Self Reliant Community

[Patt]

I live just outside a small town that is the county seat in a county that is almost all rural. We have nothing but small Mom and Pop stores, a feed store, hardware store, grocery store, and Drugstore. We also have an independant gas station within 10 miles too. So even if you shut down the Sonic, the Dollar store and the chain gas station we would all survive just fine. We have a population of a little over 10,000. We have a nice mix of agriculture although we are mainly cow/calf producers. We have our own water supply in the county that runs out to pretty much everyone and our own electric co-op.

So we could feed all 10,000 people, cloth them, provide medical care and all utilities all from small local businesses and farms. We are also considered pretty backwards here and poor so I guess we have not moved up to the point where we are dependant on others for everything.

[sgl42]

i don't share the same definition of "self-reliant" as you do, or how it comes about. tho fictional, in the movie "its a wonderful life", the evil banker is a local person, not a "mega-corporation". just being local doesn't mean someone isn't trying to make you dependent and take advantage of you. also, ancient rome imported grain from egypt, spices have been traded around the world for centuries, etc. so not everything has been "local" in life until recently, there's a long history of international trade that's beneficial.

if you don't know how to cook, then you become reliant on restaurants, regardless of whether that restaurant is locally owned or a chain. if i know how to cook, then i'm not reliant on restaurants, even if i choose to eat there sometimes or all the time.

if i don't like what restaurants are available, either because of price, or quality, or type of food, then i can start my own restaurant, or encourage someone else to start one. unless the gov't makes it difficult/impossible to do so. having more choices (competition) means that it's more difficult for any one business to make the customers dependent.

my view of the current problems is we've let gov't, heavily influenced by corp lobbyists, write the rules to limit competition. the most expensive items in most people's lives are: housing, health care, transportation, food. each of these areas is greatly impacted by gov't rules, most of which make the average "consumer" dependent on gov't and corps.

housing is controlled by zoning restrictions, building codes, permitting fees, environment impact requirements. the net effect of which is to make most housing to be created by developers (who make large profits), and houses built by builders. unless you live far enough from a populated area so you don't have all these rules, in which case there are usually few jobs, or you have an long commute to a decent paying job.

there was a time when gov't and corps didn't have the power, and when individuals were far more free to start new businesses with a minimum of rules and regulations. if we ever return to that (ie, a real free-market economy), quite a few of our current problems with "lack of self reliance" will mostly go away.

so, if you create a "local community", how are you going to enforce the rules? what if someone drives outside the community to eat at mcdonalds? will the community limit the number of restaurants that can open in the community? after all, if there's too much competition, then the wages of the restaurant will be too low, and that's not "fair" is it? how will you establish what is a "fair" price for the hardware store owner and workers? the feedstore owners and workers? the tractor repair guy? what do you do if they charge too much? boot them out of the community? make them pay more "taxes" or fees of some sort?

my view is as soon as there's a rule that "you have to buy local", then the local stores have no competition, and hence the prices go up, and now you're "dependent" on them by the rule you made to "buy local". 30 years ago when we first protected the US auto makers from the japanese with import restrictions, the auto makers immediately raised their prices. and for the last 30 years, they've continued to flounder, and recently required a huge bailout too. has that made us any less "dependent"?

--sgl

[uncle Will in In.]

The only people who were ever self sufficent had to have the know how to milk the public who weren't self suffiecent. How many people do you know who would stand by and let someone they loved die because they had no resources to cover thousands of dollars for medical treatment that could spare their life?????

[treasureacres]

Originally Posted by Patt

I live just outside a small town that is the county seat in a county that is almost all rural. We have nothing but small Mom and Pop stores, a feed store, hardware store, grocery store, and Drugstore. We also have an independant gas station within 10 miles too. So even if you shut down the Sonic, the Dollar store and the chain gas station we would all survive just fine. We have a population of a little over 10,000. We have a nice mix of agriculture although we are mainly cow/calf producers. We have our own water supply in the county that runs out to pretty much everyone and our own electric co-op.

