

There is nothing wrong with conflict arising from differences of opinion. What is unfortunate, and what is really damaging our prospects of designing a decent future, is that our main means for settling conflicts is by applying the principle “money talks”. Increasingly, the mechanisms we use to determine our direction as a society is by selling the decision to the highest bidder. Anyone with an alternative vision is free to stand on the sidelines and kvetch, but that’s about as far as dissent goes.

I believe that less kvetching and more positive action is what we need now. We could all spend the rest of our short precious lives identifying all of the things in this world which we abhor and working to overturn them — and any successes we had would be wiped out by any number of new atrocities to seize our attention. But what kind of life is it to be always pitted against, never fighting for? We are going to have to become better at imagining creative alternatives to all of the lousy idiot ideas destroying our world, ignoring as best we can the junk and the rottenness, and pushing forwards into our own dreams. We need to learn to work with those who hold different visions, when this is possible without sacrificing our vision and our dignity — this might not come around too often, but we need to continue looking for those opportunities.

Which brings me to the second event, which resonated with these reflections about conflict and conversation. From this week’s mailbag, someone writes in to say this about my colleague Tom Read, who helps manage this blog and contributes a weekly column:

He [i.e., Tom] is using your site as a soapbox to promote his vision which is highly inappropriate for Texada–his dominance on the site has discouraged other contributions, surely, you must know that on the logging stats, so SlowCoast has become non-relevant.   He supported the Westpac LNG plant and now the Texada South Quarry. So not the best eco stats.

Tom has publicly expressed his belief that the proposed quarry development at Davie Bay is a potentially critical piece of Texada’s economic future. For the record, he did not support the proposed liquid natural gas (LNG) terminal. If anyone wants to know more about Tom’s position, they can contact him easily enough. His opinion is nuanced and expresses his genuine concern for the fate of the place he calls home. And of course you can feel free to disagree with him. Sadly, though, it’s always seems to be more fun to make these intra-regional and inter-personal conflicts as black-and-white as possible; to start drawing up the list of enemies; and to backbite and shun the ideologically suspect. Perhaps our correspondent hopes that I will ditch Tom from Slow Coast so that my ‘logging stats’ (whatever the hell that might mean) will improve and Slow Coast once again becomes relevant. That won’t be happening. This project is an equal partnership and does not require a loyalty oath. I can’t ditch Tom anymore than he can ditch me — thankfully.

What I find especially irritating about this is that Tom has written directly about the Lehigh quarry proposal precisely one time, back on July 10, 2009. The rest of the time he writes about all kinds of things having to do with living on Texada: small-scale farming and animal husbandry, canning and food preservation, living in a remote location, and all sorts of other posts which I would file under the general heading of ‘sustainability’ or ‘regional resilience’. When he’s not writing for Slow Coast, he’s out there working on a number of worthwhile community projects. We need more of this; not mere ideological purity and monocultural thinking.

If anyone out there has something to say, please send your comments or your contributions. Better that than try to tear down the things you disagree with. This site is no one’s soapbox, but is intended to reflect the variety of opinions in the region. If we can no longer express our truths without someone trying to shut us down or shout us down, the conversation is over.

History

Published September 26, 2009 Texada , business , economy , history Leave a Comment

By Tom Read

Clarence Wood (left) and Dan Read discuss Texada history at an undisclosed old mine site on Texada Island.

Clarence Wood (left) and Dan Read discuss Texada history at an undisclosed old mine site on Texada Island.

Texada Island is generally known to possess a rich history, and yesterday I thoroughly enjoyed a brief, guided sojourn into our island’s past. Thanks to the generosity of local historian Clarence Wood, my father (visiting from St. Augustine, Florida) and I toured four old mine sites with Clarence, who provided a running commentary on each. Clarence also thoughtfully provided copies of old photos showing the very same mine sites as they appeared about a century ago.

We found remains of long-abandoned mining equipment and collected a few bits of colourful pyrite and iron-rich rock extracted long ago from various mines, and we used our imaginations to peer inside darkened old mine shafts that reach hundreds of feet underground. In the cool, bright sunshine of a late September morning, I felt the presence of all those working men who once built and operated these mines.

Human history on Texada goes back a lot further than its many old mines, of course. And mining wasn’t the only industry here a hundred years ago; forestry and agriculture also played important roles in the building of modern Texada. When I think about the history of this place, it helps me understand how much our island community today reflects the decisions and efforts of those who came before us. We have inherited a valuable infrastructure of buildings and transportation facilities from our history as a mining and forestry district, but we also still carry with us a less-obvious and not-so-beneficial status as a resource colony.

It’s true that a few local families, particularly the Beale family, built and operated mines on Texada. However, just as the provinces of ancient Rome were systematically exploited solely for the benefit of Roman aristocrats, Texada, and British Columbia itself, have a history of economic colonization by foreigners. For example, the mines we visited yesterday were originally built by Americans primarily to serve the American market. The metal ores and quick lime were shipped to the USA for further processing into what we now call “value-added products.”

Among the photos Clarence showed us yesterday was a posed shot of two well-dressed gentlemen standing in front of a recently-exposed rock face. These were the mine owners, come for a visit to their holdings on Texada Island. Locals provided the labour, and ultimately created a proud and strong community here, but they did it on an economic foundation provided by off-island capital investment and business management expertise, such as represented by the men in that photo.

Are there any lessons from our history that we might contemplate for our own future? Of the three quarries now operating on Texada, only one is effectively a local business. Very little value-added manufacturing occurs on Texada today, even compared to the early days of mining here. We might be grateful that the cement plants are located elsewhere, but what about other opportunities for making something useful from local resources? Do we have access to capital and business expertise locally, so that we might create a truly local economy?

History is not just about the past; it gives us our present and helps us think about our future.

