WHO CHANGES?

– WE OR THE CLIMATE

HOW TO FORM

SELF-SUFFICIENT COMMUNITIES

(that are completely and genuinely

carbon neutral)

by

Bryden Allen

This Version

This, hopefully, is a temporary version of this piece of work. Later I will try to get the work published in a more formal manner. So the purpose of this version is to get any feed-back from you - and to find out about any errors. I would like the work to be circulated as much as possible and, as such, it is free to anyone who will actually read it. However it would be asking far too much to expect you to read the whole thing. So my condition is that you can have the thing free if you agree to read - the first two introductory chapters, the åSummaryπ and also a couple of pages in between (about 15 pages). Otherwise you can have it at its cost price – probably about $15. The contents opposite will give you a very good idea of what the book contains.

Bryden Allen

7/5 Knox St, Ashfield.

Tel. (02) 9797 7249

1/12/2007

CONTENTS

Page

1. WHO CHANGES – WE OR THE CLIMATE? 4

2. INTRODUCTION 9

3. HOW THIS WORK CAME TO BE DONE 15

4. POSSIBLE FORMS 18

4.1 Communities and Governmental Forms 4.2 Degrees of Self-Sufficiency

4.3 Fundamental Forms – Simple, Basic, Village and Independent

4.4 Footprints (hence Land Required) 4.5 A Forming Society

5. A BASIC COMMUNITY IN GENERAL 31

5.1 Physical Form (with a Detailed Plan) 5.2 Membership and Finance

5.3 Officers and Courses 5.4 Meetings and Voting

6. A BASIC COMMUNITY IN TERMS OF ITS ACTIVITIES 49

A) MAJOR ACTIVITIES

6.1 Agriculture (Food, Crops, Animals, Land Calculation and åIt will be Funπ)

6.2 Building (Accommodation, Sustainability, Construction and Final Total Costs)

6.3 Transport 6.4 Social Activities 6.5 Care and Education

B) SERVICES 90

6.6 Energy (Facilities, Units, Insulation, Hot water and Electricity)

6.7 Water (General form, Storage and Collection) 6.8 Recycling

6.9 Communication 6.10 Work-Shop

C) THE EXECUTIVE 112

6.11 President (external) 6.12 Treasurer (finance) 6.13 Membership

6.14 Secretary (internal - employment) 6.15 Analyst (equivalent to opposition)

7. A VILLAGE COMMUNITY 117

7.1 Basic Form 7.2 A Two Tier Governmental Form

7.3 Distribution of Activities

8. AN INDEPENDENT COMMUNITY (A Town-State) 123

8.1 Basic Form 8.2 The Equity Problem 8.3 The Support Problem

8.4 Six Other Features 8.5 Into the Future

9. SUMMARY 134

WHO CHANGES – WE OR THE CLIMATE?

The normal accepted wisdom in the current world is that climate change is very bad and we must do something about it. However, we must also consider our economic growth and the effect of such a change on the welfare of our people. Thus young people just starting up, who wish to buy a house and have a family, are already pushed to the limit. Such people are in no position to deal with higher energy prices at the moment. Therefore we must adjust slowly to the new situation and allow some time for new carbon-removal techniques to develop. Thus joining the Kyoto agreement, which specifies a 60% reduction of carbon emissions by year 2050, seems a reasonable compromise.

This may seem a reasonable compromise initially, but let us now look at the situation in terms of åclimate changeπ. Let us consider the following three points:

1) Polluting the atmosphere with CO₂ and causing climate change should, by any normal logic, be regarded as illegal. Thus, if a farmer lets their cattle stray into a neighbourπs property, then we say that they should pay for the damage they cause. Similarly, if a chemical company allows their chemicals to injure the health of local people, then they should pay for just restitution. So, if we the rich countries pollute the atmosphere with our CO₂ and cause the people of poorer countries to lose their livelihood, then the very least we must do is to pay for the damage - and then correct the problem. Any destruction that a country causes beyond its own borders must be called illegal. If we want to be stupid and destroy our own livelihood then, that is our problem – but it must be illegal to destroy other peopleπs livelihoods.

2) The situation about climate change is already very bad and it will soon become much worse. Thus both India and China are trying to follow our disgraceful example. Now just think how bad things will become if they, with their huge populations, start to pollute the atmosphere as badly as we are now doing. The situation will be absolutely disastrous. We need to rectify our errors as soon as we possibly can and so we can set a reasonable example (and then tell India and China that any form of global pollution is illegal).

3) Climate change, as we know, does occur over periods of thousands of years - but we should not think of this as a very comforting thought. Over these thousands of years of climate change, some species die off, some species flourish, some move to a different part of the globe and others change their physical form in order to cope. All species have to change in a very significant manner to deal with the problem. We are also an animal species - so the same situation will apply to us. Do we really want these sorts of things to happen to us, within our own childrenπs lifetime, simply because we want to continue travelling by car too much and not using sensible methods to keep our houses at reasonable temperatures.

Also we simply cannot afford to wait. Thus, for example, 30% of the artic ice has already disappeared, and so climate change is already significant. Moreover we cannot imagine that by simply stopping our pollution now that everything then will be OK. Thus the pollution that we have already caused will need to be removed from the atmosphere before things even start to improve. So we need to act right now, and so far we have done nothing. A reasonable time-scale I think is that we should be completely carbon neutral within 10 years time and, within 20 years time, the countries that created this excess of CO₂ must remove their contribution to this excess (so that CO₂ level return to a normal level i.e. the 1950πs levels).

This timetable might seem a little extreme, but I think it has to be this way. Leaving things until 2050 simply means everyone forgets about it – because our thinking is that we will be dead by then. We should be acting now, and so far we have done nothing, apart from talking about good intentions in the far distant future. Remember it is WE, our generation, who have caused this problem, and so it must be WE who have to solve it. To bury oneπs head in the sand and say it should be partially solved by 2050, when our children will be inheriting an absolutely frightful problem, is terrible. Any parent who thinks that we should wait that long should crawl under the table and hang their head in shame.

Furthermore there is no problem about how this scheme should be implemented. All that we need to do is to decree that all non-green forms of energy must rise in price, over the next 10 years, until their price incorporates the full price of the removal of the CO₂ associated with their use. This extra money will go, in the normal way, to the companies that remove the corresponding amount of CO₂ (this removal procedure needs to be immediate and permanent – not like some of the tree growing schemes that I have heard about). This means that the price of non-green energy forms must rise considerably - but there is no alternative.

But now we ought to return to that very difficult problem that I mentioned in my first paragraph (about young people who want to buy a house and start a family and are in no position to deal with these extra energy costs). I am the very last person that wants to increase the burden on this section of our community. Before we can do anything, however, we must understand very clearly the reason that this situation has arisen.

The reason is very simple. As is well known, over the past 50 years of economic growth various sections of our community have become much richer. With this extra wealth these people (together with some wealthy new Australians from other countries) have bought up many of the big, old houses in our cities. This in turn has caused the prices of houses to rise enormously in our cities. This in turn means that young people, who have had little opportunity to accumulate wealth, have been forced to move out into our new, distant, outer suburbs, which have few facilities or public transport. Thus these people are very dependent on cars and so these people are very vulnerable should a large increase in the price of petrol occur. Thus their situation is very awkward indeed.

So, what is to be done? Well the obvious thing to do then is to tax the rich people because they have plenty of money and they are the people that have caused this problem in the first place. This will have the effect of lowering the price of housing in the cities and then normal young people can start moving back into the cities. The tax gathered could then also be used to provide good, public, energy-efficient transport in our new, outlying suburbs.

But – wait!, stop! – I am going far too far – I am not a politician and I only have a meagre knowledge of economics. The above case was only meant as an example of the problems we could face, and a possible way it could be solved. I am just trying to put you into a mood about thinking that we really may have to change our ways.

Over the past 50 years we have seen an enormous amount of economic growth. This growth (and cheap energy) has meant the people have built bigger houses (that use more energy) and have started using cars as the standard means of getting to work. Also this economic growth has meant that:

• We are working harder and longer.
• We are becoming obese through lack of exercise.
• Our rich are getting richer and our poor are getting poorer.
• Australia has lost its industrial base and we are now fully dependant on the global market.
• A large number of people now spend their working life sitting in front of a computer screen. Nearly all jobs lack much variety and hence in general the quality of our working life has declined.

I am appalled when I compare my own situation when I entered the work-force 50 years ago to that of my younger children doing the same thing now. In many ways we are much worse off now than we were then.

So in many ways we are now heading in exactly the wrong direction and so soon we will be forced to think about making some fundamental changes to we way we live. We need further economic growth (of the type we have had over the past 50 years) like a hole in the head. The difficulty, of course, with change is that you need to think very hard about what the best thing to do might be. It is always far easier to leave things as they are – and I am certainly not suggesting how the world should change. What I personally would like to do is to form (with other people) a self-sufficient community that indulges in none of the stupid practises mentioned above. This is what the rest of this work is all about (as the total form of my title should indicate). Unfortunately, I have to admit, the number of people that want to do this is very small indeed. However this work is also relevant to normal people (like you presumably) who are worried about climate change and who accept that we have to change our ways to some extent. Thus:

1) This work shows how we can insulate our houses and then keep them at a comfortable temperature by just using solar hot water. We could then comfortably deal with the extreme temperatures of both Summer and Winter, and we could do this at a total annual price that would be probably be less than we pay at the moment. Obtaining solar electrical energy is a little more expensive - but I demonstrate that we donπt need to use very much electrical power at all and so the total cost can be quite reasonable.

