Micro-teach session: Community Supported Agriculture

Framing a context for a social permaculture of creating livelihood. A summary of a micro teach with Davie by Andrew Zionts.

I’ve been largely inspired by Berkana, more information on this can be found at www.berkana.org. Berkana describes the two loop theory, the first of which is the typical loop of “peak everything” which is the curve of exponential growth, peaking and leading to sudden decline.

We can look at different ways to approach this loop, do we continue growing towards infinity? Do we stabilize with green technology? Do we try to apply permaculture principals to slow the decline? Or the fourth option, do we just collapse? The second loop is an upswing from the first, connecting, nourishing, and illuminating possibilities for growth.


CSA_picWhat is livelihood?. We can look at it as work that we do which makes us come alive examples of creating livelihood in community, primarily from CloughJordan in Ireland, www.thevillage.ie:

1. CSA: community supported agriculture helps provide food insurance to a community, this can apply to everything, every need a community has.

2. Consumer groups or solidarity buyers clubs enable a community to combine their purchases of food and other products, eliminating the middle man, as well as arriving at a fairer price for both the producers, and the consumers.

3. Community supported Energy. We did an analysis of our community and found that 8,000 people spent 22 million euros per year on energy, which illustrated our buying power for either solar panels, a windmill, or a biodigester. Thus we created our own local energy supplier, which is both a community asset, and creates employment.

4. Bread club: our community prepays for bread from our community owned bakery, which guarantees the baker a certain number of loaves per day, which are then delivered directly to our door twice a week.