Wednesday, November 5, 2008

CWF is moving along

I am moving forward with my planning for the Common Wealth Farm. Here are some recent thoughts on what I need to make it a reality.

I welcome your donations, comments, and suggestions. I can't do this by myself, but I will find a way, with or without help. If you want to take part in this exciting demonstration project of how a group of people can pool their resources and talents and actually prosper in a Depression, let's talk.

Common Wealth Farm, by the way, is not a place for homeless people who don't want to work. It is for those folks - homeless or not-yet-homeless - who want meaningful work that won't go out of fashion with the next recession. Food never goes out of style, although it may go out of supply when - for whatever reason - the trucks that bring it into our cities don't run for a while.

War abroad interrupting oil supplies, distrust of inflated money, civil insurrection and riots in the USA, weather emergencies: many factors can disrupt food shipments that city-dwellers depend on. The Common Wealth Farm model offers security and even prosperity in troubled times. Think about it.

A lot of folks would prefer to live in a quiet rural setting, if only they had a secure income. I know, I was a rural economic development coordinator for the US Economic Development Administration in the early 1990s. After that, I worked for my small-town chamber of commerce. I talked with a lot of city folks who wanted to move, but they needed a job. At the time, we didn't have any jobs to spare. Common Wealth Farm was conceived to solve this problem - and it works near any community with a population of 50K or perhaps even less.

The community where I intend to introduce Common Wealth Farm is Corvallis, Oregon, a college town in the heart of the fertile Willamette River valley. The town, population 50,000, is a county seat and the home of a regional hospital with a very good reputation. Hewlett Packard has a well-established manufacturing center there which, while it has already felt some job cuts, together with the college and county and city of Corvallis jobs, as well as other successful farmers, will provide a climate of economic stability and a market base for our produce.
Corvallis is a very desirable place to live. It is rated as #x among small towns in the nation for X, Y, and Z. I do not discount the negative effects of a severe recession or even a Depression will have on EVERY community, but I would rather live among highly educated, prosperous people with lots of savvy and political pull, than near any major city with a large population of marginally-employed, possibly thuggish, welfare-dependent people who are hungry and angry at those who are not so miserable as they.

Corvallis is a center of study for alternative energy generation and transportation methods. It is very familiar and friendly to organic farming and Community Supported Agriculture, as well as farmers' markets. These are well-established and proven, even preferred sources of foodstuffs. Both the "Slow Food" and "Local Grown" concepts are enthusiastically welcomed in Corvallis. CWF will be in alignment with these local trends, which should help our acceptance in the community.===============================================================================================================

No comments: