As we work in our own communities to bring about healthy regional economies, we are not working as isolationists, securing only our own future and our families’ futures, but rather we are working in solidarity with villagers around the world who are seeking ways to revitalize their own economies. It is important to share the stories of our successes. A vigorous local economy for the Buryats in the Olkhon region on the western shore of Lake Baikal in Siberia, for example, will certainly look different from a more self-sufficient Kentucky Bluegrass economy, but it will grow out of the same love of place and community.

Excerpted from “Occupy Secession”:

“Quietly and surely around the world, new attention is being focused on the renewal of village economies. In village after village, leaders are appearing whose roots run deep in their local community. They do not need outside consultants to show them the natural riches and human skills available to shape new patterns of local production and local trade. They are using their imagination to craft new local institutions to support this renewal. It is these villagers, both rural and urban, who are the new Agrarians, creating the basis for a new peace while champions of the global economy are risking the lives of us all by fostering the conditions for a new war.

What are the characteristics of these new Agrarians and their village economies? In his book Why the Village Movement? Gandhian economist J. C. Kumarappa addresses the women of the villages with these thoughts: You, my sisters, perhaps it is your husbands who earn the money for your family, but it is you who are determining how that money is spent; in so doing you are deciding the fate of your village. You may choose to buy the beautiful silk made in France or Belgium, or you may choose the khadi cloth made by your sister and your neighbor. When you choose the khadi cloth, you are investing in more than cloth—you are investing in your neighbor, her children, and your village. As you watch the children walking to school in the morning, fed by the earnings of their mother, you realize that you and they are woven together through the cloth. You and your village are richer in proportion to the number of stories that unite you.

Across North America, in region after region, citizens are banding together in their role as consumers to work with producers, sharing the risk of production costs in order to help shape the kind of vital local economy that incorporates social and ecological objectives. I believe that the future of Agrarianism lies with these regionally based producer/consumer associations.

In 1986 in my own Jug End Road neighborhood of the Berkshires region of western Massachusetts, Robyn Van En founded the first Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) project in the United States at her Indian Line Farm. In a CSA, consumers guarantee the yearly production costs of the farmer through a shareholder fee. Working in collaboration with shareholders, the farmer determines an annual operating budget. Ideally, the budget is then divided by the number of shareholders to determine the cost per share. CSA members pay in advance so that funds are available to the farmer during the growing season. In return they receive a weekly share of the harvest and the security of a local source of organically raised vegetables. Because of Robyn’s initiative there are now over a thousand CSA farms around the country.

CSAs provide an excellent model for consumers sharing the risk of yearly production costs with the farmer. Yet the question remains: how can young farmers gain affordable access to land in the first place? Again Indian Line Farm provided a model. When Robyn’s farm came up for sale following her untimely death in 1997, the sale price was too high for entering farmers. A farm income alone could not carry mortgage payments and still maintain responsible farm practices.

It was the cost of the land that put purchase price out of reach. This problem is typical of regions close to urban areas or deemed valuable for vacation homes. The market value of the land reflects the demand for house sites, frequently second-home sites, rather than the social benefit of maintaining a local farm. High purchase costs of the land and the pressure of mortgage payments on that purchase can drive a farmer to employ unwise farm practices and production methods beyond what is ecologically suitable for the land. If the citizens of the Southern Berkshires wanted Indian Line to remain an active farm producing vegetables for local sale, they would have to partner with the farmer to purchase the farm.

The community, working through the Community Land Trust in the Southern Berkshires and The Berkshire Taconic Landscape Program of The Nature Conservancy, made a one-time donation to purchase the land. The Community Land Trust holds title to the land, and The Nature Conservancy holds a conservation restriction. This has enabled two young farmers, Elizabeth Keen and Alexander Thorp, to purchase the buildings and enter into a ninety-nine-year lease on the land, the use of which is determined by a detailed land use plan.

The individuals who donated to the project needed the incentive of knowing that the Community Land Trust and The Nature Conservancy would not be coming back next year to the donors to refinance the same farm—that this one donation would keep the farm actively farmed and affordable for future farmers. Ownership, after all, is only a bundle of rights. It was simply a question of what rights the donors, working through the two non-profits, wanted to retain in return for their role in purchasing the land; put another way, how many rights would the farmers require to preserve the incentive to farm with all their heart and strength?

The Nature Conservancy used the legal tool of a conservation restriction to protect the ecological quality of the land for future generations. The Community Land Trust used the legal tool of a lease to ensure that community objectives are maintained.”