The trouble with growth is that it keeps growing

Published September 14, 2009 corporatism , de-growth , decline , economy , growth 2 Comments

By David Parkinson

Fall-bearing golden raspberries; a gift from Robin Wheeler, now a gift from the garden

Fall-bearing golden raspberries; a gift from Robin Wheeler, now a gift from the garden

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.
(E.F. Schumacher)

As the 50-mile eat-local challenge winds down and we come closer to the annual Fall Fair, the end of summer looms on the horizon. Soon we will be in the thick of the wintertime: short wet days and long evenings and nights. Many people complain about the winters here on the coast, but I find it to be a good time of the year. The gardening and food preservation are done, everything is mulched, cover-cropped, or protected by a row cover from the relentless rains and cold winds. All the visiting and traveling slows down. It’s the time of year for retreating to the home, to the fireside, for the season of contemplation. Sometimes the summers here seem almost too frenzied, although once they start to fade into cooler and shorter days, you start to realize how many projects you somehow failed to get to. Oh well, you think, there’s always next year.

This summer felt like another watershed year for the local food movement. There was so much interest in the Edible Garden Tour that I’m already thinking about how to make it just that much bigger and better next year — without turning it into an unmanageable behemoth, just using it as a better way to bring people together around a shared interest in small-scale food growing. And my impression is that the Fruit Tree Project has grown considerably again this year: more fruit preserved; more people fed; less food wasted; and fewer bears led into temptation. The seed-saving pilot project sponsored by the Farmers’ Institute is coming to an end for this year, and it looks as though we’ll have plenty of carefully-raised local seed to share with the community at next year’s Seedy Saturday. The Garden to Table workshop series being sponsored through the Community Resource Centre in Powell River has been attracting good numbers of participants.

Recently, I was talking with someone about the upsurge in small-scale food production which is taking place not just here but all over North America. We were wondering to what extent this is motivated by awareness of peak oil or the frailty of the global food system; or by the economic downturn; or by less tangible motivations, such as a growing need to take control over parts of our lives which have been outsourced to corporations and gigantic impersonal systems. I’m not even sure that many of us could articulate our reasons for wanting to become more self-reliant. There’s a sense in which it’s just out there in the air we breathe these days: a feeling that the huge institutions which have taken care of our needs and wants are starting to fall into disrepair, joined with a fear that we have no clear Plan B for any of these, should they happen to fail. And the prospect of failure of the food supply is something that gets people moving pretty early.

I have noticed that there is a pretty rigid code of silence around the discussion of topics such as this. Even when you’re surrounded by like-minded people, it can be awkward to acknowledge that you are growing or storing food because you do not have complete faith in the future of the food supply. The urge to say nothing stems in large part from the power of the great myths which underlie the workings of the world we live in. One of the central ones for us is the myth of eternal growth. Somehow, against all rationality and in the face of everything we know about the natural world, we have come to believe that we can continue to keep growth going forever. Even when we accept we are pushed to the limit and we acknowledge that eternal growth is a fiction, we simply cannot see beyond the point where growth stops and becomes contraction. Nor can we imagine a society constructed around the idea of sufficiency or limit or moderation. A belief that there are limits to growth, and acting on that belief, are uncomfortable heresies best kept private.

In the domain of our food supply, this ethos of growth has led to a large and intricate system of production, processing, and transportation capable of managing the production of unimaginably huge quantities of staple foods around the world, getting them into a transportable and consumable form, and getting them to consumers. It’s a miracle of efficiency and productivity, so long as you don’t notice the waste and destruction hidden underneath the surface. There are real human and environmental costs associated with this system, costs which we mostly ignore — or, if forced to recognize them, we chalk them up to the usual minor inefficiencies that any large system will produce. And anyway, it’s not like we can see any real alternatives. Things grow. If something is good to begin with, then when it grows it’s better… right?

The goodness of Growth has become an almost unquestionable assumption at the base of our economy. Our economy is built on top of resource extraction and the production of goods carried out in the most rapacious and destructive manner, because to take anything less than everything is a sin against Growth. We cannot see how to get away from total resource extraction; if one company holds back in the interests of the environment, another will gladly step in and finish the job. The system of laws, norms, and social rules which define this culture have no way to express “less than everything”. And it’s not at all clear how, from within a culture of totalizing extraction and consumption, we can evolve a culture of sufficiency — one which can recognize limits and respect them in the interests of all people and other species. Some of us know we need to get there, but we can’t figure out how to get there from here.

I know that this doesn’t sound cheery. And this is another reason why we all find it hard to talk about these difficult truths. Who wants to be the ghost at the banquet? Not I. Not you. So we trundle onward, doing our best to question the foundational myths of a culture which shows every sign of heading off the rails, while trying not to question the small palliative measures which are acceptable enough to be rolled out in public (e.g., the “green economy”, “sustainable growth”, and so on), and feeling more and more alienated from a world built on top of what are intolerable and unsustainable practices.

It occurred to me recently, as I passed by one of our lovely local clearcuts, that one way we can more easily see the destruction caused by the normal workings of the growth economy is to ask the question: “If someone were doing this for free, what would we think of it?” Imagine that a community group sprang up whose purpose was to go out every weekend and cut down huge swathes of the forest in our back country. Would you join a social club which went out and dammed rivers just for the hell of it? How about raising funds so that we can contaminate the water supplies of First Nations communities with toxic chemicals? Maybe a telethon to send chemical fertilizers into the ocean where they will create an algae bloom visible from space? These are all repugnant ideas, aren’t they? Now if you imagine that these activities are carried out for the direct profit of a relatively small and élite group, then we are expected to accept them, to reward them, and to honour the men and women who do them. Our elected governments will use their full force to protect the right to engage in these activities. For now they are creating “economic development” and are beyond questioning. In fact, they are the fundamental activities — the rituals, if you like — around which we construct our world. We may acknowledge their ill effects, but when we put those in the scale and balance them against the unquestioned — unquestionable — benefits they bring to our economy, we have nothing to say.