2) How to become self-sufficient in agriculture is, of course, a very large subject indeed. However I do cover most of the essential details of how it can be done. If you are patient then you will find out how we can, very happily, integrate a healthy, outdoor, agricultural life style with a normal city life. Thus we can save on energy and also gain a richer and more varied life style. I show that people could even continue to hold a normal city job, if they wanted to. As regards climate change it is important to be involved with agriculture because this gives us an opportunity to retrieve CO₂ out of the atmosphere (by returning growth and organic waste into the soil as humus). Thus we ourselves can correct any excess of CO₂ which may have been caused by our city life.

3) The easiest way to avoid the excessive use of cars is to revert back to old-fashioned ways. Thus it is best to live in reasonably compact housing (i.e. terraces) that then can be close to a village centre. The local community could then run a small, electrical bus service to the local town, which could run quite frequently (and also hopefully connect up to a fast train service to the city). Besides this, a more limited use of cars can in fact be made quite sustainable.

4) I show how a small community can develop its own reliable, flexible finance system. Thus the older people can be quite secure with most of their life-savings as equity in the community and yet, at the same time, young people can build up their equity in the community in a reasonably easy manner. At old age then all people will have an equal (yet substantial) equity in the community, which they can slowly withdraw (and then use this money for any care that they might need). Thus the capitalist curse of åthe rich getting richer and the poor getting poorerπ will not occur, and hence all people will always have sufficient savings to look after themselves in their old age.

5) In a self-sufficient community, I can show how we can regain our leisure and have no worries about obtaining further employment, if required.

6) Finally I show how all people can be involved in the governmental process and so there will be no problem about a ruling clique emerging.

If you have studied the six previous points carefully then you will probably feel that the first three points are indeed relevant to how we might have to change in the future (because of climate problems). However, on the other hand, the last three points donπt seem terribly relevant to you (as a normal person) because you are already reasonably happy about how our current financial and governmental systems are run. However, you may be forgetting one very important point – the fear of loss of employment. In the current western world, most people are trained for one type of job and often people stay in that type of job for the rest of their life. Furthermore, most people tend to expect the nature of employment will remain more-or-less as it is, and so they adjust their future life on this expectation (i.e. where they live and the size of their house). Now a major change in life-style (as an adjustment to climate change implies) will radically change the nature of employment. Thus I think most peopleπs antagonism to a full adjustment to deal with climate change is, not because of a slight change of life style, but a fear of a radical change of employment and its consequences to them. And I have to admit that this fear is fully justified.

So – what can be done? Well in the current world there is not much that we can do. This is the way our world is structured and it is very hard to change anything. We, the human animal, are justly famous for our intelligence and hence how we can adapt to many different circumstances. But the same cannot be said for our western civilization (unless it gets a really good kick in the pants - like a world war, and then it simply has to adapt). However, if one does accept that we have to change, then we perhaps we should think about further changes that would make our society more adaptable to change. And this is precisely what those final three points are all about. If you study these points you will realize that, in a self-sufficient community, people will have no worries about loss of employment. Thus the community will easily be able to adapt to any new situation.

So you now probably have got the message that I would like those people, who are thinking about adapting their life because of climate change, to also think about joining a community that is considering about a certain amount of self-sufficiency. When you start to go through the details, you will find that the natural way of dealing with climate change will also lead to more self-sufficiency. Admittedly such a course will not lead to people gaining a huge amount of wealth – but there are a lot more important things in life than just having a big house or a flashy car.

This is all I want to say about climate change because I am certainly not an expert in this field. Nor will I say a great deal on the subject of being åcarbon neutralπ because I again am not an expert in the field. However the reason for this is also because there is very little that needs to be said on the subject. A self-sufficient community must, almost of necessity, be mostly åcarbon neutralπ. After all, a small self-sufficient community wonπt have access to coal or oil and it wonπt wish to burn any organic matter (because it will need this matter to build up the quality of the soil). So being self-sufficient, in my terms, means that you will automatically be mostly åcarbon neutralπ – so nothing further needs to be said. {Besides, the details start to get very technical indeed. Thus, for example, I know that normal agricultural land in Australia only contains 3% organic matter because of our poor agricultural practices. Good land should contain 10%, which is obtained by returning organic matter into the soil. But, to work out how much carbon one can return into the soil, one needs to know: the depth of soil to which it is applicable, how difficult it will be to do, and how long it will remain there. So the calculation must be very hard indeed.}

So most of this work is simply about self-sufficiency. I canπt really claim to be an expert even in this subject - but I have been involved with the topic for a long time. Thus I wrote a paper called ≥Modelling the Energy/Agriculture Self-Sufficiency Problem≤ way back in the late 70s. I certainly passionately believe in the subject - and so I have done my very best.

Thus the following chapter is the introduction to the main topic of this work, which is, of course, self-sufficiency.

2. INTRODUCTION

The 60 years since the last world war has given us (the Western world) an unprecedented degree of affluence. However, there is a down side to all this in that we are now much more dependent on a global economy and we are working harder and longer. I think many of us now would like to have the option of disentangling ourselves slightly from our rich city environment. Thus we would like to have an association with the country and have the option of moving there if things turn bad i.e. should we get the sack. Hopefully this would be better for our children as well. The purpose of this book then is to show that, if we use the technological advances over the last century, then a group of people can physically form a fairly self-sufficient community reasonably easily. The difficulties are rather that:-

∑ One needs to do some fairly careful thinking beforehand.

∑ One needs to find a group of people who feel the same way as you do.

∑ One needs to forego a few of our excessive affluent expectations (e.g. big houses and yearly overseas trips).

In most of this work I will deal with the fairly precise problem of how a group of about 100 people can become reasonably self-sufficient. Clearly this is quite a difficult problem and most people will be more interested in a less demanding case. I do this for two reasons:-

1) There are many facets to this problem i.e. water, energy, food, re-cycling, social, building, transport, self-employment, finance and governmental form. There are a myriad of ways of partially solving any of these problems. It is easiest for me to show how all these problems can be solved in a reasonably complete manner. You can then just skip over the bits you are not interested in.

2) Many of these facets interact with each-other – thus water is rather essential if one wants to become self-sufficient in food. So if you were to miss out one facet then the other facets would become incomplete. Moreover I think it is better for you to feel that you could see a complete solution if you wanted to. So please accept that this booklet might be a bit long and hard - just skip the bits you donπt want.

The solution to this fairly complete case shows that:-

1) Such a community will use much less land than you would think. Strangely it is easier if you keep everything compact. The advantage of this is that you can now afford to buy expensive land and hence live close to a town or a city. So you neednπt feel isolated.

2) Such a community will tend to have an excess of time (and hence wealth). This is because a fully recycling, compact community is a very efficient way of living. So we will have a lot of spare time to spend with our children.

3) The physical work might be easy but you will need to know how a lot of systems work. A fair degree of your spare time may have to be spent on learning these systems.

I do spend some time on other cases. On the simpler side, there is the extremely important problem of how people can find other people who will be compatible with them (to form a community of their required type). I naturally deal with this problem in some depth. On the more complex side, there is the problem of how a largish group of people might try to form a fully independent green community (i.e. a state). This would be the ultimate challenge for a group of people dedicated to self-sufficiency - so it is fun to consider how all the various problems might be solved and then how this form could lead us on into a different kind of future.

My previous page should have given you a rough idea of what this work is all about. The remainder of this chapter then is now mainly about the detailed advantages and disadvantages of joining a self-sufficient community.

To some extent, the search for self-sufficiency lies against the trend of our successful modern civilised world. Thus our current success has depended on the high degree of specialisation that has occurred in our cities throughout the world. This has resulted in great technical advances in materials and products. These things have been produced in cities and then shipped throughout the world. Hence we now mostly live in cities, have increased energy needs and we accept a global market situation.

This is what has happened, but it does not necessarily mean that this is quite the best solution. Now I donπt want to argue the current debate between living in country or city or

the debate between self-sufficiency and globalisation too keenly. You can make up your own mind on these matters. However, it is appropriate at this moment to remind you of a few basic facts. These are that:-

1) Probably less than 20% of our labour force is associated with manufacture and so the majority of people donπt actually need to live in the city.

2) Energy-wise it is better to live close to your source of food.

3) Complete recycling of excreta is almost impossible unless one lives close to oneπs source of food.

4) Sunlight and rain (our principal sources of renewable energy and water) lie well distributed throughout the country.

Thus, if you wish to live efficiently, then it is basically better to live in the country rather than the city. This is confirmed throughout the world where the people who live in villages (in the third world) have far smaller footprints than we who live in the western world in cities.

Now letπs get down to the main purpose of this section which is to show that there are significant advantages in living in a self-sufficient community that has a very close association with country land. These are:-

1) More Leisure

The excessive amount of work that we indulge in within Western Societies is entirely unnecessary. Remember 30 years ago when there was a slight panic about all the leisure that our forecasters were telling us we were soon to have. This never occurred. However the logic that the people were using then is still true – namely that, if you have a modern society (with all its labour saving devices) in a stable situation (30 years ago we had only just finished dealing with the baby boom and the reconstruction after the second world war), then there should be an excess of leisure. It didnπt occur of course because of the unfortunate infinite truth associated with Parkinsonπs Law – ≥Work will always expand to fill the time available≤. However in a self-sufficient community, where this problem is clearly recognised, then it should be reasonably easy to regain our leisure. Besides this (as I shall show later), living in a modern self-sufficient community is a very easy and efficient way of living.

2) Better for Our Children

A less frenetic lifestyle will give us more time to spend with our children (or have more children). Moreover a country lifestyle is usually more healthy for children because they can play where they like. Also, in a small basic community, it is much easier for children to know everyone and learn how everything works.

3) A Safer Situation

An independent community will be safer because:-

• Knowing your neighbours will make crime unlikely to occur (as is found in village communities throughout the world).
• Less cars and knowing your neighbours will make life much safer for the children.
• Growing oneπs own food will reduce the risk associated with diseases and pests from imported produce.

• In the case of a world recession the community can simply look after itself on its own little patch.

4) An Independent Culture

Within an independent community one can develop a culture that would be less materialistic and would support oneπs own concepts of independence, equality and recycling. Hopefully then oneπs children might continue with this better lifestyle.

5) The Friendliness of a Community

Most of us live in cities these days without much of a local community, and we can be short of friends. Thus we often get most of our friends through work. Living and working in a community means that your work friends can become permanent friends, and your relation with them will be unbiased by having to play the politics and åsuck up to the bossπ. Thus it provides a much more natural situation for obtaining friends. {Not as good as climbing club of course – but then you canπt have everything.}

6) Doing the Correct Thing

We in Australian are doing a lot of very silly things. Thus:-

• We are polluting the atmosphere with CO₂ and causing climate change,
• We are allowing our land quality to degrade through over grazing,
• We are polluting the ocean with our excreta and our excess fertilizer,
• We are allowing our rich to become richer and our poor to become poorer.

In the small self-sufficient recycling community that I am suggesting there is no way in the world that you will be doing any of these things. In fact an independent community is almost forced to be excessively saintly. This is because it is much easier to support oneself on a small amount of good quality land. To form good quality land, one needs to create organic mass, turn this into humus and then plough this into the land. This process thus automatically increases the quality of land and takes CO₂ out of the atmosphere. Moreover there is no way you can afford to put an excess of fertilizer on the land that will be washed out to sea. In general, a full recycle process of all materials is the simplest and easiest option for supporting oneself. Thus we can bask in the glory of doing the absolutely correct thing.

These then are the advantages of living in a self-sufficient community. However naturally there will be disadvantages as well - so I had better mention them.

1) Living in the Sticks

This wonπt be entirely true – there is no way in the world that I myself could bear to live in the sticks – so I wonπt be suggesting this at all. However it is still true that we wonπt be able to live in the centre of things quite as much. Also we wonπt be able to use all the amenities of a big city, like Sydney, all the time.

First let me explain why it neednπt be too bad. Firstly, the form I am suggesting will be quite compact so we certainly will be able to afford to live fairly close to a reasonably sized town. Secondly, there is no reason why all our living accommodation need be on our agricultural land. Thus some of the accommodation could be in the city, and so some of our people could, some of the time, live in the city. However, of course, we cannot have it both ways. Thus we canπt claim to be self-sufficient if we are always using big city facilities. Likewise, if we want our children to have the benefits of living in the country, then we cannot be forever dragging them off to the city.

2) A lot of Learning

Being self-sufficient must involve a lot of learning. Thus things like agriculture, building, energy and water management are very complex subjects and they all must be learnt. This learning process will be very natural because it is easy to learn a subject when you are continuously involved with it. However, there is certainly a hell of a lot that needs to be learnt.

3) Less Individual Choice

In the current world, we have a huge degree of choice over consumer items (because we import them from all over the world). In a self-sufficient community, we cannot have too much choice because we will be trying to make such items ourselves. {And, even if we import items, we still canπt have too much choice because we would still like to mend our imported items.} This lack of choice should not restrict our community in any way – but this different situation would take a while to get used to.

Communities like I am suggesting will in fact add to the variety and choice available in the world. I talk about this very general concept in the further advantages in my last chapter.

4) A Strict Egalitarian Government

So far we have basked under the benign assumption that our community will run well and everything will be hunky-dory. Alas this is rarely the case. If you think otherwise then you should read the fate of the Paraguay experiment led by Billy Lane in the 1890s. Thus I think we need to think very carefully about our government form before we start, and we need some quite strict rules. Thus I think the following sort of rules must apply:-

• New members must be formally examined to check they know the rules before they start.
• Attendance at a high proportion of general meetings should be compulsory.
• Possible candidates for an office must be examined in their subject before they are elected.
• Voting must be public and recorded (so that checking is possible if bad errors occur).

To many people, these sort of strict rules will be quite obnoxious and so they wonπt join. However I agree with Bernard Shaw ≥Liberty means responsibility. This is why most people dread it.≤ I believe that a just egalitarian community is possible – but it ainπt real easy. It is terribly easy to degenerate into a simple autocratic regime.

In spite of all the wonderful advantages I have outlined, I think that you will have gathered (or else you intuitively already knew) that forming a good self-sufficient community wonπt be real easy. There is no doubt that, if you want to live a normal, simple, easy life, then it is best to go with the flow and put up with the inadequacies of our current life – things arenπt all that bad – particularly if you compare our life with the life people had in previous centuries (or even life in present third world countries). However, if you are like me and believe that at least a little part of our existence on this earth should be spent on working out how to create a better life then – what else can you do? We know that we are doing some very stupid and terrible things to this world - and yet at the same time we are living in absolute luxury. Surely we must try to do something - admittedly it wonπt be all that easy but then it wonπt be all that hard as well - particularly if you compare yourselves with other small self-sufficient communities that have existed on this earth in previous ages. Are we simply going to give up and pretend we are incapable of genuine thinking and follow the common horde? However I think we must accept the situation that forming a good self-sufficient community is a very definite challenge – in fact I think it is the best and most magnificent challenge that exists for us in the world today. So some of us at least should try and have a go at solving it.

As you may have already surmised, this challenge breaks down into two fairly distinct parts:-

1) the problem of finding a governmental form which works and is just and fair to all,

2) the physical problem of being self-sufficient.

Because the physical problem is detailed, large and complex; this subject tends to be covered mostly towards the end of this work. This means that the governmental problem tends to come first. However, I do try to mix things up a bit so that, as you read, you can feel you are progressing towards a complete solution. Neither problem is real easy - but then also neither problem is really hard – all we have to do is to keep working at them.

If I wanted to join a self-sufficient community, then the sort of things I would like to know before hand would be: how much it would cost, what the accommodation would be like, how far from the city it would be, what we would live on and how much time would be involved in running it. The only real way of answering these questions is to form a detailed plan of the whole thing (and also decide on a reasonable general diet for everyone). From all this one can then calculate: the total amount of agricultural land needed, the total required water, cost of all the buildings, the total land requirement, the total capital cost and then the daily, total work-load. From this then one can make an estimate of how close one could live to a city (which must partially depend on how much everyone in the community wishes to fork out to begin with). A total plan like this of course isnπt easy to form. But this is precisely what I have tried to do. I really do believe that some of us should knuckle down and show the world that some people can live in a sane, green, self-sufficient manner. And the best thing I, in my declining years, can do to help this happen is to form a detailed model, and so show precisely how it can all be done in practise.

Of course everyone will disagree about the details – but if a community is to start then the interested people must have something to look at to begin with - and then everyone can change the model as they see fit. But everyone must have a definite plan to start with to fix their ideas on. To make this model as applicable as possible, I have assumed that our community will adjust the agricultural land to make it as productive as possible. {And with modern knowledge and a lot of dedicated work, all land can be made as productive as the available sunlight and water will allow. This means that the model can apply to nearly all terrains to a reasonably good degree.}

I realise that most of my readers will not be interested in this amount of detail - but you can just skip the bits that you are not interested in. It is just that I, the writer, am absolutely dedicated to the idea that self-sufficient communities should start up – and I want to do the most I possibly can to help this happen.

At this stage now, it is probably worthwhile if you were to go back and study my contents page in detail. Thus you can then initially only read about your particular area of interest. The rest of the details can wait. There is never any point in learning about anything until you actually want to apply it.

3. HOW THIS WORK CAME TO BE DONE

Most of this work requires you to do some quite hard thinking. I thought at least we might start very easily and I simply describe how I came to do the work. This wonπt require you to do any thinking at all - but you will get a vague feeling of what the work is all about.

I have never been over enamoured with either the materialism of this little world, or the benefits of joining big business. Thus when I finished my first degree, while the rest of my friends in the maths department were getting lucrative jobs with the national coal board and things like that, I sneaked off back to Australia (where I had been born) with the hope that I might be able to find an existence that was slightly more associated with the basics of life. However that didnπt last long. The crucial day occurred when I was hitching up north in Queensland. During the night I was slightly sick through eating some slightly rotten carrots (and the mossies were bugging me as well). So to cool off I went out for a little walk but, to my horror, on returning to my tent I found a huge cane toad sitting bang in the middle of me sleeping bag. He could only be removed with the help of a large stick. So, on reflecting on this for the rest of the night, the life of wandering around seeking the meaning of life seemed too hard to me. So next morning I turned back and returned to Sydney. In the end I finished up doing a PhD as a means of avoiding work for a while (fortunately my first degree results were sufficiently good so that getting a scholarship was no problem). Then the usual sorts of things happened - I got married, had children, had to get a serious job etc.

However the idea of living a more basic life was not forgotten and so, when the Tuntable Falls Coordination Co-operative (often simply referred to simply as åNimbinπ) was forming, I was very keen to join in. However it soon became very evident that it was not what I wanted. Nimbin tended to be a complete escape from our current civilized world. But there is much in our current lifestyle that I like - I just wanted to chuck the bad bits and retain the good bits. But I must admit you have to do a lot of careful thinking before you can differentiate between the good and the bad bits (and how you can organize everything so that you do it with people who feel the same way will be damn hard). Meetings are not the places to do such thinking - you need to be alone and then write everything down very carefully. However I of course still joined. I visited there once with the family about 30 years ago but we were a bit depressed. There were too many people there on welfare and/or drugs and things were getting a bit out of hand – besides it was far too far away. I should go back to see what is going on - but this would be very difficult now with a broken back.

My next association with this subject occurred while I was lecturing at Macquarie University in the late 1970s. I was giving a course in Linear Programming (a mathematical tool for optimising activities in industry), and my students came to me complaining that the large example I gave them on optimising a refinery was too difficult. They didnπt understand how oil refineries worked - so I should give them a problem that they did understand. I thought about this for quite a while and I soon realised this would be a superb opportunity for me to follow a subject very dear to my heart - namely how a genuinely green world could work. Now of course this is a horribly hard problem. So what I did was to do all the work and formed the model myself (LP is a very suitable tool for this kind of thing and I am quite adept at this sort of work). I wrote up the work as a paper called åModelling the Energy/Agriculture Self-Sufficiency Problemπ and gave a copy to each student. All the students had to do was to understand the model and then form the equations (which I had already given several lectures on). But even then the students found it too hard – they wanted to return to the refinery problem the following year. Still the problem got me thinking about this whole subject again.

Probably what I should have done then was to do what I am doing here in this book now. But I didnπt – I tried something much harder and more abstract. I suddenly realized that, if all levels of government (i.e. local, municipal, state, nation and world) were given equal degrees of autonomy and independence, then the general government problem could be solved in a very logical and precise manner. This form would also result in giving more autonomy and independence to the local level of government. This is what I think our current world needs because this would result in more variety and choice being available at the local level (rather than globalisation which makes everything the same). So this was my big thing - it took me 20 years to do and is 362 pages long. It is called åSociety of Choiceπ (the opening page with the abstract is given at the back of this booklet). You can have a copy for $30 if you want to but I donπt recommend it – it is simply too hard.

When my ≥Society of Choice≤ was finished my next appointed task was to produce some stories that would introduce the essential ideas behind this work in a much easier fashion. This task proceeded in very lackadaisical fashion for 3 years because I mainly went climbing. However, sadness and bitter grief, I then broke me back in a minor climbing accident and the simple fact of life was that the only thing I could then do was to work (i.e. to write). So life started again in earnest and so the stories started to form. But, as I started to get down to the details of how a low level society must run (and this of course must come out in the stories), I found I had to differ quite markedly from my ≥Society of Choice≤. Thus:-

1) Our current problems associated with energy, water and pollution needed to be dealt with in much more detail.

2) Many of the problems now become easier because, in a small community, everyone knows everyone else (and what is going on). Thus it is much easier for everyone to make a fair appraisal of what they should vote for.

3) One is now only really interested in one level of government, and so most of the general abstract nature of the problem can be avoided.

Thus, in the end, the details and differences associated with forming a small independent community turned out to be so great that clearly I needed to write a separate book.

This last paragraph may give the impression that this work in merely an offshoot of my major work. This is false. My ≥Society of Choice≤ describes how a logical and consistent political system can be formed for all levels of government (i.e. local, municipal, state, nation and world) giving equality (and the maximum amount of freedom) to all people. This is an enormous theoretical challenge, and my final result turns out to be so complex and so different to the current world that no normal person can see how they would apply it in the present world. It is just too difficult. All that our little world really wants to know is how to start a grass-roots community that does not indulge in the worst excesses of our current world. This is what this piece of work does. So I now think that this work is a lot more important than my ≥Society of Choice≤ project.

I started this work in 2005 and the first year was spent studying the problem and thinking over the various possible solutions. The work clearly requires a great deal of technical knowledge which isnπt very easy to obtain. By far the best source of information has been the NSW Dept of Agriculture (they have some very patient agronomists there). I have joined the åDiggersπ Clubπ and the åSolar Energy Societyπ and they have helped a bit. Iπve studied a little at the åSustainable Buildingsπ offices with mixed success (their solutions were too much oriented towards big business). It was surprisingly hard to obtain the cold hard figures that I required. I wish there was a modern update of the åPhysical Constants and Tablesπ I used to have at school when doing physics (e.g. for obtaining the heat conductivity for Polystyrene). I have done my best, but I would very much appreciate receiving any corrections or extensions to my essential data.

4. POSSIBLE FORMS

4.1 Communities and Governmental Forms

There are two quite radically different types of governmental forms that can apply to communities. Thus the first job we need to do is to understand what these two different forms are and then work out when these two different forms should apply. However before doing this I think we first need to start quite formally and understand fairly precisely what we mean by a åcommunityπ.

I will thus define a åcommunityπ to be a group of people that live on a stretch of land that is to some degree communally owned. So by this definition:-

• a block of units,
• a set of town houses,
• a commune,
• a municipal council,
• a country,

are all communities. Clearly all such communities must have some degree of community ownership because, at the very least, the community must own the shared access facilities (i.e. a road). This implies that the community must also have all the usual democratic processes like - meetings, voting, an executive (secretary, treasurer, chairman etc), bank account etc.

This so far is all very standard but the next point requires some very careful thinking. Different types of communities differ in a very crucial way as to how new individuals become members (or share holders). These two methods are:-

1) Individual share-holders decide who a new member will be.

This occurs, for example, in a block of units because a share-holder may sell (or give) their share to someone who will become the new member. Of course the leaving member doesnπt usually care as to who the new member will be. However the only way that the old member can be assured of getting a fair price for their share of the property is to have complete freedom as to whom they sell their share to.

2) The community itself decides who new members will be.

This occurs for example in a commune or in a country. In this case it is then sometimes convenient to also extend the power to include the authority of possibly banishing a member from the community. The crucial decision then is how such a member will be recompensed for their share.

As is well known - method 1 is much the simplest and safest method to implement. Method 2 is clearly much more dangerous - but then it gives the community the power to form a much more cohesive and stronger community.

The major task of this chapter then is to decide under what circumstances which of these two different forms should apply. However, before doing this, I think we first need to think about what tasks and activities the various possible communities are likely to be associated with. This I will do in the next section. Then in the following section I am finally able to specify which of these governmental forms should apply to the general different forms of community.

4.2 Degrees of Self-Sufficiency

In this section then I will list those items and activities that give a community a degree of self-sufficiency. The list is quite long and I try to order the list so that the easiest and natural items come first. However, as each item can be carried out to very different degrees, this order can be a bit meaningless. The degree to which a community can be self-sufficient is also highly dependent on how big such a community is.

1. Shared Facilities

This situation corresponds to what a normal body corporate of a block of units has to do. Thus this always includes:-

a) looking after the common gardens,

b) painting and looking after the common bits of the building,

c) looking after the access road and the visitor parking.

Extra facilities are things like:-

d) a common laundry,

e) a swimming pool and children play facilities,

f) a common social room.

2. Water

Probably the first and easiest step in the path to self-sufficiency is to collect and use oneπs own water. Thus one can buy a tank and store the rainwater from the roof. One can also recycle oneπs grey water and use it to water the common gardens and lawns.

3. Power (Electricity)

The next step is probably to become partially self-sufficient in power. Thus one can install hot water panels on the various roofs and so provide the community with a common hot water system. With a bit more expense one can also buy some PV panels and save further on ones electricity bills (though with current very low energy prices one certainly cannot justify this in commercial terms).

4. Transport

A very useful step is for the community to own its own small bus and use it to make regular trips to the local municipal centre and transport terminus. Thus the huge expense of many individual cars can largely be dispensed with.

5. Food (Agriculture)

It is relatively easy for a community to become self-sufficient in fruit and vegetables. At the cost of buying a more significant amount of land, it is also not too difficult to become self-sufficient in dairy products and even meat as well. The hard thing is to become self-sufficient in grain products (for animals as well as us humans). However grain is an essential part of our diet so one cannot regard oneself to be self-sufficient in food unless one takes this step as well.

6. Re-cycling

When one becomes self-sufficient in food then it becomes relatively easy (and hugely beneficial) to re-cycle oneπs human excreta and also all organic matter as well.

7. Social

It is easy to forget this point but it is terribly important. We humans are very much social animals and probably the majority of our time is spent in being social. Thus ,for our community to be self-sufficient, it must provide a sufficient amount of social activities to fulfil this essential need. Unfortunately a small community could not provide much of a social outlet to people (like myself) with normal western expectations associated with city life. In the basic system I am designing therefore I have also envisaged that our community be part of a largish village. This will help to overcome this problem. However people will always need to be part of a wider community as well so this must be accepted (and this is partially what the bus is for).

8. Self-Employment

This is by far the most important point of all. Work is probably the most important facet of our life and so to be self-sufficient our community must try to provide sufficient work. This is not all that easy to do. The obvious jobs are the regular jobs such as:-

a) Agricultural work (picking, harvesting, ploughing, sowing etc)

b) Driving,

c) Painting, fixing and mending,

d) The executive control work.

However these regular jobs are probably only a minor part of the total work that the community would need to do. Thus I think things like:-

e) Building,

f) Installation (energy panels etc),

g) Land preparation and reconstruction,

would needed to be included in the work load before the community is essentially self-employing with respect to the major part of the communityπs work load.

9. Welfare

This comes at many levels. The community can fairly easily provide child-minding facilities for the young and also care for the old. Nursing and medical facilities are naturally more difficult to provide.

10. Education

A normal school usually serves a community of about 5000 people (to give 2 or 3 classes per year). Thus a small community cannot provide any significant degree of education ( For my small community I just give scouting/guiding like facilities). A largish full village community is just capable of providing this facility.

11. Banking etc

The community must of necessity (as I shall describe in section 5.2) provide some form of internal banking. Most people however would also require extra external investment and insurance facilities as well to feel secure.

12. Judicial facilities

This is the hard one. To be genuinely self-sufficient one would like oneπs own laws and oneπs own judicial system to implement them. However in general most external communities (i.e. states and nations) are very loathe to allow sub-communities this degree of independence.

13. Manufacture

This is just a question of degree. A small community could for example manufacture their own doors, windows and furniture. However even nations are rarely self-sufficient in respect to manufacture. Thus a community cannot be self-sufficient if they donπt have the basic raw materials (e.g. metals and oil) for manufacture. So self-sufficiency in manufacture in general is out of the question.

4.3 Fundamental Forms – Simple, Basic, Complete and Independent

So, having seen the various degrees of self-sufficiency, we now must return to our fundamental problem of - åwhich of our fundamental governmental forms should applyπ i.e.

1) Should individual share holders decide who a new member will be (by giving or selling their share to a new person), or

2) Should the community as a whole decide who a new member will be.

I think the answer is fairly natural and obvious. Thus when åself-employmentπ is minor then the individual shareholders should decide who to give or sell their share to, but when åself-employmentπ becomes a major issue then the community should decide. The reason is that when self-employment is a major item then the community as a whole must know what a new member can do and to what extent they will be useful to the community.

This is an important issue so letπs just consider the situation in a different manner. At the lower stage of self-sufficiency you are probably thinking in terms of money as to how this can be done. Thus you (or the community i.e. body corporate) might buy a water tank or solar panels or land and so become a bit more self-sufficient. As this is mainly in terms of money your main concern will be that you do not lose your money. This situation is best supported by method 1 because you are then fully in control of how your share will be sold. However at the other end of the scale when you are fundamentally integrated in the community then your life and work (and how this integrates with the rest of the community) becomes the most important thing in your life. Hence you, as part of the community, will want to have your say as to who and when new members will be chosen. Hence you will want method 2.

I am now in a position to fairly clearly differentiate between four different kinds of community. I do this in the sequence of the simplest and smallest to the largest and most complex:-

A. SIMPLE

This is the simplest and easiest form and is really just an extension of the normal åbody corporateπ form for a block of units. Its two major features are:-

1) Each member can sell (or give) their share to anyone they like,

2) The community can carry out all activities that depend principally on money. Thus it may:-

a) own all the required community buildings and land,

b) be self-sufficient in power, water and transport,

c) be self-sufficient in food and recycling,

d) even be self-sufficient in welfare and education.

What it is difficult for this form to do is to be very self-sufficient in employment. This is a result of my reasons given above. However the form is still very useful because it is the simplest and easiest form to gain some degree of self-sufficiency. At a later date such a community could possibly transform itself into a form that could offer self-employment.

I donπt talk about this form very much for the simple reason that there is not much to be said. There could be an infinite number of forms of self-sufficiency the community could have and its basic political form is simple and well known. One minor little point I should make is that the simple bodycorporate form as used in Australia for a block of units will not always be appropriate. Thus in the case of a farm community where every member family has their own house then clearly each family should be able to do what they like to their own house without much reference to the community as a whole. However in general I donπt say much about this case (and all the details of self-sufficiency are dealt with in the following major case).

Although this case could be used for quite complex cases (e.g. example (d) as above) the case is better for just small simple communities. Hence the form is a very useful form to start with.

The following three forms now all assume a high degree of self-employment and hence the community as a whole must control membership. You might be a little worried at this stage that a member might not be able to leave such a community and receive the full value of their share. However I do consider this problem very carefully (see section 5.2) and I think I give a very just solution. It is just that it has to be a slightly more complex process.

B. BASIC

This is the fundamental form that the majority of this booklet refers to directly . I want as my prime example to have a community that is as small and simple as possible and yet at the same time to offer a reasonable degree of self-employment. This then is what this case is all about. Thus the crucial decision is how small can such a community be. Well my feeling is that a community that has arrived at that critical stage of being able to do the major part of its work load (i.e. level 8 as in section 4.2) then it needs to consist of about a 100 people (i.e. between 50 and 200). In considering this one must remember that the community must contain a standard range of ages and sexes (i.e. no age or sex is represented above another) and be of normal ability. Then to get a group of people that can cope with all the normal problems of farming, building and transport you will need to have this sort of number of people. {In the current world, with its enormous degree of specialization, this may seem too small. But if you look at past ages (or at third world countries) then this is not the case at all. We should be able to all become jack-of-all-trades again – and probably enjoy it. I know I, as a maths person, would. Thus maths is OK but 10 minutes of maths a day is quite sufficient for me.}

I try to make my actual case to be as definite as possible. Thus my community:-

1) will be fully self-sufficient in water, power, building and food,

2) will be sufficiently self-sufficient in self-employment so that a person that only resides in the community can obtain enough employment to pay for all they need.

3) will have its own bank and monetary system and run itself completely.

4) will recycle almost everything (of necessity in fact).

This case may initially appear to be a little extreme. However it means I can show that all this is possible and hence I can give a very definite result.

C. VILLAGE

My åbasic communityπ has been carefully designed so that 16 of them neatly fit around a nice village centre. This will give rise to what I call my village community (which will consist then of 1600 people). This community is just big enough to support a village school (23 children per year). This school, with other facilities, will naturally go in the village centre and everything will be sufficiently compact so that no internal transport would be necessary. One would like to be in charge oneπs own education because then oneπs children can be taught how they can be self-sufficient right from the start. The other big advantage of this form is that it can be much more socially self-sufficient (it is hard to be socially self-sufficient with only 100 people).

D. INDEPENDENT

The final challenge is to form a community that can readily stand by its independent self – like a nation. Thus it must have its own laws, its own judicial system and be capable of being socially independent for a significant amount of time. I think the minimum size for this is about 10,000 people. Thus in my terms it could consist of several villages (as in C. ) clustering around its own åtown centreπ. My final bit of work considers the various problems associated with such a community.

4.4 Footprints (hence Land Required),

In case you do not know, oneπs åfootprintπ is the total amount of land you need to support your complete lifestyle (in hectares). The world average is about 2.3 hectares and Australians have a footprint of about 6.5 hectares. Compared with these foot-prints the foot-print I am about to suggest will seem to be very small indeed. The reason I do this is, not particularly to be saintly (though I donπt mind this), but rather because it makes life much easier. However, before going into details, let me first relate some of the experiences I have had in this regard (or heard about).

I was once associated with a group of people who had some land on the Coxπs river. I went up there once for a weekend. First of all, it took us half a day to get there because their lovely beautiful scenic land (which it was) was out in the sticks (which is bound to be the case because close land will be too expensive). We then spent the rest of the first day extricating our land-rover that got bogged. We then spent the whole of the next day patiently hacking out tussock-grass from the pasture (which the law requires - and rightly so – åtussock-grassπ is an exotic weed which will spread if not kept in check). We thus returned home in the evening exhausted with no produce and had only removed enough tussock-grass to make up for what had grown since the previous visit. It didnπt seem a very viable proposition.

The Tuntable Falls Co-operative (mentioned in 3.1), when I visited it, was supporting about 100 people on 2,000 acres of land. This was about 10 times as much land as it needed. The result of this was that the community couldnπt cope with all the Lantana and it was getting out of check. The case of the Paraguay Co-operative experiment was even worse – they were given a free grant of 500,000 acres from the government. This was about 1000 times as much land as they needed - no wonder the experiment folded within a few years. Thus too much land often does not help you – it can be just a mill-stone around your neck.

Let me now list some of the reasons why keeping things tight and compact can make life much more pleasant and easier:-

1) A small community cannot provide much of a social life (as mentioned in 4.2). Keeping things small means you can choose land close to a larger community and so still have a reasonable community life.

2) Keeping things small means that transport around the land is much easier (in fact I only consider walking and hand pushed carts). Recycling oneπs excreta is also much easier.

3) Compact living makes heating and cooling much cheaper and easier.

4) Fences and services lines (water, power and sewerage) will be shorter.

5) Total water losses will be less. Thus if you grow the maximum number of crops per year then the evaporation losses, that occur during the fallow period of the year, will no longer occur.

To decide on what might be a suitable foot-print you unfortunately need to know a hell of a lot of basic quantity facts (none of which are too definite). However, before we go into details, we need to think fairly carefully about what units we use. The two units we need to consider are:-

1) Land Area

The normal unit used for this, in agricultural circles, is a åhectareπ which is 10,000 m². However in general for us, this unit is much too large. Thus, for fruit and vegetables, an individual only needs a few square meters – and so to talk in terms of hectares would be ridiculous. So it is best to talk simply in terms of the well-known åsquare meterπ (i.e. m²). When buying land for the whole community, one must use the standard term of a hectare and of course I do (or any time when it is standard).

The unit of a åhectareπ has bugged me for many years so, for a moment, let me give vent to my frustration. Normally units go up in terms of thousands. Now, as our small unit must be a square meter (m²) and as our large unit must be a square kilo-meter (1,000,000 m²), then one would expect, in every way, that the intermediate unit would be 1,000 m². But the stupid thing is it ainπt. Moreover 1,000 m² is what every normal person should want. It is recognizable – it is more-or-less equal to the standard ¼ acre block and the standard municipal swimming pool (50m x 20m) – which everyone is familiar with. Moreover it is approximately the amount of agricultural land that one individual needs. Anyway no use whingeing – one simply has to put up with it.

2) Water volume

The two standard terms here are:–

a) a litre - for normal use and

b) a mega litre (1,000,000 litres often abbreviated to ML) - for agricultural use.

Unfortunately, for this work, a litre is too small and a mega litre is too large. The unit we need is a kilo litre (1,000 litres) because this is roughly the amount of water a square meter of land needs per year. However a kilo litre is not a standard unit. Fortunately 1,000 litres is the same as a cubic meter (1 m³) which is clearly an MKS unit - so this is what I now will normally use. The advantage of this is also that it automatically gives the depth of water above the land in question. Thus, if one needs 1.5 m³ of water for a square meter of land per year, then the unit automatically indicates that a depth of 1.5 meters of water is needed for this land (which is in fact 50% more that the world average rainfall per year).

Returning now to the problem of how much land we might need, I think the following very approximate facts will be useful in giving you an initial feel of the situation. They are:-

1) the absolute, basic, nutritional diet for a person is about 1 kilo of grain per day. This will give a person plenty of energy and protein but it will be deficient in certain vitamins etc. However the land needed for these extra nutrients is very small (and a kilo of grain is slightly more than is needed).

