Selecting a Community Currency
Community Projects, Consumerism, Economics, Financial Management, Markets & Outlets, People Systems, Society, Village Development — by Shann Turnbull November 16, 2010
Every time we add our own labour to a product or perform a service we expend energy and increase the overall entropy of the environment. Every time we exchange money for product or service, the legal tender we use represents payment for previous energy that we expended. Money, after all, is nothing more than stored energy credits. – Jeremy Rifkin, Entropy: A New World View, New York: Viking Press, 1980
Money can be anything that people in a community will accept as carrying on its basic functions, which are to provide a unit of value, a medium of exchange, and a store of value. Throughout history many different forms of money have been created with a number of forms being used simultaneously within the same community. Each form has various advantages and disadvantages. These need to be reassessed with modern technology and in the context of the objective of creating for individual communities an autonomous banking and monetary system.
Historically, units of value have been defined in terms of the weight of a given commodity of specified quality. Ideally, the commodity selected as a unit of value should also provide a stable value over time. As scarcity creates value and abundance reduces value, we need to select a commodity, the availability of which remains relatively stable in relation to all the other goods and services traded for money in the community. This requirement is described as the quantity theory of money. Simple stated this theory says that, other things being equal, prices will vary directly in proportion to the quantity of money in circulation.
Comments (18)Surviving in the Cash Economy Once Your Food Forest is Established
Commercial Farm Projects, Economics, Food Plants - Annual, Food Plants - Perennial, Markets & Outlets, Medicinal Plants, Plant Systems, Village Development — by Judith Goldsmith November 3, 2010
Richard Alan Miller likes to tell the classic story of one of the first farmers who came to him for help.
He had 400 acres in Iowa in corn, which was infested with burdock. He had tried everything — spraying, everything — and he couldn’t get rid of the stuff. The bank was threatening him with foreclosure.
He came to a workshop I’d given at Charlie Walter’s Acres U.S.A. conference in Kansas City, and got in touch with me. When the bank heard I’d been hired to consult, the banker gave him a one-year stay of execution. I advised him to: sell half his land; sell half of his capital equipment; and then I had him get rid of his noxious weed — which was the corn! — and grow what nature wanted him to grow, which was the burdock!
I helped him sell all his burdock crop to Asian markets in Chicago, at two dollars a pound fresh (I advised him that he’d only get 60 cents a pound dried), where they couldn’t get enough of it for kim chee and fresh vegetables. After the first year, he was out of foreclosure. After three years, he owned his own land outright . . . and he started buying back his old land, and putting it into timber for his grandchildren!
Miller’s consulting does not always result in such dramatic conversion, but it has brought financial stability to many other small- to mid-size farmers and would-be farmers throughout the U.S.
Comments (24)The Power of Enterprise Budgets: Permaculture, Holistic Management, and Financial Planning
Animal Forage, Bird Life, Commercial Farm Projects, DVDs/Books, Financial Management, Fish, Food Plants - Annual, Food Plants - Perennial, Livestock, Markets & Outlets, Medicinal Plants, Nurseries & Propogation — by Ethan Roland September 7, 2010
Resource alert: At bottom of this blog post is a download option for more than a thousand enterprise budgets.
Permaculture designers: It’s time to get serious about profitability.
Farmers & Greenhorns: You already know what I’m talking about. I’ve been working on an integrated ecological farm design for the Ashokan Center in the Hudson River Valley bioregion. The design calls for a mega-diversity of organic enterprises: Multi-species rotational grazing, hardy kiwi vineyards, mixed-fruit orchards, agroforestry & silvopasture, no-till & greenhouse vegetables, gourmet & medicinal mushrooms, and more. There are 200+ edible & useful species spread across 13 acres of farm and 200+ acres of forest.
Click for larger view
From Little Things Big Things Grow
Consumerism, Courses/Workshops, Food Forests, Food Plants - Perennial, Food Shortages, Land, Markets & Outlets, People Systems, Retrofitting, Social Gatherings, Society, Trees, Village Development, Waste Systems & Recycling — by Matt Lees July 30, 2010
Have you ever grown your own food? Studies have shown that people who eat organic produce from their own garden have an increased sense of well being and good health.
In September 2007 I met a group of motivated, hardcore volunteer gardeners. When I say hardcore, some of these guys where involved with the guerrilla gardeners. They turn unused trashy areas and transform them into edible, self-sustaining gardens.
It started like this….
Some groups even go to extremes like dressing up in council uniforms or go out in the middle of the night and load their vans armed with fruit tree seedlings, compost and shovels.
Comments (4)Shedding Some Light on Food Prices
Commercial Farm Projects, Community Projects, Consumerism, Economics, Food Shortages, Markets & Outlets — by Doron Francis April 9, 2010
by Doron Francis, CERES Food Connect
Food prices have been going up for some time now. According to OECD data Australia has the highest food price inflation in the western world, and, for the first time, Australia is now importing more fruit and veg than it exports. The reasons for this are many: global demand has pushed up prices as populations increase, severe and prolonged drought locally has lead to shortages, demand for oil is increasing whilst production is decreasing and the loss of biodiversity as our land becomes infertile due to unsustainable farming has caused widespread soil erosion, salinity and depletion of water resources.
Australians are spending nearly 20 percent of their weekly household budget on food and the promise of cheap abundant food is diminishing rapidly. Most of us are well aware of the problems, however this isn’t the whole story. Unfortunately food prices are hugely inflated by retailers and middle men. According to the The National Farmers Federation, “producers receive as little as 5 per cent of the price paid by consumers”. The duopoly of Coles and Woolworths enjoy a 87% share of the grocery market allowing them to dictate pricing to producers and inflate retail prices at will.
Comments (1)PRI at the Markets
Community Projects, Demonstration Sites, Eco-Villages, Education Centres, Markets & Outlets, People Systems, Social Gatherings, Village Development — by Jay Kimber December 15, 2009
Jay Kimber at the stall
Recently Zaytuna Farm, home base for the Permaculture Research Institute, took their surplus produce and information to the (very) local craft and produce market in the Channon, situated less than 2 km from the farm.
Comments (7)An Urban Gardener Feeds a Community
Bird Life, Commercial Farm Projects, Community Projects, Consumerism, Eco-Villages, Food Shortages, Markets & Outlets, People Systems, Society, Urban Projects, Village Development — by Sarah Gorman December 10, 2009
Bronwyn’s urban backyard is teeming with diversity. It is providing local families with nutritious food through her Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), but she doesn’t think she is doing anything exceptional. Students from Mulloon Creek Natural Farm’s Permaculture Design Certificate course recently visited Bronwyn Richards’ home in Braidwood, NSW, Australia. They learnt how an urban gardener manages to provide a constant supply of organic vegetables not only for her own family, but five others.
Comments (3)Get Behind the Raw Milk Campaign
Health & Disease, Markets & Outlets — by Cathe Fish September 11, 2008
by Cathé Fish of Practical Permaculture
Help Raw Milk Diary Producers in Australia!
As you probably know, many small dairy farmers have been forced out of business by big corporate Ag laws, especially those laws that outlaw sales of health-giving raw milk, raw butter, raw cream and other raw milk products. My grandparents had this happen to them. These pasteurization laws take what should be a healthy value added cottage industry product (raw milk and raw cheese, etc.) and force small dairy farmers to sell at wholesale at 1975 prices.
Dairy farmers who sell wholesale go out of business here in the US at a rate of 16 per day, as they are squeezed by the giant corporate milk companies. Study after study shows that compulsory pasteurization laws (that protect the inferior pasteurized unhealthy product of Big Ag) have been largely responsible for the decline of small diverse mixed farms, and small American towns and rural life. I believe this is true also in Australia and around the world.
Comments (1)Look Mom, There’s a Farmer in Our Back Yard
Markets & Outlets, Project Positions, Society, Urban Projects — by Craig Mackintosh PRI Editor September 1, 2008
Normally the words ‘business’ and ‘environmentally friendly’ do not fit harmoniously together in one sentence, but here’s a money-making venture with real merit: Donna Smith and Robyn Streeter, of Portland, Oregon, have started a business called YourBackyardFarmer. It’s about growing food in urban areas – i.e. close to where it’s consumed. This is urban farming with a twist! Instead of broken New Year’s resolutions from your derailed intentions of developing a green thumb, Donna and Robyn will come to your house, and do the work for you.