Destruction redeemed by so-called economic benefits is a bad enough bargain when times are good and the limits to extraction are not in sight. But we now live in a time when those limits are slowly becoming visible. Despite some lingering controversy over the mathematical models, it is clear that we face the end of cheap petrochemicals by mid-century. The list of other endangered natural resources grows daily. It would have been good if we could have recognized natural limits to growth before hitting the crisis point, but there you have it. As a species, we have failed to exchange long-term crisis for short-term discomfort. We haven’t even been able to understand the terms of the exchange, and a lot of that is because we are in under the spell of Growth. Without growth, nothing makes any sense to us, so we choose not to think about the world beyond it.

So long as we remain stuck on the idea that there is no alternative to eternal growth; so long as we excuse the failings of corporatized large-scale production as minor glitches in an otherwise functional system; so long as we refuse to even imagine a steady-state economy which produces meaningful work and a reasonably fair distribution of good things; above all, so long as we allow ourselves to be silenced by the church of eternal growth — then there is not going to be a way out of the difficulties we find ourselves in. I’m going to take this up in future posts, since there are people out there beginning to talk about what a ‘de-growthed’ economy might look like, and how we can get there from here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.F._Schumacher

The challenges of a 50-mile diet

Published August 31, 2009 50-mile diet , Wendell Berry , eat-local challenge , economy , food security , local food economy , relocalization , resilience , solutions 6 Comments

By David Parkinson

Seeds of the red orach, one of the surprise hits of the Edible Garden Tour

Seeds of red orach, one of the surprise hits of our garden during the Edible Garden Tour

We learn from our gardens to deal with the most urgent question of the time: How much is enough?
(Wendell Berry)

We’re just about halfway through the 50 days of this year’s 50-mile eat-local challenge, which goes from Sunday August 9 until Sunday September 27. On August 9 we held the first ever Edible Garden Tour, which showcased thirteen gardens from Lund down to Lang Bay where people are using a variety of techniques to grow food in a variety of conditions. From backyard lasagna gardening experiments to a demonstration garden and a community garden, and with all kinds of gardens in between, it was a really good opportunity for gardeners and would-be gardeners to see how other people are tackling the eat-local challenge by eating as locally as possible.

This is the third year that I’ve been involved in organizing the eat-local challenge; in fact, the famous ’50-mile diet’ was one of the first things I knew about Powell River before I moved up here in late 2006. And one thing I’ve noticed is that there are far more people eating locally than you might know from the number of people who sign up. In fact, quite a lot of people, when asked if they want to sign themselves up for the eat-local challenge, say something along the lines of, “But I eat locally all the time!” I’m sure that many people out there reading this can understand that response, since the idea of eating locally is really a part of the culture here, at least for a significant chunk of the regional population who have homesteading in their personal or their family’s history — or for those like me who moved here with the intent of getting closer to the sources of our food.

Another theme which has really jumped out at me this year is the number of people who feel that the eat-local challenge needs to be kicked up a notch. After all, just about anyone can go 50 days in the height of summer eating something like half of their daily food from sources within 50 miles of where they live; this is not entirely without some challenges and a certain amount of effort, but it can be done and it’s not a terrible hardship. But just try doing it in the winter! In the summertime, you can go to the Open Air Market, to numerous farmgates, and you can find local food at the fruit truck and at some of the grocery stores. In the winter, though, if you haven’t taken steps to put food by, you’re going to have a hard time finding local produce at any price. The upshot is that a wintertime eat-local challenge has to start in the summertime, while fresh food is abundant and while there’s time to plan and plant a winter garden. Of course, many people are busy right now canning, freezing, drying, and pickling, which are age-old techniques for preserving the harvest for leaner times. But if we were serious about eating local food year round, we’d all have to be doing this, and in serious quantities. Instead, we rely on the grocery stores to get us through the winter.

And this doesn’t even touch on all the foods that we don’t grow here, or grow in such small quantities that it barely counts:

  • Meat, dairy, poultry: I’m putting these at the top of the list, because — although we can obviously produce them here and in pretty serious quantities if need be — the government in its wisdom has seen fit to clamp down on small-scale production of animal products. This situation is still unresolved, and constitutes on of the most serious obstacles to a local food economy. What are we supposed to be doing about this situation? Will the grocery stores always supply our needs?
  • Grains: Imagine the amount of wheat, corn, oats, and other grains consumed here every day. Should we even be trying to grow these here? Many people are interested, and I am seeing some interest in a local grain CSA. Is it feasible? Can we produce these grains at anything like a reasonable cost?
  • Beans: A similar situation, except that beans are pretty easy to grow here. Although the amounts required are enormous. How can we approach the sort of commercial scale required to make a real farming enterprise out of this? Again, can it ever be economically realistic to do so?
  • Oils: Sunflowers certainly grow well here, and of course animals can provide oils for some uses. But again, imagine the amount of production needed to supply the needs of the region. How did people handle this in the days before importation of almost all food? I’m guessing that lard and other animal fats were pretty much a staple.
  • Spices, tropical/sub-tropical fruits & cocoa, coffee, etc.: There are some foods that we cannot grow here. That’s always been the case and always will be. We can try to find substitutes, or we can accept that no region can ever be completely self-reliant.

When you take a look at a list like this, imagine the amount of food passing through the tills of the grocery stores in the region, and then contrast that with the puny amounts of food produced locally, it’s enough to make your head spin. Are we even producing 1% of our local consumption? I’m not sure it adds up to even that minuscule percentage. But just because the task ahead of us looks Herculean, that’s no reason not to tackle it. The question you have to ask yourself is: why should we care? Why not continue to rely on the amazing global food industry, which brings us food from around the world at all times of the year?

What motivates the people who commit to eating locally, whether for 50 days at the height of the summer or all year round? I believe that for many of the people who make a commitment to local food, it’s worth growing, preserving, and hunting down local food for many reasons. But not the least of these reasons is the pure satisfaction — which is at heart an aesthetic pleasure — of connecting in the most primeval way possible with our surroundings. A strawberry from the garden certainly tastes more delicious than a strawberry from the grocery store, protected during its world travels by a pathetic plastic clamshell. But the strawberry also tastes better, and pleases us on a deeper level, because it is the fruit of our very own soil. It is as much a part of the place we live in and care for as we are. There is something genuinely spiritual about this connection to our food, and sadly this is a connection that many people have lost or have never had. The fight to save local food (and it is a fight, make no mistake) comes from the desire to save something whose passing from the world can never be replaced: the wonder of bringing our food into being, caring for it, harvesting it and preserving it, and creating meals that sustain our bodies and our spirits. The cultural importance of these activities is huge, but like so many things in our world, they get swamped in discussions of economics and efficiency.

Eating locally is an act of cultural preservation. And I think that most of the people who are drawn to the eat-local challenge understand this on some level, even if they’re not easily able to express it. And that’s why it is not going to stop growing, getting a little bigger and more visible each year. It’s a long game, but we have nothing to lose but the best food in the world.

Local economy betrayed by the $5 customer

Published June 12, 2009 Texada , business , community , economy , localism , transportation , winter 1 Comment

By Tom Read

Centennial Service, not a mere commodity seller, but a key part of our island's local economy

Centennial Service, not a mere commodity seller, but a key part of our island's local economy


Centennial Service has the best commercial location on Texada Island. Its prominent spot at the corner of Blubber Bay Rd and Gillies Bay Rd greets traffic flows coming in from the ferry, or travelling between Van Anda and Gillies Bay, making this a true corner gas station. Even the greenest first-time visitor just can’t miss it.

The owners, John and Linda, have lived on Texada much of their adult lives. I’ve observed the way they conduct business during my nine years living here, and I’d like to point out a few realities that visitors and Texadans alike should consider about our only local gas station.

Let’s start by getting one thing clear: Centennial is not really a commodity-selling business, like gas stops in the cities. For example, if you ask the city gas station attendant for directions, you might get a very brief, often uninformed answer, as in “I don’t live anywhere near here, sorry” while they shift their focus back to the long line-up waiting to buy junk food. Note that it’s an “attendant” you’re usually talking to, not an “owner” or someone who thinks and acts like an owner.

But if you ask John or Linda or Ian (whom I consider an honorary owner, given his dedication) for help, you get real, well-informed, interested help. This could include detailed directions (with a local map) if you’re lost, being a trusted drop-off point for an envelope or package for pickup by someone else later, or having the station opened up after hours so you can get gas if you’ve run out. That’s service, not commodity-selling.

Speaking of after-hours service, consider that in last winter’s snowfalls, our local gas station owners came in to work very early and stayed very late so that our intrepid highway maintenance guys, Al and Sy, could refuel the island’s snowplow/sand truck as often as needed to keep our roads open.

Yet this is a business where volume is everything. If you don’t sell “x” amount of gas each month, you’ll end up paying a higher wholesale rate than your competitors, who will eventually drive you out of business if people choose to buy their gas solely on the basis of price. Our Texada station really can’t offer the lowest prices in the region. It must contend with being off the beaten path for fuel distribution, so the owners often must pay more to bring gas and diesel here. Thus, we “regulars” typically pay a bit more per litre than the city people across the water do. But that’s ok for a loyal customer, because we know that the price spread on fuel between island and mainland isn’t price gouging, it’s just necessary to stay in business. And, believe me, this community really doesn’t want to lose this particular business.

Conclusion: there is just no way this gas station can survive without the loyal support of local people. My understanding is that Texada’s Centennial Service has about 75 such loyal customers who are keeping the station afloat, sometimes just barely. So where are all the other hundreds of vehicle owners who live on Texada buying their gas? Ah, here’s where the $5 customer comes in, pulling up to the pumps right now: “I’ll take $5 worth,” says the polite lady in the nice car, who has lived here a decade or two. “I just need enough to get to Powell River,” where, obviously, she will buy her fill of gas.

Does this hurt? Of course it does, especially for local business people who pride themselves on giving the community superb service that would be unheard of in a city. Local business people who care about their customers are treasures, the very foundation of our local economy.

Principles for creating a cooperative local economy

Published May 18, 2009 business , collaboration , collective , community , community development , cooperation , cooperative , economy , permaculture , planning 2 Comments

By David Parkinson

Horsetail

Horsetail, like all plants, finds the right niche and provides needed services to its local ecosystem. It does not force itself into a niche where it has no purpose.

Last week, I introduced the subject of designing cooperative local enterprises as one way to start boosting the resilience of this region. But the one big problem with working cooperatively is that many of us don’t have a lot of experience at working with a team of equals, brainstorming, compromising, and discussing our way from problem to solution. My feeling is that we’re going to have to get better at this, and quickly.

There are plenty of processes and methods out there for working better collaboratively. Many of these can be found in the business section of the bookstore or library, since this is the main place where people have sensed a need for making plans at the level of a community — a corporation or a working team being a community of a special kind. One of the few books of this type that I’ve read is Peter Block’s Community: The Structure of Belonging, which Giovanni Spezzacatena discussed briefly back in March. Block’s main idea is that meaningful change at the level of the community can happen only through conversations which open up a space within which ideas and hopes can emerge organically.

A little while ago, I was reading about permaculture, and it occurred to me that there are some real similarities between the Block-style approach to community development and the permaculture approach to creation and restoration of holistic natural systems. Permaculture is a design system developed initially by Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren. To go into great detail would take us too far afield for this short piece, but to me the core of permaculture is that it takes a systems view of agriculture and the human role in coaxing food from the earth. Rather than impose a technological brute-force solution to food production, as is done in commercial agriculture, the permaculture approach takes advantage of natural processes, using human labour to maximize positive outcomes and minimize negative ones. Humans move from being producers who impose their will on the earth to being facilitators of the earth’s natural inclination to be productive in a sustainable fashion.

I was reading about David Holmgren’s twelve principles of permaculture, and it struck me that — just as Peter Block’s principles of community development take a very non-hierarchical approach to unleashing the creative energy of a group of people — permaculture in a similar fashion is about observing and intervening very gently and respectfully into natural systems, with an eye to increasing their outputs for the benefit of humans and the other plants and creatures who participate in those natural systems. I’m always intrigued by theoretical systems or collections of principles which are specific enough to have applications in one area but general enough that they apply to other areas as well. So I decided to try to apply Holmgren’s twelve principles of permaculture design to the domain of community development. (Anyone interested in learning more about how these principles apply to the design of agricultural systems can learn more by starting here on Holmgren’s website.)

I. Observe and interact

Successful community development, meaning the creation of new groups working on new projects to benefit the community, is all about careful observation and interaction. Observation means looking at what the community has and what it needs, thinking about why those needs remain unmet, and looking everywhere for the pieces of the solution, even in unexpected places or marginalized people. Too often the same old people are in charge of the decision-making process, and this leads to an insular and stale process for coming up with solutions and new ideas. It’s critical to tap into the genius and passion of the folks who are usually outsiders to the planning process — unless, of course, you really do want more of the same. And observation means continually trying to see past the surface of the community and understand how things are held together at a more abstract level. Why is there more vandalism there than elsewhere? Why do people hang out in this park but never in that one? Why are so few people riding the bus?

II. Catch and store energy

In the world of permaculture design, this is about making sure that no energy is wasted, whether it comes from the sun, rain, wind, or wherever. Catching it is crucial, as is storing it, since storage means having energy even when it is not still forthcoming from its source. For example, rainwater stored in a pond can be used to drive a waterwheel even during a drought.

For our purposes, this principle is about making sure that, when the right people or resources show up, we need to recognize them, draw them into our project, and ensure that their creative energy is not wasted. This might mean getting better at recognizing talents and abilities in people which we don’t need at present but will need in the future.

III. Obtain a yield

This is a big one for me, because I interpret this principle as stating that no activity should fail to produce some kind of reward or benefit to someone. Basically, this means no free labour. It means that even if volunteers are doing the work, their time and labour must be returned to them somehow. And even a small return is better than nothing.

I’ve been involved in a few planning processes which treated the volunteers from the community in an atrocious manner. And so these volunteers trickled away and the collective energy dissipated. Each time this happens the process loses the input of the community, and the community loses a sense of engagement in the process and whatever comes from it.

No one should be expected to work collaboratively on some project without ongoing rewards for their contribution. Sometimes it’s hard to do this, but this is one of the problems that must be addressed at the very early stages of any planning process. Failure to do so means creating a process which does not engage ongoing support and attract talented and enthusiastic collaborators.

IV. Apply self-regulation and accept feedback

This one seems like pretty much a no-brainer, but it’s amazing to me how often a conversation about some new project will go off the rails early on and never recover. We live in a culture which finds it very hard to critically examine ourselves and our work. Everyone wants to celebrate their successes, but no one wants to learn from failure, even though failure is extremely informative. And if you don’t recognize when something is not working, then you can’t correct it. The longer it goes uncorrected, the worse the situation becomes.

A conversation leading towards a new vision or a new enterprise must be able to incorporate feedback at all times. It must be open to criticism from within and without. Everything must remain provisional and open to change as long as possible. Plans and methods will change, especially in the beginning, so we need to be ready to abandon preconceptions and change course quickly.

V. Use and value renewable resources and services

The meaning of this principle is clear enough in the domain of permaculture. In the realm of community development, I take it to be saying that we need to find sources of funding and labour which we can rely on to continue. One-time-only or startup funding is dangerous because — if the planning is not careful — it creates a need for more funding. Soon your community effort is devoting too many of its resources and time towards finding more money, and neglecting its primary mission.

I am not saying that one should never seek or accept outside funding. But too often money is seen as the universal cure-all for what are not really financial problems. Failure to observe one or more of the other principles of community development will likely lead to a situation in which only money can push things forward — because you are working against systems you should be working in concert with, or your volunteers are burning out, or you are wasting money needlessly elsewhere. As much as the planning and implementation can be done on a shoestring, so much the better.

VI. Produce no waste

Waste in the context of collaborative planning and creating new community projects can mean anything from wasted time to wasted labour to wasted good will. It’s not entirely clear how waste in the non-physical sense can be used as the input to some other process, but we should be aware of opportunities to apply our excess resources to other related projects in the community.

VII. Design from patterns to details

When entering into a planning process, it is important to stand as far back from the problem to be tackled, or the enterprise to be created, as is possible. The solution can be sketched out from this very high level before the details are filled in. And because the enterprise is being created through an iterative and ongoing series of conversations, the big picture and the minor details can be constantly revisited and rethought.

It’s not uncommon to find yourself well into some kind of planning process or series of meetings and to realize that at no time has the group had a chance to stand back from the solution they are supposed to be working on so as to name it, comprehend it, and talk about it to one another. This means that there is no genuine consensus among the group as to what they are really doing, and the end result of that is frustration when the unspoken assumptions turn out not to be shared by everyone.

A vision statement is a way of stating the whole pattern from the beginning.