2) one can obtain 2 kilos of grain (dry) from a square meter of good land per year (double cropping is necessary to obtain this figure),

3) for a normal dry Australian climate, one needs about 1.5 m³ of water per square meter to obtain a maximum crop growth rate (e.g. to obtain the 2 kilos of grain quoted above).

If you combine these three little facts then you will find that the absolute minimum amount of land needed to support one person is then about 200 m² of land and this land will require 300 m³ of water per year. Thus, in this extreme case, if you had plenty of water then you could have a foot-print of only .02 ha.

The actual foot-print I shall be suggesting is .2 ha (i.e. ten times as much). To substantiate this figure will take a long time but let me, at this point, give you a very rough picture of the situation. First let us assume that our rainfall is 750 mm per year (which is low - the sort of rainfall you get 100 km west of the dividing range - the world average is 1 m). Then one person should need about 2,000 m² of land (corresponding to a foot-print of .2 ha) of which:-

1) 500 m² are needed for growing food,

2) 400 m² are needed for a dam and water collection (i.e. tiled),

3) 200 m² are needed for living and recreation (and energy collection),

4) 900 m² are needed for wild-life and possible expansion (I call this natural land).

Of the 500 m² needed for growing food this would be made up of:-

a) 100 m² for fruit and vegetables,

b) 300 m² for grain (wheat and maize - mostly for the animals),

c) 100 m² for pasture (lucerne).

I have also assumed that the roofs and pavements of the living area will be used for water collection (in fact half the living area) giving a total collection area of 500 m². For a system like this to work, one does have to recycle absolutely everything. This recycle process is reasonably easy to carry out because everything is close at hand and so all our wastes can be composted and ploughed back in.

At this stage it is probably worth taking a break from reading and looking at the diagram on page 33 which corresponds to my basic community of 100 people. The diagram shows a lot of detail (particularly in the living area) that you, at present, wonπt understand. However the areas used correspond quite closely to these figures and so hopefully this picture may help you understand that these figures are not too extreme.

The fundamental problem I havenπt tackled yet is the quality of land because, as you probably know, there is very little good quality land in Australia (and my solution requires very good quality agricultural land). However, before doing anything else, we need to look at our total financial situation. The average person in Australia has assets considerably in excess of $200,000 (mostly in terms of their homes). We should expect that the housing and land of a reasonably complete community should mostly consume the membersπ assets. Thus, for example taking my basic community, the total asset value of the communityπs buildings and lands should be about 20 million dollars (i.e. 100 x $200,000). If we allow that half this should be for buildings (this includes all the membersπ housing), then we will still have 10 million dollars to spend on the land. If we allow $100,000 per hectare to buy the land (which is very expensive - but it means that you can live quite close to a town or village) then we will still have 8 million dollars left to spend on improving our land. This means that our community has $73 for every square meter to spend on the 11 hectares that need improving. We can do a hell of a lot of improving with that sort of money to spend on every single square meter.

With $73 to spend per square meter almost the worst conceivable land can usually be brought up to scratch (provided that one has sufficient water). Let us go through the essential features:-

1) Level

Our agricultural land must be reasonably level. This shouldnπt be too bad because naturally we will choose the 5 agricultural hectares that are the most level (out of the 20 hectares that we have). After choosing the best then we will naturally do a fair amount of bulldozing.

2) Soil consistency and depth

Our agricultural land must have the correct proportion of clay and sand. If incorrect it can be corrected by taking the appropriate ingredients from our other land. In the worst case we might have to buy it elsewhere.

3) Nutrients

The soil must contain all the nutrients one needs to grow food i.e. nitrogen, phosphates etc. This is easy - $1 per square meter will buy all the nutrients that we could need (provided of course that they are fully recycled).

4) Humus

This is just a question of time. Our soil must contain sufficient old organic matter to allow water retention and soil ≥clumping≤. If it doesnπt have sufficient humus then we simply have to keep growing vegetation and ploughing it back into the soil until we do have enough. After 5 years we will certainly have enough.

On a more philosophical note, you will find any good self-sufficient system will be trying to promote the growth of life. This will apply, not only to the agricultural land, but also to the communityπs ånatural landπ as well. This is because oneπs natural land will be much more pleasant if is contains an abundance of life. This will occur for example if one is very careful to avoid bush-fires in the area because then dead timber will have a chance to decay slowly to form humus and provide food for insects as well. However all this can lead to a CO₂ problem in reverse. There is not a huge abundance of CO₂ in the atmosphere. Thus if you were to lay it all flat on top of the earth then it would form a solid film of only 3 mm deep. Also one could, with absolutely maximum growth (e.g. with the growing of sugar cane), deplete the atmosphere of CO₂ corresponding to the land below in just six months. Thus it is possible that the building up of humus to promote life could denude the atmosphere of CO₂ quite significantly (and vegetation growth is heavily dependent on the amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere). This is clearly not an immediate problem – but it should be borne in mind – creating a world with an abundance of life may not be all that easy.

Anyway getting back to the main purpose of this section, I hope I have now persuaded you to think very carefully before buying too much land. You have to study your figures very well before you make any move - particularly if you have any pretensions at all to being ågreenπ.

The footprint of .2 ha, which I am suggesting in this section, will give a slightly false impression. This footprint only applies to people while the people live in the community. Most people will also spend an appreciable amount of time also in the outside world and, during this time, they will be increasing their footprint depending on their activities there. So this footprint of .2 ha is just the beginning. Nevertheless it is still a very low footprint when one considers how much has been included in it already.

4.5 A åForming Societyπ and Actually Forming a Community

Trying to form a self-sufficient community is not going to be at all easy. Thus one will have to find a sufficiently large group of people who all agree on:-

1) The level of self-sufficiency the community should be trying to attain,

2) How the community should be governed,

3) Where it should be situated,

4) And finally the most difficult thing of all, a group of people where everyone is happy with their fellow members. {Besides all this the community must consist of a reasonable balance of people in terms of different - ages, sex, abilities and wealth.}

I think the only way to solve these problems is to create a society whose sole purpose would be to allow people to meet people who have similar ideas on forming self-sufficient communities. The sort of thing, that the society would do then, would be:-

1) to have a site on the internet where everyone would give their own ideas and desires of what such a community might wish to do,

2) to have a meeting (perhaps once a month) where everyone could meet people with ideas similar to themselves,

3) when groups of people agree within themselves on their ideas then their unified ideas should be put on the internet site as well. People could then join with groups that have known, substantial support.

Even forming a society like this is not going to be easy – thus:-

1) Such a åForming Societyπ must be reasonably large because naturally there will be many different opinions of what people want. Thus I would imagine that a Forming Society would need to consist of about 1000 people before people could start forming communities of say 100 people.

2) Such a society must have all the normal facilities of general societies i.e.

a. a membership fee,

b. a voting procedure and an executive,

c. a newsletter,

d. possibly some paid officials to set up the internet site and look after it.

What I have said so far in this section may make the task of forming a self-sufficient community sound almost impossibly hard. However it will not be all that difficult if you bear in mind everything I have said previously. We need to go through everything in careful detail.

First of all, we have to remember that communities must fall into two very clear distinct groups (the simple and complex as described in section 4.1). Now, as I have said, there can be a myriad number of ways that a simple community can obtain some degree of self-sufficiency – which is a problem. But on the other hand one must remember that a simple community can be very small e.g. it need only be an extended family. So, with the simple form, you simply start small and then try to build up to something bigger and more self-sufficient as time goes by (and using a åForming Societyπ will help). So this situation will not be too bad.

Now let us turn our attention to our bigger and more complex communities and then let us go through the four problems I mentioned at the beginning of this section one by one. {However in fact I will only deal with the åBasic Communityπ because this is the smallest - and the larger ones are just obvious extensions of this form.}

1) The Degree of Self-Sufficiency

In this work I give a great deal of self-sufficiency to this community as it gives me something clear and definite that I can say. However this is not necessary. At the initial stage of forming this community all that one would need to do is to design the community so that it could be self-sufficient in the distant future. This means that, at the start, all one need do is design the community so that it does not need to use too much energy or water and have a form where recycling would be easy. The community can then decide for itself on the actual degree of self-sufficiency as time goes by when the community knows the problems (and also when the community is in a situation to do something further about it). Fortunately the current prices for things like water, energy and grain are quite low so, as a temporary measure, it is easy to buy them externally.

2) Governmental Form

In this work, I have tried to give a very egalitarian governmental form. This means that every member must take their voting very seriously - even to the point of studying the facts very carefully. I know the vast majority of people will not like this at all. It is much easier to believe in the fantasy that there is such a thing as a ågood leader who will always do the right thingπ. I have to admit that is probably a fundamental problem and we have to accept the number of people who can accept this situation is limited.

3) Where should the community be situated?

If you live in NSW and like to be able to get to Sydney reasonably easily then this is a surprisingly easy question to answer. It seems that the Upper Hunter region is a reasonably obvious choice. There are 4 reasons:-

a) It is fairly close to Sydney (very much the centre of our state) and has reasonably sized towns within it. So one neednπt feel too isolated.

c) Its rainfall flows to the ocean and so, if one uses all the rain you receive, then you cannot be accused of starving the drought stricken inland areas. Its rainfall is a little higher than the 750 mm I was talking about in 4.4 - but not so high so that you could be accused of pinching Australiaπs best land.

c) There is a reasonable amount of available land here. In case you have not noticed, Sydney is surrounded by a system of very extensive parks. This means that the land within this ring of parks is at a very high premium.

d) Land close to Sydney and the other large cities are subject to many planning requirements. The upper Hunter region is the closest area to Sydney where these rules are less applicable.

