Willits Economic Localization/Visioning The Localization Process
From CFI
(Jason Bradford)
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We need to put hard numbers on what we need to accomplish. I will use data from Food as an example.
If we currently get 99% of our food from long distance transport and need to replace this with 100% local food in 20 years, how much land needs to go into local production between now and 2025? (If you want to know why I pick 2025, look at the work of Meadows et al. "Limits to Growth" and Gever et al. "Beyond Oil: The Threat to Food and Fuel in the Coming Decades." http://www.oilcrisis.com/beyondoil/).
Let's use 2000 acres of local food production as our goal and assume we have an insignificant amount in production now. That would require 100 acres per year of transition.
I'll break this figure into three categories: (1) Yard Gardens, (2) Community Gardens, and (3) Farms.
The easiest way to start this process would be using Yard Gardens because this requires only personal initiative and low capital costs, but we need to be realistic about how much area can actually be used in this approach. Let me assume that the average number of people per home in the Willits region is 4, giving a housing stock of 2500 units (would be great to check all these assumptions!). Let me also assume that only half of these are suitable for Yard Gardens due to, e.g., size, soil and shading issues. I will also assume that the average available area per suitable site is 600 sq ft.
Now the simple math. 600 sq ft x 1250 Yard Gardens = 750,000 sq ft/43,000 sq ft/acre = 17.5 acres.
Given that we need about 2000 acres to feed a community of 10,000 people, this obviously won't cut it, but it is a great step to take and can teach a lot of people how to grow food in a short time period.
Now let's do the same kind of calculation for Community Gardens. The Community Garden proposed for the area around the county offices in downtown Willits would have about 30,000 sq ft, or say 3/4 of an acre. Assume we get gardens of similar size at each school, i.e., Blosser, Brookside, Baechtel Grove, San Hedrin, Sherwood, Willits Charter, Willits High, New Horizons and Community Day. Let's also assume an equal number of offschool sites, perhaps at the edge of town and reclaiming some abandoned industrial sites. This would add up to perhaps 20 community gardens. If we put all of these into production we'd have a grand total of 15 acres by 2025.
Altogether then, Yard Gardens and Community Gardens will only cover a small percentage of total community food needs. If the quick calculations done here are correct this works out to less than 2%. However, individual families or neighborhoods may be well situated to grow much higher proportions, or even all of their own food using such approaches, so I want to be clear that I am not trying to discourage their use. I believe they are vital and can be created quickly.
Obviously, to feed the town, Community Farms are necessary. Over the next 20 years we need, on average, one farm per year of about 100 acres each to meet our basic food needs, assuming no change in population size.
Does this provide some perspective on where we need to focus some of our energy? We take an inventory of our current system to get an idea of the scale of our predicament and the necessary rate of transition required over a given time frame. As an analogy, we need to cross a river, but we don't know if we should just swim, build a boat, or construct a bridge. So measure the breadth and depth of the river, and access our abilities and our resources before making an investment. Our initial research will help us sort among various "solutions." What we perceive as viable is context dependent.
If we act with foresight, we should actually have an accelerated rate of change early in the process, such as 150 acres per year over the first 8 years. As energy becomes scarce, it becomes more difficult to make infrastructure changes (e.g., develop a new farm). The sooner we act, the more fossil fuels we will have available to invest in transporting necessary materials and equipment to make these farms work efficiently.
Worried about jobs? Well, we will need plenty of people willing to "work for food." Absent fossil fuels, growing food is labor intensive. This is how most people actually survive, so don't feel it is something "exotic" or "impossible." Our current lifestyle is the bizzare one. Farming 2000 acres without mechanization would require at least 4000 people, and probably more, especially during peak planting and harvesting times. We could safely suggest that at least half the population needs to grow food. Historically, this figure is 60%-90% in agrarian societies. (See the work of David Pimental, "Food, Energy and Society"). Perhaps we will need modest mechanization as the labor force adjusts to new realities. Small tractors might be useful for a while, but it is hard to conceive of having a sustainable system with tractors.
Other Resources. We need to make parallel calculations for water requirements and any associated energy requirements to produce this amount of food. Because food is so central to the function of a peaceful society, we can "hang" these minimal requirements on basic food needs. This is actually what classical economists used to do, before the discipline became overly enchanted with the now almost abstract concept of money.
