Criqitue from Eric Hunting
It was just a token but I wanted to express my support. I have also mentioned the project on the LUF forums -I think Bryan Bishop did too. I plan to add links to it on the TMP@ wiki when I start compiling that links page. I'd also suggest you look for other Intentional Community forums. One I've been on -but which doesn't get much traffic- is the Hawaii Big Village forum on Yahoo Groups. It's focused on Hawaii (I've often wanted to move there...) but I think your project would interest what few lurkers they have. Also try Richard Nelson's Solaroof Yahoo Group, which see much more activity. This forum was started specifically about Richard Nelson's open source solarroofgarden technology and dynamic liquid foam greenhouse systems. You could pick up some tech there as well as spread the word on your own tech.
Though my personal tastes may tend toward the more Modernist and High Tech over the Soft Tech, I think that Open Source Ecology and the Factory E Farm project are doing excellent and worthy work. Long-term, I think the designs and systems you're developing are going to have some great impact. My only concerns are that the goal of remote self-sufficiency is really hard to achieve while the location makes it difficult to get as much local support. I don't think that detracts from the value of what you're doing. It just means it's really hard and I have to applaud your determination. I just fear it may be too easy to burn out if you set the challenge too high.
I tend to be of the opinion that total self-sufficiency is unattainable at present levels of technology without too great a sacrifice in standard of living for the majority of western people to adopt. The technology you develop may be a boon to developing countries and refugee communities but may not draw more followers from the western society than other Soft Tech community projects have in the past, simply because it can't well address the essential indentured servitude of the middle-class that limits their options and mobility according to the fungibility of their life-long debts. This is a problem I've long struggled with in the LUF and its goals of creating new intentional communities. The people with all the technology knowledge -middle-class technical professionals- are stuck in life. We need them to develop the technologies of industrial independence but they are themselves slaves by debt to a system that won't let them move to the edge of wilderness or anyplace their debts aren't fungible. This is why intentional communities tend to be limited to the same demographics -artists and craftspeople whose incomes aren't 'job' based and young and old people (pre and post mortgage)- no matter what their theme is otherwise. It's just too hard for too many people to 'unplug'. Long-term, your work will help that, but near-term it hampers your support.
Since I see the architecture of civilizations as based primarily on social networks organized around resource communication, (energy in particular) I see the key to cultivating a Post-Industrial culture as based not on individual self-sufficiency but on the establishment of alternative and independent (in some cases illicit) networks of exchange and support between people wherever they are right now. The cultivation of a self-perpetuating sub-culture rather than isolated 'model' communities. Model communities help communicate the ideas and ideals, but they are so hard to sustain. So I think what would most help Factory E Farm most is linking into a larger community and network of practical materials exchange with other intentional communities and alternative farming projects that share at least some of its ideals. All farm activities tend to produce surplus. It's not that hard to produce more of a particular type of produce than a small community can actually use itself and certain locations produce particular abundances. Why waste it or just try selling it on a roadside vegetable stand? The more different things you can do with this surplus the better. This is where trade started from in the first place.
One thing that comes to mind right away with this the Intentional Communities directory site.
You should get a listing here, if you don't already have one, and use it as a guide to seek out other communities to exchange with. And when I talk about 'exchange' I'm also talking about trade. This is one of the glaring omissions in the intentional community movement. They all tend to be based on that same ideal of absolute self-sufficiency. None of them think very much about lessening the challenge, risks, and burdens of that by teaming up with each other as a collective community. Why is there no eBay for barter linking all these communities -and everyone else whose a 'prosumer' for that matter? Part of the problem there is that they don't have -and never think much about- networks of transportation with independent sources of energy. Amish communities are NOT totally self-sufficient. They exchange a lot within their larger community and often they rely -at least on a regional basis- on their own horse-drawn transportation. Those black buggies aren't just a cultural statement -they're practical transportation without someone else's gasoline. We have many options for this -even international now. Ever hear of Working Watermen? They're people who earn a living sailing small yachts that they often build and maintain themselves -typically catamarans. They operate mostly in regions with dense small island groups where they earn a living partly by chartering their yachts out for private pleasure cruises and fishing trips but also by doing packet transport and roaming mercantilism that was once supported by packet steamers. It's not all container ships. They operate under the same gigantic economies of scale as airliners. So they never serve the small island communities. I have often say that, logistically, the world was better interconnected before WWII than it is today. That was the era of the packet steamers and flying boats -and those flying boats were made out of wood and aluminum and fiberglass and they ran on diesel. And there are other ways to transport goods beside making alternative forms of vehicles. If people are already traveling place to place, every car has cargo capacity to spare. The international courier industry relies on this. As the early hackers used to say, never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of hard drives.
This is why, when I was proposing that Vajra community idea, I chose to focus on an urban setting for it. The urban environment concentrates a lot of 'secondary' resource supplies (industrial waste as well as wholesale importers/exporters). This is why artists congregate in cities. It's not just the social environment and the galleries. It's supplies. Growing up in the suburbs, I was constantly frustrated by this and came to say that, in New Jersey, everything simple is impossible. Despite all the industry and high-tech companies, I could spend weeks driving around the damned state looking for things as simple as corrugated plastic sheet, stock aluminum, lab bottled hydrogen, certain electrical or electronic parts, casting compounds, glass tiles, or blank (unmarked) dice. I got so sick of walking into every hardware store only to be treated like I just hopped off the Mothership from Mars the moment I asked for something. In Manhattan, you could find most anything with ease -even if most of the merchants were as surly as pirates. A city like New York has a huge short-haul transportation industry that never goes out of the city limits and often works on just human power. It's not as common today, but there was a time when you could call any store in New York city and have anything you wanted to buy delivered right to your door -no space-age technology required. This is one of the reasons communities like Christiania have some staying power. They have to politically fight a lot for their place in the urban environment, but from a resource and transportation standpoint, subsistence isn't as tough there. They even invented their own class of work bikes.
So that's some of my own rambling thoughts on this. Again, I think this is a great project and I'll be following it closely.
Eric Hunting