Thus I think if you live in the Sydney region then the Upper Hunter is likely to be the obvious choice.

5) Choosing Fellow Members

This is a difficult task and will require a considerable amount of time and effort. I think a åForming Societyπ (as mentioned at the beginning of this section) is essential to allow this process to proceed. I think that one must expect to need at least a year to find fellow members for a community. Alas this is another one of those problems that one simply has to accept and spend time on it. Life wasnπt meant to be easy.

Forming a self-sufficient community then is a bit like getting married. Thus one has the same problems – first one has to find suitable partners, then one needs to define the rules under which everyone will live, then one needs to decide what partnership is going to do together, and finally one will need to decide where one is going to live. In fact, if anything, forming a self-sufficient community will be harder than getting married – after all in recent times I donπt think it has ever been successfully done. But then, on the other hand, this makes it a magnificent challenge.

Thus forming a self-sufficient community from scratch is going to be fairly hard – but there could be an easier option. It is possible that somebody could be persuaded to start a school for self-sufficiency. For the community at large there are significant advantages in having such a school. When people leave school a lot of students donπt want to do any further academic study and yet they donπt want to enter the long tread-mill of continuous work too soon. I think that they would really enjoy the challenge of trying to live in a self-sufficient manner (I know I would). And then as far as the community at large is concerned there is absolutely no better form of general education than trying to learn to be self-sufficient – for self-sufficiency you need to know everything. Furthermore it wouldnπt cost very much – the students would do all the work and all the governing body would need to do would be to provide some land, equipment and advisers.

Such a course would need both a finished basic community as well as an unfinished basic community. The course would then divide very naturally into 3 distinct years. Thus we would have:-

Year 1

The students would spend their first year in the finished community learning how everything works and how to support themselves.

Year 2

The students would then spend the next year in the unfinished community doing the more difficult tasks associated with building and extending the community (besides supporting themselves).

Year 3

This would be the real testing year – it is not sufficient for students just to know how a community works and how to extend it – but they also must know how to run it. So, in the final year, students should take over the 15 officer positions in both the finished and unfinished communities - and so effectively run the whole show. Staff advisers and examiners would still be needed to oversee everything (e.g. that the year 3 students were not mistreating or misinforming the year 1 or year 2 students). But nevertheless the students should do everything themselves (including voting for who they want to be their officers).

Of course all that I am saying here is rather simplistic. All I want to do here is to get you to bear in mind that there could be an easier option. From such a school there would still be quite a journey to the stage of actually forming a self-sufficient community. However it would still be an enormous help. It would mean that there would exist a body of people that would know what they could do, probably have a definite interest in the subject and who could all be contacted at a later date (after they have done their trip round the world, had their taste of normal employment and done all the usual things like that). And I think everyone would find such a course a great challenge and good fun.

5. A BASIC COMMUNITY IN GENERAL (OF 100 PEOPLE)

As I mentioned in my introductory chapter, in this community I will be as specific and definite as possible. This because finally at the end of this work I will want to work out how much time and money would be involved in creating the whole community. However this does not mean that I expect you to follow this form at all. Every community must choose their own form and my ideas are just a starting point – to help you start your thinking. You can just skip the stuff you are not interested in.

In particular in this form, I will assume that all 100 members are residents. Clearly often many members would prefer to be åsleepingπ members and so they would reside where they were - until it was convenient to move (but they could still contribute to the finance). Here I assume members are all residents simply because it is precise and definite. It is too hard to assume that a certain percentage would live elsewhere.

When I describe my ådefiniteπ communityπs activities I try to use words like åmayπ, åcouldπ, åshouldπ etc. However sometimes I forget and I use words like åwillπ and åoughtπ. This is just a mistake – I just get carried away with my own little ideas - I am only trying to help.

5.1 A Physical Form and Land Usage

The best way to understand the physical form is to study my diagrams on the following two pages. You most certainly will (and should) have a lot of questions to ask but perhaps the first will probably be åwhy the funny shapeπ? The answer is reasonably straight forward – it is because I have envisaged that the community will want to be close to a village centre and this form allows 16 similar communities to be equally distant from the village centre (see section 6.1 to see how this would work out in detail). The total area is 20 hectares (which corresponds to a footprint of .2 for 100 people - as described in section 4.4).

You will soon notice that the area divides up fairly naturally into four fairly distinct regions. So it is easiest to deal with these areas separately (corresponding again very closely to the areas described in section 4.4 on Foot-Prints).

A) Agricultural Land

This is the obvious area on the right hand side of the page between the åliving areaπ and the åwater collection areaπ. The crop areas correspond as accurately as possible to the actual figures I shall derive later in section 6.1.2. {Where the areas are too small to write the whole crop name, the single letter corresponds to the crop in the sequence - thus åPπ corresponds to åPotatoesπ.}. The total area for agriculture, as I mentioned in section 4.4, was 5 hectares, whereas my accurately derived figures actually give 5.01 hectares (i.e. remarkably close). However the split into åfruit and vegetablesπ, ågrainπ and åpastureπ is much rougher.

If you study the diagram carefully then you may have a feeling that the total agricultural area is greater than a quarter of the total area (which the given figures indicate). This feeling is correct because the agricultural area contains some water collection area as well (along paths and on buildings) - and we cannot afford to waste any water at all. Thus the 5 hectares only corresponds to the actual crop area.

I have placed the smaller and more intensive crops closer to the living area. However, in practise, this might be hard to maintain because crops need to be rotated to avoid disease build up in the soil. The agricultural buildings are relatively large because clearly one wants the best possible facilities for oneπs animals and also oneπs crop storage.

B) Water Collection and Storage Area

This is principally the yellow area at the top right - but it also includes all buildings, paths and water dam/reservoirs (these are all carefully covered) as well. In total it adds up to about 5 hectares – almost the same as my crop area. The water collection area must also be supported by an intricate system of underground pipes (because we cannot afford to lose any water at all).

C) Natural Wild-life Land

This is the obvious dark green area on the left of the diagram. Although it would mainly support wild life, it is also for the enjoyment of the community as a whole. Thus I have included some: camp-fire areas, a rock-pool and a climbing crag as well. These facilities might need to be partially manufactured - but this is one of my little areas of expertise. In Oxford (U.K.) we climbed on the side of a disused railway tunnel with enormous satisfaction. The most important thing, funnily enough, was to make sure it had sufficient traffic – otherwise it became over-run by stinging nettles.

The åwild cornerπ is supposed to apply to humans (rather than animals - animals are just more naturally wild). I thought it appropriate that we should have an area where the conventions of normal civilised life should apply a little less rigorously – it is only small.

D) Living Area

This is best seen in the more detailed diagram on the following page. Its most important feature is the accommodation units (numbered 1 – 20). They need to be compact so as to minimise building and heating/cooling costs - so they are in terrace form. The diagram gives the various numbers associated with them. The terraces can be of 2 or 3 levels giving between 76 and 114 mostly single person type units. However the most important feature that I have incorporated is to allow the single units to be combined in several ways, so that the form can be combined to give any sized åhouse typeπ accommodation. I think the system can give all the features and flexibility that might be required (but of course you will have to read section 6.2.1 in detail to check that I am not raving on).

The rest of the living area gives all the work, social and playing facilities necessary for such a community. These facilities are reasonably extensive because Australian villages tend to be lacking in a social life. If one did have an active village (as I will assume in chapter 6) then one wouldnπt need as many facilities (however they would need to be included in oneπs calculation of foot-print).

You should have gathered that I would like our community to use its land in the best possible manner. Thus we now come to a very general problem of what land should be used for which activity. This is quite a difficult problem and I would have preferred to have left the problem till later – but there is no other suitable spot (because later each section deals with a particular activity). So we need to decide the matter now. I think then that our usage of land should follow the following priorities.

1) Water Storage

This question will be discussed in detail in section 6.7.1. The result of this discussion is that we will almost certainly need to give some of our very best quality, flat, valley land over to water storage. Sad – but it has to be done because all life is dependant on a reliable source of water.

2) Living area

We humans are very much social animals and this means that our living area needs to be as close as possible to a village centre (and then our children can walk to school). It would also make our life much easier if this land was reasonably flat.

3) Agricultural Land

Clearly we would prefer to do our farming on flat land but this cannot always be the case. Previous societies have successfully lived on very steep land by terracing their land – and we could carry out this operation far more easily than they ever could. There is no reason that we should continue to always be put to shame by the industry of older more primitive societies. Terracing is not all that difficult and we could have simple electric pulleys to help us deal with the hills (for daily activities). We will clearly use the good quality soil (that our water storage facility would be covering) on the valley floor and put it on our agricultural land.

4) Water Collection

Water collection is best done using steep, shady land. This is very convenient because this is the land that no other activity wants.

5) Wild-life Land

Wild-life, as always, gets left with the land that we humans donπt want – but, not to worry, they are tough - they can deal with it (not like us humans who have grown soft with too much civilized, city living).

So, with a bit of work, we could use almost any land that may come our way.

A PLAN FOR A SELF-SUFFICIENT COMMUNITY OF 100 PEOPLE

Scale VILLAGE CENTRE

Trees and Bush-Land

Grass

Fire

Tiled Area (for water and energy collection

and paths)

Water (reservoirs and dams)

Crops

Roads

Fences

DETAIL – LIVING AREA

Scale

Grass

Trees and Bushes VILLAGE CENTRE

Buildings

Tiled Area (for water and energy collection - and paths)

Roads

Fences

Service ducts

Vertical service ducts

Hot-water Tank

HOUSING

---------------Two Levels---------- ----------Three Levels------------

Houses Size m² Units People Rooms Size m² Units People Rooms

1-16 200 4 4 9 300 6 6 14

17-18 133 2 2 5 200 3 3 8

19-20 267 4 6 13 400 6 9 20
5.2 Membership and Finance

As mentioned previously, this is the most important section of this whole work. Thus far we have chosen that our community shall be run by its current, present, active members. However, somehow, we must take care of the financial aspects of the enterprise bearing in mind that:-

• the older members will be able to provide much more finance than the active younger members,
• our older membersπ finance must be very secure because it will consist of most of their savings (as does oneπs house under normal circumstances),
• there must be facilities for members to withdraw their finance in a reasonably orderly fashion and receive the genuine current value of their share,
• the equity of members should be kept as equal as possible (i.e. in line with memberπs voting powers so that when they vote they are representing as much as possible the value of their equity).