So we could feed all 10,000 people, cloth them, provide medical care and all utilities all from small local businesses and farms. We are also considered pretty backwards here and poor so I guess we have not moved up to the point where we are dependant on others for everything.

That sounds like a great town/county! Your own electric coop is pretty unique anymore, at least in may area. My questions would be: Could they raise enough food even without using the modern gmo's and herbisides? What amount of products at the mom and pop grocery stores come from local producers? Do most people make large purchases such as cars or refrigerators locally, or is there a large city near you where people go?

[arabian knight]

Originally Posted by treasureacres

That sounds like a great town/county! Your own electric coop is pretty unique anymore, at least in may area.

My Telephone Co, Cable co. and Internet provider is a Co-op, Hence my E Mail addy ends in .coop, and not .net, or .com, and My Electric Company is also a Co-op, and where I buy my propane to heat with, is also a Co-op, where I buy my horse feed and feed for the steer I raise is also a Co-op. (Cenex) which is also a gas station. We have plenty of Co-ops in my area.

[treasureacres]

Originally Posted by arabian knight

My Telephone Co, Cable co. and Internet provider is a Co-op, Hence my E Mail addy ends in .coop, and not .net, or .com, and My Electric Company is also a Co-op, and where I buy my propane to heat with, is also a Co-op, where I buy my horse feed and feed for the steer I raise is also a Co-op. (Cenex) which is also a gas station. We have plenty of Co-ops in my area.

What I have seen in our area is that our local coop where I used to buy my feed and propane, is now part of a huge corporation with about 30 other sites. They shut down the feed mill and only sold bagged feed, and eventually they quit selling feed at all. They shopped the propane out to another corp that is a real pain in the $%$ to deal with. We have a great Coop for phone, internet, and cable, but I can not access due to the fact they don't want to cross the interstate that runs a mile from my house. My brother who is a mile and half from my house gives me a hard time about how cheap these services are for him and he gets a nice dividend check each year. I have to have satelite tv and internet which cost a lot more. I remember when coops where mostly local, now most have combine with others to survive.

[haypoint]

I do not understand how Co-Op relates to a self sufficient community. Who does your utility buy its energy from? Doesn't the Co Op propane place buy its LPG from the same place as every other place?
I belonged to a food Co Op that bought food in bulk and we split it up. Came from the same places that grocery stores got theirs, we just cut those foods from the grocery store's list of things we buy.

[Patt]

Originally Posted by treasureacres

That sounds like a great town/county! Your own electric coop is pretty unique anymore, at least in may area. My questions would be: Could they raise enough food even without using the modern gmo's and herbisides? What amount of products at the mom and pop grocery stores come from local producers? Do most people make large purchases such as cars or refrigerators locally, or is there a large city near you where people go?

There isn't much use of herbicides and pesticides or GMO's out here, like I said we are "backwards". Never caught on because the farms are all small and it costs more than it makes. All the beef out here is grass fed with a minimum of grain too, again it's cost efficient. People around here supply a lot of their own food or get it from someone they know. The grocery brings in most of it's food though.

Realistically if you closed the borders of the county to food coming in we could shift over and produce what we need really quickly. We would need a local dairy and we would have to increase local grain production.

If you closed our borders to everything then yeah we would be in trouble. We have no manufacturing here and there is actually very little manufacturing in the whole state to be honest. So major goods would have to be imported. AR produces plenty of cotton and at least some wool so if you could close the state border clothing manufacturers would spring up and stuff like that.

I guess the way I look at it is this. If we were to shut down subsidies and big oil dependent agriculture slowly and give time for a shift over it would not be the huge gloom and despair people paint it as, smaller farms would spring up. What we spend money on would shift, there would be less available for frivolous spending and more would be spent on food and convenience food would be wildly expensive but people would not be dying in the streets, like flies, of starvation. Most areas provided all their own food not so very long ago and there are still pockets, all over the rural South at least, that still do.

[Windy in Kansas]

Originally Posted by treasureacres

After reading several posts over the past few weeks about how bad large corporations, farm programs, and gmo's are,

I take it you have formed those opinions after reading and making up your own mind. You are certainly entitled to them.

