From c_dbowen@qualcomm.comMon Apr 10 15:16:43 1995 Date: Mon, 10 Apr 1995 11:55:40 -0700 From: Don Bowen Reply to: homestead@world.std.com To: homestead@world.std.com Subject: More from Wendell Berry This is something else I pulled from Practicval Farmers of Iowa. Every time I try to express how I see things, I find that Mr. Berry has been there before and has done a much better job than I ever could. CONSERVING COMMUNITIES Wendell Berry (Editors note: The following is from a talk entitled Conserving Communities, given by Wendell Berry at the 1994 campout at Seed Savers Exchange, in Decorah. We reprint it here with their kind permission. The entire address appears in the Seed Savers 1994 Harvest Edition.) . . . the old opposition of country and city, which was never useful, is now more useless than ever. It is, in fact, damaging to everybody involved, as is the opposition of producers and consumers. These are not differences but divisions divisions that ought not to exist because they are to a considerable extent artificial, trumped up for the sake of illegitimate advantages. The so-called urban economy has been just as hard on urban communities as it has been on rural ones. These conventional affiliations are now meaningless, useful only to those in a position to profit from public bewilderment. A new political scheme of opposed parties, however, is beginning to take form. This is essentially a two-party system, and it divides over the fundamental issue of community. One of these parties holds that community has no value, the other holds that it does. One is the party of the global economy; the other I would call simply the party of local community. The global party is large, though not populous, immensely powerful and wealthy, self-aware, purposeful and tightly organized. The community party is only now becoming aware of itself, it is widely scattered, highly diverse, small though potentially numerous, weak though latently powerful, and poor though by no means without resources. We know pretty well the makeup of the party of the global economy, but who are the members of the party of local community? They are people who take a generous and neighborly view of self-preservation; they do not believe that they can survive and flourish by the rule of dog-eat-dog; they do not believe that they can succeed by defeating or destroying or using up everything but themselves. They want to preserve the precious things of nature and of human culture, and pass them on to their children. They want the world s fields and forests to be productive; they do not want them to be destroyed for the sake of production. They know you cannot be a democrat (small d) or a conservationist and at the same time a proponent of the supranational corporate economy. They believe they know from their experience that the neighborhood, the local community, is the proper place and reference of responsible life and work. They see that no commonwealth or community of interest can be defined by greed. They know that things connect that farming, for example, is connected to nature, and food to farming, and heath to food and they want to preserve the connections. They know that a healthy local community cannot be replaced by a market or an entertainment industry or an information highway. They know that, contrary to all the unmeaning and unmeant political talk about job creation, work ought not to be merely a bone thrown to the otherwise unemployed. They know that work ought to be necessary it ought to be good, it ought to be satisfying and dignifying to the people who do it, and genuinely useful and pleasing to the people for whom it is done. The party of local community, then, is a real party with a real platform and an agenda of real and doable work. And it has, we might add, a respectable history in the hundreds of efforts, over several decades, to preserve local nature or local health or to sell local products to local consumers. Now such efforts appear to be coming into their own, attracting interest and energy in a way they have not done before. People are seeing more clearly all the time the connections between conservation and economics. They are seeing that a community s health is largely determined by the way it makes its living. The natural membership of the community party consists of small farmers, ranchers and market gardeners, worried consumers, owners and employees of small shops, stores and other small businesses, community banks, self-employed people, religious people and conservationists. The aims of this party really are only two: the preservation of ecological diversity and integrity, and the renewal, on sound cultural and ecological principles, of local economies and local communities. And now we must ask how a sustainable local community (which is to say a sustainable local economy) might function. I am going to suggest a set of rules that I think such a community would have to follow. And I hasten to say that I do not understand these rules as predictions; I am not interested in foretelling the future. If these rules have any validity, that is because they apply now. Supposing that the members of a local community wanted their community to cohere, to flourish, and to last, they would: (1) Always ask of any proposed change or innovation: What, will this do to our community? How will this affect our common wealth? (2) Always include local nature the land, the water, the air, the native creatures within the membership of the community. (3) Always ask how local needs might be supplied from local sources, including the mutual help of neighbors. (4) Always supply local needs FIRST, and only then think of exporting products. (5) The community must understand the ultimate unsoundness of the industrial doctrine of labor saving if that implies poor work, unemployment, or any kind of pollution or contamination. (6) If it is not to be merely a colony of the national or the global economy, the community must develop properly scaled value-adding industries for local products. (7) It must also develop small-scale industries and businesses to support the local farm and/or forest economy. (8) It must strive to produce as much of its own energy as possible. (9) It must strive to increase earnings (in whatever form) within the community, and decrease expenditures outside the community. (10) Money paid into the local economy should circulate within the community for as long as possible before it is paid out. (11) If it is to last, a community must be able to afford to invest in itself it must maintain its properties, keep itself clean (without dirtying some other place), care for its old people, teach its children. (12) The old and the young must take care of one another. The young must learn from the old, not necessarily and not always in school. There must be no institutionalized child care and homes for the aged. The community knows and remembers itself by the assciation of old and young. (13) Costs now conventionally hidden or externalized must be accounted for. Whenever possible they must be debited against monetary income. (14) Community members must look into the possible uses of local currency, community-funded loan programs, systems of barter, and the like. (15) They should always be aware of the economic value of neighborliness as help, insurance, and so on. They must realize that in our time the costs of living are greatly increased by the loss of neighborhood, leaving people to face their calamities alone. (16) A rural community should always be acquainted with, and complexly connected with, community-minded people in nearby towns and cities. (17) A sustainable rural economy will be dependent on urban consumers loyal to local products. Therefore, we are talking about an economy that will always be more coop- erative than competitive. These rules are derived from western political and religious traditions, from the promptings of ecologists and certain agriculturists, and from common sense. They may seem radical, but only because the modern, national and global economies have been formed in almost perfect disregard of community and ecological interests. A community economy is not an economy in which well-placed persons can make a killing. It is not a killer economy. It is an economy whose aim is generosity and a well distributed and safeguarded abundance. If it seems unusual for modern people to hope and work for such an economy, then we must remind ourselves that a willingness to put the good of the community ahead of profit is hardly unprecedented among community business people and local banks. | Donald E. Bowen donb@cts.com Valley Center CA. c_dbowen@qualcomm.com Software Engineer, woodworker, historian, beekeeper, farmboy model railroader, 1936 Farmall 12, 1966 Corvair CORSA 140 convertible 1 wife, 3 kids, 2 acres, 2 cats, 2 dogs, ? projects, no TV, 24 hours