VIII. Integrate rather than segregate

This is the very essence of collaborative work: the notion of pulling effort together to generate synergy. It takes wisdom and careful observation to see how various people and resources can be brought together to create a whole which is more than the sum of its parts, but failing to do so wastes effort and creates frustration.

Processes which are modeled on competitive and individualistic planning tend to pit people against each other, if subtly. As a society, we are not very adept at creating truly open spaces which bring people in and give them the tools they need to excel both as individuals and as members of a collaborative enterprise. We need to work hard at this and create our own models as we go.

IX. Use small and slow solutions

Everyone wants a big bang for the buck right away. But oversized and needlessly ambitious plans can burn people out and create false hopes. It’s better to succeed in small things, to continually re-evaluate and expand from there, than to wear ourselves out reaching for too much right away. Small and slow-building solutions allow for continual feedback and re-evaluation, and make it easier to generate some kind of payback in the early stages of development.

One area where we are seeing this principle applied is in the diverse and fast-growing area of urban agriculture, where many people are working on a small scale to develop techniques for producing food in urban spaces like backyards and abandoned properties. Generally, these begin as one-person operations and are highly experimental at first while the correct set of techniques and procedures is hammered out. Presumably these experimental and low-budget enterprises are generating a corps of technically accomplished urban farmers who can continue to expand their operation, codify the ways or working which make the most sense to their community and climate, and bring more people into their enterprise as needed.

X. Use and value diversity

One way to avoid groupthink is to invite and include a diverse set of people in your planning. Too often, collaborative projects fall into a kind of rut because the same people keep showing up with the same ideas. It’s essential to create a welcoming environment so that people who have not been part of the process can easily find a way in and feel as though they can contribute. A lot of this goes back to creating a process which is critical and self-reflexive, since an uncritical group process does not allow for newcomers whose ideas might seem far out or whose troublesome questions don’t have easy answers.

It’s not easy to keep trying to include the sort of people who might have good reasons for not being involved in the process you’re creating. All the more reason for doing so whenever possible.

XI. Use edges and value the marginal

Holmgren uses the proverb “Don’t think you are on the right track just because it’s a well-beaten path” to illustrate this principle. In permaculture, edges are of special importance because we often find particularly exuberant and productive ecosystems at the boundaries between two ecological zones. I take this principle, as it applies to collaborative planning for community development, to mean that we should constantly think about hidden places where there might be opportunities for creative new projects at the edges between ‘zones’ in our surroundings. For example, what might flourish on the edge between day-care centres and composting? Between mass transit and education? Between low-cost housing and unemployed people? This principle urges us to look harder at the places we often ignore and to see edges between two connected domains where we might otherwise see them as completely separated from each other.

XII. Creatively use and respond to change

I interpret this principle as similar to Principle IV (“Apply self-regulation and accept feedback”) only on a larger scale, the scale of societal change. We are in a time of increasing turbulence, most of it so far in the economy but more of it to be increasingly in society in general, how we work and live together with our families and with other people, and how we organize ourselves at the community level to provide for our basic and not-so-basic needs and wants. As the systems which define our society undergo these changes, we will need to stay flexible and look for opportunities to provide goods and services in ways that might not have worked well in the past.

I believe that any cooperative effort to create a new project or to change the environment or culture of some place would do well to think about applying principles like these. It’s good to have some kind of mission or vision statement or goals to work towards, but it’s probably more valuable in the long run to have a set of principles which guide the ongoing process of getting from here to there, whatever that might mean. Goals and visions can always be rethought and reworked, but a collaborative process for community development which operates under weak principles or none at all is destined to waste a lot of time and energy.

The cooperative local economy

Published May 11, 2009 business , collaboration , collective , community , community development , cooperation , cooperative , economy , permaculture , planning 2 Comments

By David Parkinson

We use the word 'weed' for plants which interfere with our plans for nature.

We use the word 'weed' for plants which interfere with our plans.

‘Tain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it,
And that’s what gets results.
(Melvin “Sy” Oliver and James “Trummy” Young)

Last week’s column was about creating a stronger local food economy, something which I spend a good deal of time thinking about (and being engaged in). And now that we have a newly-formed Transition effort starting up in Powell River, I hope that we’ll see renewed efforts to start new projects which help move us in the direction of regional self-reliance.

It’s not hard to sit around a table and brainstorm ideas for projects which would help this region adapt to peak oil, climate chaos, and the economic uncertainty that is hitting us now and showing no signs of abating. Car-sharing, carpooling, or ride-sharing networks; backyard gardening cooperatives; municipal composting; local media collectives; neighbourhood potluck and child-minding groups; campaigns to raise awareness of shopping locally; cob-building workshops; micro-hydro and wind power; barter and free exchange networks; and on and on. Ask someone who is hip to the challenges we face and you will get any number of good suggestions of how we can become more resilient, less dependent on fossil fuels and imported goods, and stronger as a community. There is no shortage of good ideas. But so far not a lot of them being implemented.

The more I think about transition planning, the more I believe that we need to see a large number of experimental projects happening. Some will succeed and others will fail. They cannot all be funded by government dollars or money from foundations and charitable organizations. Nor can they all run entirely on the goodwill and time of volunteers. We need to find ways to create small businesses out of these solutions to various problems; but we should also be creating businesses which balance entrepreneurial risk and foresight against a strong commitment to the people and the values of the surrounding community. A local economy which supplies local needs and keeps jobs and wealth in the region will also need to do its part to reduce social inequities and to provide solutions to systemic problems like poverty, food insecurity, insufficient affordable housing, the lack of a living wage, and so on. These problems are the inevitable result of an economy which places profits above all other considerations, and the sooner we stop pretending otherwise the better.

It seems clear to me that the best solutions to the challenges we face will emerge from genuinely collaborative, collectively-designed and -managed, community owned enterprises. Cooperatives provide a good way to create businesses that satisfy needs which individuals find hard to satisfy on their own, and they have the advantage that they are well recognized in provincial and federal business law. But some of the projects we might want to work on are too loose and informal for all of the hoop-jumping and legalities of a formal incorporation. There are no one-size-fits-all structures for getting people to work together so that everyone benefits.

No matter how we formalize an understanding among individuals which involves property, money, labour, rights, obligations, and regulations, we first have to get to the point of working out what it is we’re trying to accomplish and how we intend to go about it. When this is done in order to attract start-up capital it’s called a business plan, and might emerge from a collaborative process of:

  • brainstorming in free-flowing conversation;
  • identifying an unmet need in the community;
  • thinking about how we might harness cooperative energy to solve the problem we identify;
  • solving various problems of start-up costs, dealing with regulations and other legal impediments;
  • enlisting the support of people who need the planned goods/service (potential customers, collaborators, or members of a cooperative);
  • defining how those who contribute their labour and knowledge can be adequately rewarded (whether in the form of money, equity, goods, shares, etc.).

There will always be individuals with an entrepreneurial bent who are talented at identifying business opportunities and figuring out how to apply money and resources to a problem in order to find a solution which will return a profit on money invested. But as for the rest of us, we might have to get involved in cooperative business ventures with other people. And this means having to collaborate effectively, to learn how to weigh different alternatives and figure out what is possible and what is impossible, to figure out what the steps are in solving a problem and which are of a higher priority than which others, and so on.

Lately, I am witnessing a number of processes which are intended to be collaborative and cooperative. For the most part, they are not succeeding as they might. In some cases, they are downright counterproductive. Why is this? As a society, we are pretty good at identifying what we want to do, but we often struggle with how to go about accomplishing the goals we identify. (What we want to do is very often stupid or pointless or toxic, but the goal is at least clear.) Entrepreneurial management strikes me as fairly uncomplicated: do whatever it takes within the limits of the law (more or less) to make your money make more money. All other considerations are subordinate to the prime directive, profit. But cooperative management and business development entail other considerations, since they reflect a community of interests and often have a socially responsible orientation; e.g., the triple bottom line of people, planet, and profit.

We’re going to have to become better at working collaboratively in many ways as we adjust to the post-peak economy in which more of our needs will need to be met locally. I want to work together with other people to cobble together appropriate solutions to problems in the local market, and I want people to receive proper pay for their contributions to meeting the needs of the community. I want to be able to participate in cooperative decision-making in the common interest. I want to be part of starting up enterprises which can support the local economy, train and employ people in useful and necessary activities, and generate wealth which remains in the community. I imagine that many others feel the same way, but don’t know how to start collaborating (and on what?).

In next week’s conclusion of this piece, I will sketch out how we might learn a thing or twelve from David Holmgren’s principles of permaculture about creating an effective collaborative design and planning process which we can use for starting cooperatives and other small businesses in the region.

Growing the local food economy

Published May 4, 2009 Robin Wheeler , economy , food security , local food economy , resilience 4 Comments

By David Parkinson

Yarrow, one of the medicinal plants we found thriving next to the road on Brian Lee's wild plant walk

Yarrow, one of the medicinal plants we found thriving next to the road on Brian Lee's wild plant walk

This past weekend, as part of my work with the Powell River Food Security Project, I hosted something I called a “Food Skills Weekend“. This consisted of a series of workshops and talks on improving our personal and community-level self-reliance and resilience with respect to our food supply. We had one workshop on increasing our capacity to produce food in our own backyard, led by Robin Wheeler, edible landscapist extraordinaire; local canning whizzes Nicole Narbonne, Will Langlands, and Peggy Fedor presented two workshops on the basics of water-bath and pressure canning; and wild plant aficionado Brian Lee took us on a wild plant walk around Powell River to learn about some of the wild foods in our area.

Among all of that, Robin led two workshop/discussions on the importance of breaking down barriers that get between us and increased resilience. Much of this conversation consisted of talking about what prevents us — as individuals — from becoming better prepared in the home and garden, and what prevents us — as a community — from working better together to increase resilience at the level of the neighbourhood, town, district, or region.

This is a valuable and an essential conversation to be having.

When we think of becoming more food-secure in our own homes, we can think of certain assets we can work on creating:

  • a thriving garden;
  • a well-stocked pantry;
  • a kitchen where we can prepare healthy meals;

And creating each of these assets might require that we work with others in the community who can help us acquire the necessary knowledge and skills. In some cases, we might achieve economies of scale by working with others; a good example here are old-fashioned canning bees, which allow us to put large amounts of food by at one time by working together.

Community food security consists of the sum total of individual and household food security plus the sorts of resources which exist to serve larger groups within the community. Farms, farmers’ markets, buyers’ groups and cooperatives, garden-sharing networks, community dinners, food pantries and food banks… all of these are ways of organizing food security at higher levels and building resilience into the local food economy.

Many people around us are aware of the importance of food security and are concerned about the fragility of the global food supply, especially in a time of economic uncertainty. All over our region and elsewhere throughout the world, people are having conversations about how to increase their control over the food that they eat, how to create community around food, and how to develop a robust local food economy. This is a huge topic, but I want to focus here on personal and community food security, and especially on how we can start to create more initiatives which will allow us to become more self-reliant without having to spend all of our time and energy gardening, canning, and cooking.

So, what are the skills, areas of knowledge and know-how, and capacities that add up to personal food security? Let’s look at three pretty basic ones. In each case I want to briefly outline what I’m talking about and also think out loud about some of the ways we can make it easier for people to acquire the necessary skills or take advantage of other people’s skills and work.