I think perhaps a good example of what you wish for would be Cuba.
Rather than tell about it and make errors I suggest that you view the movie I'm listing, via Inter-Library Loan or another means.

The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil

[KeithBC]

This is very much what the Transition Town movement is all about.

The criticism of self-reliance I see in these posts centers around self-reliance while maintaining a consumerist lifestyle. Yes, that won't work. But self-reliance with a more modest lifestyle worked for centuries and there is no reason it could not work once again.

A community aiming for self-reliance must abandon anything made in a factory, because a community of that size is not going to have a factory. If the town blacksmith can't make it or fix it, you don't want it. If you or your neighbours didn't grow it, you won't be able to eat it. You won't need a ton of money, because there would be nothing to spend it on, nor any way to earn more than a modest income.

If you approach self-reliance from the point of view that your current lifestyle is not negotiable, then it would really hurt. If you approach it from the point of view that modest sustainability is preferable to catastrophic luxury, then it's not such a bad idea.

[MrCalicoty]

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned the Amish yet. It seems to me that they are doing a pretty good job of being self-sufficient. I'm not sure of the 5000 number and the density of their population but a quick google of Holmes County Amish would probably give you a good idea. Most of us would not prefer this lifestyle but it works for them.

I admire the Amish immensely especially since I'm a woodworker and want to work toward a self sufficient lifestyle. I'm nowhere near where I would like to be but I've gone a good way towards distancing myself from "the world".

[wyld thang]

The thing to remember with the Amish too is a very defined(or rigid) social system, tradition, rules, etc. Not a lot of "diversity". If you don't toe the line you are GONE--you can't remain a part of the community and continue your funny business.

All that has its own consequences.

[DaleK]

Think you're not watching most Amish people that closely if you think they're all that self-sufficient. Most that I know depend to some extent on working for the rest of us, selling us stuff. They buy A LOT of food and other supplies off the farm, my wife drives two of her Amish girlfriends to the supermarkets in town here every week and every week they come home with a full van. One is a baker, she buys all the bread her family eats except what she can get for free from the distributor when it's getting close to expiration. The bread she bakes to sell costs too much to feed to her own family, she'd rather get the cash for it instead. The other one owns the Amish bulk food store, all of her stock is purchased through the same distributors as the rest of us use but she can mark it up that much more because people assume it's somehow different and more.... something.

Funniest part is when people assume their produce is all organic, they won't say it is or it isn't, just that it's grown "our way"... and people are more sure than ever that it's organic. Never mind the old 3pth sprayer with the Honda motor on the wagon behind the horses, or the truckload of chemicals I haul home for them every spring.

[arabian knight]

No that is for sure about the Amish. They Shop at those Big Box Stores. We even have Horse ties at our Farm and Fleet type stores for goodness sakes. And one town even has horse tie ups at the local BANK.
They Shop at not only Mom and Pop grocery stores but a lot at Aldies. That is Sure Not Being self-suffient now is it?

[MrCalicoty]

Hey Dale,

That's some insight that I wasn't aware of. I did know that Lehman's was founded in the 50's primarily to provide things the Amish needed for their non-power lifestyle. There are also different levels of Amish with Old Order being the most primitive that I'm aware of.

As far as I can tell there aren't many of them complaining about their station in life.

"AS IRON SHARPENS IRON SO ONE MAN SHARPENS ANOTHER"

[MrCalicoty]

I've looked into Intentional Communities and have even visited a couple. One that was still forming seemed very interesting where I would have the opportunity to run my woodworking business from. We decided not to for a variety of reasons but aren't completely decided against the idea. It would just be difficult to make the transition and we're not there yet.

As for self sufficiency I suppose that's an elusive term if not taken literally. Rather I strive for some level, a high level, and realize that except for some remote aboriginees that most all societies have a certain level of trade with other groups or cultures etc.
Even if I were to join an IC I still would want to offer my wares for whatever valuable trade items I would like in return.

