Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Sustainable ag and cohousing

[Joel Woodhull (jwoodhull]

King Collins asks 
>Are you saying that you want to strengthen the separation
>between community and farm? Or is it that zoning laws make it
>difficult to do both together? Clearly agribus with heavy
>chemicals and massive equipment is inappropriate, but light,
>labor intensive garden farms would mix, would they not?
 
Yes, most definitely the farm should be physically separate from
the community that is primarily non-farm, because residential
communities have a lot of reasons for being relatively high
density, and farms are necessarily very low density.  It is the
attempt to do both in one place that perpetuates the mischief of
suburban sprawl.  Everyone with their own half acre is a way to
achieve neither country living nor urban access efficiency.
 
On the other hand, it is clearly beneficial to have food growing
in close proximity to everyone.  The idea of the urban-rural
dipole is analogous to a dipole in physics, where the strength of
the dipole is a function of both the intensity of the poles and
of their closeness to each other.  The idea would be to have the
light, labor intensive garden farms as close to the urban
concentration as possible.
 
In the case of Sebastopol, any point in the town is less than a
mile from the town edge.  The town is surrounded by beautiful
countryside, but the tendency for people to carve little estates
out of it was gradually eliminating "country" for all. 
Fortunately, rules were put in place to make that more difficult,
while directing development into the towns.  Unfortunately, the
towns are still resistent to the kinds of densities that make the
overall scheme work out.
 
I like to compare the Netherlands with Los Angeles County.  They
both have the same overall density, but within them they are
entirely different.  The Netherlands is a collection of
relatively high density urban nodes (with few tall buildings) and
a great deal of countryside and agriculture.  It is easy to get
around by rail and bike and bus, and to get into the countryside
and enjoy it.  Along the rail lines are many small family
gardens, and one frequently sees that the gardeners got there via
bicycle.  There are relatively few significant gardens on
residence parcels however.
 
>Doesn't this model also include some industrial projects mixed
>with the rural and residential, so that communities can contain
>workshops, retail stores, garden/farms, and residences, all
>within walking distance? (Disruptive, noisy or harmful projects
>would be placed elsewhere) 
 
Most everything else that is not land intensive should be mixed,
such as workshops, stores and residences.  One of the
shortcomings of cohousing so far, which has been mentioned on
this list, is that they are perhaps too exclusively residential
enclaves, and they tend to be similar in that respect to other
auto dependent suburban commuter enclaves.
 
>Could you tell us more about your experience [with CSAs] and
>what problems you had, and perhaps how it could be better?
 
Thinking that the CSA would be the ideal for our farm, we joined
one as a consumer to learn more about it.  Our impression was
that it was the place where the products were directed that the
stores and the fancy restaurants would not accept.  If the farm
is not wholly engaged in producing for the subscribing community,
this conflict would be very hard to avoid.  Also, the all-alike
food boxes circumscribe the expression of individual preferences
within the same overall production assortment.
 
The free-market mechanism has much to be said for it.  The best
things going on here in Sonoma County are the efforts to bring
consumers and farmers closer together within a local free market
-- examples such as the Sonoma County Farm Trails, the farm
markets and the Gravenstein Apple Fair in Sebastopol.
 
For our farm, we will want to explore mechanisms for expanded
ownership and local labor participation as well as local
consumption.  Local cohos seem ideally suited for this.
 
Joel Woodhull
Sebastopol