I. The ability to produce food

This is a huge domain of knowledge, skills, and experience. It covers everything from planning a garden and selecting seeds to rotating crops, using water efficiently, building soil, choosing amendments, and many many more practical and theoretical skills. (I’m setting aside some other ways of producing food, such as foraging, hunting, and fishing.)

How can we make it easier for people?

Some people are simply unable to grow food for themselves. Maybe they lack the necessary space; or the time it takes to do all the planning, planting, weeding, watering, and so on; or they are physically unable to do some of the strenuous work. There are businesses springing up all around which use urban lots to grow food, and about as many business models as there are businesses: some grow the food for the homeowner; some use lots as urban farms and sell the produce; some are more like a Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) model, which produce food for subscribers. (You can browse a number of these urban-farming enterprises here.)

These sorts of enterprises — whether structured as for-profit corporations, not-for-profit community initiatives, or cooperatives — are necessary because we are unlikely to find ways to free up people’s time or make them more physically able to work in the garden.

So how can we encourage more people to think of farming the city and collaborating on larger farming operations? What stands in the way? Is it simply not economically feasible? Not attractive enough as a potential business opportunity? Too much damn work for most people to even think about? Maybe there are not enough highly visible models… yet.

II. The ability to process and store food

There are many skills associated with processing and storing food, especially used when food is abundant. Canning, freezing, pickling, drying, fermenting, and root-cellaring are among these skills.

How can we make it easier for people?

Besides continuing to present workshops so that those who are experienced in these techniques can hand their knowledge on to people willing to acquire them, we need to start considering some of the real barriers that stand in the way of people doing more of this. One of the major ones is the cost of the necessary equipment and supplies as well as access to proper processing facilities; in the case of canning, this might mean the cost of a canner or pressure canner, jars, lids, and other bits of kitchen equipment. As so many people have pointed out to me, why should everyone have to own their own canner, etc.? And why should everyone have to work alone in their own kitchen processing large quantities of food? There are surely economies of scale to be realized by working together in a common kitchen, not to mention that it would be a more pleasurable activity, like an old-fashioned canning bee.

So one thing I personally want to concentrate on this summer — in collaboration with the local Fruit Tree Project — is to organize canning bees in local kitchens. We’ll need to work out the details of how people participate; people should be able to put in labour or money or some combination of the two. But the bottom line is that by working together we ought to be able to produce large quantities of properly canned food at affordable prices.

Likewise with drying food: why should everyone have to have their own dehydrator? What if we pool money to buy a good solid commercial-quality dehydrator, which people can rent space and time in? We can organize work parties to prepare food (gleaned locally or otherwise procured) and keep the costs as low as possible. And again people can choose to participate by contributing labour or money or both.

III. The ability to find, store, and prepare healthy inexpensive food

An obvious aspect of personal or household food security is knowing how to get the best food at the lowest possible prices, how to store food against rainy days or disruptions in the food supply, and how to use basic ingredients to prepare nutritious meals at a reasonable cost.

How can we make it easier for people?

This is, of course, a huge area and not likely to be successfully tackled anytime soon. Part of this involves educating people about how they can save money and eat better while supporting the local food economy as much as possible. The 50-mile diet challenge and the Open Air Market are two of the best and most visible ambassadors for healthier local eating. But we need more. One thing we could use are more cooperative food-purchasing groups or food cooperatives. Many people have no room to store frozen food, while others have huge amounts of room to spare.

As with the need to get more food produced locally, part of the problem here is simply that the global food supply is working well enough that there is no widespread perception of fragility. And by the time there is that perception, it will be late in the day to start developing these enterprises, man of which will require a long and cautious incubation period.

Creating a local food economy

I’m throwing some of these ideas out there in a casual fashion, but as a community we need to start tackling some of these if we intend to become a region where everyone is secure in his or her ability to eat well and to do so in a way which supports a strong local economy. There are all kinds of efforts out there which point in this direction, but the sky is the limit. It is impossible to have too many projects which aim to help people become more self-reliant, more able to produce and store food safely and wisely, more able to understand how to eat cheaply and well.

More and more, I understand that this is not going to happen solely as a result of not-for-profit or volunteer-based endeavours, whether government-funded (e.g., the Food Security Project which I work for, or the Food Bank), charitable (e.g., various church dinners and food pantries), or ‘shoestring’ (e.g., the Fruit Tree Project, which has no reliable funding or infrastructure). We have to start trying to develop the local food economy, with the accent on economy. There is a huge amount of critical work to be done, and too much is already happening as a result of volunteer effort. The most important thing we can do to increase food security in this region is to develop small businesses or cooperative enterprises and support each other in these efforts.

One type of enterprise I dream about is a cooperative which will bring together people who want to be as food-secure as possible. Members will contribute time, labour, money, or some combination of these. In return for their contribution, they will be subscribed to a year-round food-security service which will:

  • produce food on their behalf;
  • provide them with collective work parties where they can learn essential skills and get the benefit of their work (e.g., canning bees, sowing and weeding parties);
  • offer them significant savings on purchases of bulk staples, sourced as locally as possible;
  • work closely with local producers to create and support markets for dairy, meat, fish, grain, and other foods which require larger-scale production;
  • provide members with a library of shared tools and common food storage facilities;
  • act as a clearinghouse for information and expertise, offer workshops, etc.

As Robin pointed out in her workshops on this subject, some of the barriers to developing cooperative efforts are pretty widespread and easy to identify: lack of time, lack of trust, and often a lack of self-confidence and willingness to step forward and claim a common problem as our own and start working on it. I don’t know how to address these stumbling blocks, but clearly we need to fight against the isolation that keeps us all in our own personal silos working on our own personal problems and failing to draw the connecting lines between my garden and your freezer, between her farm and our canning bee, between our buyers’ group and their community dinner.

I think we’ll get there in due time, but if anyone out there wants to start working towards these goals now, contact me.

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