[motdaugrnds]

I can see a community made up of people determined to need only what they can produce themselves. I think KeithBC is right on in that a self-reliant family is not dependant on commercialism.

I suspect many would-be self-reliant people would go nuts without a computer or television, both of which are dependant on outside sources to work.

[treasureacres]

Originally Posted by Windy in Kansas

I take it you have formed those opinions after reading and making up your own mind. You are certainly entitled to them.

I think perhaps a good example of what you wish for would be Cuba.
Rather than tell about it and make errors I suggest that you view the movie I'm listing, via Inter-Library Loan or another means.

The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil

When I stated how bad gmo's, huge corporations, and the other "evils" are I was kind of saying it with a tad bit of sarcasm. Personally, I wish we could live without all of chemicals, the huge corporations destroying local businesses, and all of the government subsidies, but that is never going to happen. We need the Monsanto's of the world to keep up with food supply. We need the big box stores because they can sell us the crap we think we need cheaper than small local stores. I asked these questions in this thread to see if people thought we could really survive in such a situation. My opinion is that if all the people for HT got together we could make it work, maybe. But, 99% of the population in the U.S. could never make it work unless they were forced into it, and then it would be chaos for a while. Right now, in the current state of our country, we will all have to live with the "evils" and understand that this is what keeping the rest of the world running and they do provide valuable contributions to society.

[o&itw]

Originally Posted by Patt

I live just outside a small town that is the county seat in a county that is almost all rural. We have nothing but small Mom and Pop stores, a feed store, hardware store, grocery store, and Drugstore. We also have an independant gas station within 10 miles too. So even if you shut down the Sonic, the Dollar store and the chain gas station we would all survive just fine. We have a population of a little over 10,000. We have a nice mix of agriculture although we are mainly cow/calf producers. We have our own water supply in the county that runs out to pretty much everyone and our own electric co-op.

So we could feed all 10,000 people, cloth them, provide medical care and all utilities all from small local businesses and farms. We are also considered pretty backwards here and poor so I guess we have not moved up to the point where we are dependant on others for everything.

Still, the tractors, the x-ray machinery, the shovels and rakes, the plastic syringes, the 2,4,D, the saw blades, and the petrol come from some place else.

[SirDude]

Originally Posted by motdaugrnds

I can see "individual" homesteads networking together for self-sufficiency via a barder system. I don't see 5000 people getting together for self-sufficiency. There are just too many barriers, including psychological & social.

I am thinking something like this too. 5000 people, all agreeing to the same way of life, leadership, etc, that's a lot to ask people to do. Now if each homestead / family was part of a bigger picture, but wasn't told what to grow, where to work, etc, then it's possible.

There are groups of people doing this all over the world, it's what first lead me to look deeper into the WWOOF programs. But each group has one or a few different views or beliefs, so as much good as they are trying to do, they can't all see eye to eye. I saw something like this with a "SCUBA club" that I was / still am a member of. But it grew too large for everyone's voice to be heard, so member's left and started their own groups. Others, like me, just don't go to many of the events anymore.

There's a group in NC (I think) that was on TV not too long ago, who live off-grid, join together to garden, etc, in general they look like they have a good thing going for the right people, but it's not for everyone due to their strong beliefs on what to eat, religion, government, things like that.

The other thought that comes to mind is, if "I" were to start something like this, I would try to keep it as simple as possible. What things do we all need to live? Those would be the items sold in the stores. Not to say I would outlaw TVs and computers, but if we're talking self-sufficient, then why do we "need" all those things anyway. I'm sure out of 5000 people we could find enough people to make clothes, grow food, tradesmen to build or repair our houses, etc.

One thing I would try to find a better balance for is with shelter. I don't like large cities, but living in the middle of nowhere has it's draw back for transporting items to a market. If there was a nice way to balance bringing groups of people together in buildings with shops on the ground level like a lot of towns have, but with green roofs to help grow some more food that would be a start, but is not the perfect match. If I had all the answers, I'm sure I would be off saving the world right now.

Anyway, just some of my rambling thoughts.

SirDude