Furthermore all this must be integrated with a reasonably slow and careful membership attainment process. I hope in this section then to outline a practical process which will do all these things. I would like you at this stage to be as critical as you possibly can be because, after all, if you are joining such a community you must be absolutely certain that your savings will be safe. However at the same time you cannot of course expect the impossible. Before doing all this, however, I must outline some fairly obvious stages of membership.

I think there needs to be at least 4 levels of membership:-

1) Associate Membership

Associate membership is for those people that might consider joining but first want to see how it all works (and also get to know the people that live there beforehand). Thus this membership should allow people to go to the communityπs social functions (I personally am always a greater supporter of Saturday night dances for this sort of thing), possibly do some work there and occasionally buy some of the communityπs produce. This level of membership would also be suitable for people living in the local village whose only desire is to join in with some of the social activities. There probably would need to be an annual fee to cover the costs of this membership.

2) Child Membership

This is the obvious level of membership for the children of members living in the community. In practise, this membership wouldnπt be very different from associate membership.

3) Interim Membership

This is the level of membership that is suitable for people who seriously desire to become members of the community. People at this level would live and work in the community and the only difference between them and full members is that they wouldnπt have full voting rights. During a personπs time as an interim member, they would be working towards having a minimum equity in the finance of the community. I think åinterim membershipπ should last between 1 and 5 years.

4) Full Membership

This is the normal membership that everyone would eventually attain. Clearly all official positions of the community (15 in all – see next section) would be restricted to just full members.

I will talk about membership in detail later but, for the time being, the following points need to be mentioned:-

1) It is essential that members know the laws and the responsibilities associated with the community. The only unbiased way of checking that the various levels of membership do know these things, I think, is to have formal written exams. They donπt need to be difficult exams - but they must exist. The same situation occurs when one learns to drive – here again you are formally tested to check you know the highway code before you are allowed to drive.

2) No member can rely on external welfare. A community canπt in any sense claim to be self-sufficient if any of its members are living from external welfare.

3) Drugs of any form are terribly dangerous. I donπt think a person can be a community member if they allow drugs to affect their working capacity in any significant manner.

Coming to finance now, the first fundamental rule, I will assume, is that the community members must completely own the communityπs physical assets. Thus I donπt think a community can claim to be self-sufficient if it is in debt to other institutions. Now let us consider how the financial situation might evolve when a young person joins our sort of community.

First let us assume that there is no inflation and that the going interest rate is 4% (a highish rate if there is no inflation at all). We will assume the asset value of the community per person is $200,000 (as in section 4.4). We will assume that our young member has no assets and hence they must pay interest on their $200,000 (which will be received by older members who have invested more than their share). Let us now assume that the value of his/her labour is $20 per hour and they work 30 hours per week (50 weeks per year). Then a realistic cost/value of their maintenance expenses (i.e. food, water and energy) is probably about $100 per week (equivalent to 5 hours work). {This is a very contestable figure indeed and to know if it is true or not then you need to study my system in detail. However if you bear in mind that the only work that needs to be done in the community (once it has been set up) is to produce oneπs food and to do any repair work on oneπs capital assets then one can see it cannot be too far wrong.} Such a person might then realistically wish to spend $100 per week outside the community (if they had reasonably greenish principles - again this is equivalent to 5 hours work).

Then for the first year:-

1) the personπs income would be $30,000 equivalent to 1,500 hrs

2) their interest repayments would be $8,000 equivalent to 400 hrs

3) their direct expenses would be $10,000 equivalent to 500 hrs

which would leave $12,000

which would become their equity in the communityπs assets.

If you continue this calculation over the succeeding years you will find that this guy would have paid off their share of the community assets in just over 13 years.

This is a very simplistic calculation because it does not consider things like tax. However the example is sufficiently accurate to high-light two very important features of the communityπs financial situation.

1) The community will, in general, have an excess of time and this could very easily lead to an excess of wealth. This is basically because it is a very efficient system. Thus the living costs in time are only 5 hours per week (equivalent to $100 per week) and even the capital cost would be paid off with 5 hours per week over a working life span of 40 years (remember this is a closed system so that any interest you pay when you are young must in turn be received by an older member). Thus, as you can support yourself on 10 hours work per week (on average), you have a reasonable amount of spare time for gaining wealth in the normal Australian community (and hopefully paying a nice lot of tax as well – I am not trying to defraud the Australian government of any of its just returns).

2) A young person will tend to have to work too hard when they are young and then they will not have enough to do when they are old. In the example above you will see that the situation is not too bad and, if a young person wanted to, they could fairly easily delay their interest payments until they were older (and then do the work when they did have more time). Nevertheless, as a true egalitarian, this situation still infuriates me. In my åSociety of Choiceπ I could overcome the problem by insisting that people repay their upbringing costs (and this gives me a logic for having no interest at all). However this is not possible where a young person can simply move back to Australian society where there is no such expectation. So we are stuck with the problem. Any sane older parent should of course help their children, if there is a problem, when the children are busy producing grand-children. But alas, a lot of older people are not always very sensible about these sorts of things.

One of the facets that this bit of logic tends to lead to, is that everyone might as well be paid at the same rate (per hour). This is because everyoneπs needs are the same (i.e. we would all eat the same healthy food and we would all live in the same very convenient living units). Also there is plenty of time for everyone to earn these things (in fact 5 hours is all that is needed). So, what would be the point in paying the leaders of our community at a higher rate of pay, when there is nothing they could do with this money except go and live the åhighπ life outside (and so set a bad example to the people they are supposed to be leading - like the wicked clergy used to do in previous centuries). This may still sound a bit too free and easy – but it is not. Thus only reasonable people would be asked to join the community and, if anyone was too slack in doing a job, then they wouldnπt be asked to do the job again. So, if a person got no work, then they would get no money.

The final thing that follows from this bit of logic is that oneπs unit of currency should simply be åhours workedπ (which can be traded in the normal way). The advantages are:-

1) everyone clearly knows what it means and they can see that every one is doing their fair share of work,

2) it is not subject to inflation,

3) it is a more sensible size (a dollar is too small).

Of course there would always be a rate of exchange between åhours workedπ and the Australian dollar and one could always convert either way. But, within the community, åhours workedπ is simpler and easier (as I hope you saw when I included åequivalent hoursπ in my example above).

Now let us get down to the details of how all this might work out in practise. Clearly our community would follow normal practise and each person would fill out a time sheet (at the end of the week) detailing work done (which as usual would need to be signed by the officer in charge of the area). When a person entered their time sheet, this would add to their åhours creditπ. The aggregate of all membersπ credit balances would then effectively become the communityπs banking system. On submitting their time-sheets people would also indicate how many hours they wish to be converted to Australian dollars (and this would be given to them on the basis of the current exchange rate). Within the community all the usual expenses (e.g. food purchases, interest repayments, electricity etc) would debit peopleπs accounts. Iπll justify this further and give more details in section 6.12. However it is a surprisingly straight-forward thing to do.

In my example I used 4% as my rate of interest. This is a slightly high figure (given no inflation at all). Over a long period of time, the interest rate figure (when inflation has been taken out) tends to be between 3% - 3.5% when you are talking about real estate where there is virtually no risk. {At least that is how I remember things when I worked in the actuarial dept in GIO.} I think 4% is a sensible figure to use because then all members will have a clear incentive to put their money in the communal holdings as their share of the equity. As there is only a limited amount of equity available in the community, eventually our equity will be over subscribed. Here I will now insist that the members, that are over represented in the equity, must gradually withdraw their equity (and hence receive Australian dollars instead). The effect of all this then will be to equalise the equity between all members (the last requirement I mentioned at the beginning of this section). At this point you must pause and be clear that you understand what I am saying. This is not standard practise because normally oneπs interest rate changes purely on supply and demand. In this system the interest rate is fixed at a slightly high level so that there is an incentive to equalise the equity of the community between all its members.

We can now return to the problem of how all this finance and equity stuff should be integrated with our various levels of membership. Firstly, åassociateπ and åchildπ membership can clearly be ignored because their financial commitment would be (and should be) negligible. åInterimπ membership is the important one in this regard and here I think interim members should obtain 1,000 hours of equity in the community before they should become full members. {As the average total equity is 10,000 hours (corresponding to $200,000) this is approximately 10% of their expected equity.} Furthermore I think this 1,000 hours of equity should be personally worked for (thus buying this equity via Australian dollars (or being given it by other members) is not acceptable). The membership of the community must be sure that a new member can take an active part in the community before they are accepted. Full membership could still be gained within a year - but this would be improbable because people need still to eat and do other things as well (as my example shows). In general I think as least 2 years should elapse before an interim member becomes a full member. Clearly the gaining of both interim and full membership must be voted on by the full community (with due notice to all members – membership is terribly important). Of these two hurdles the gaining of interim membership is probably the more important. When you become an interim member you become a full active member of the community so everyone would want to feel that you were OK beforehand. You only wouldnπt gain full membership if it turned out in fact that you werenπt OK.

There is only a certain amount of work that needs to be done in the community and so we now come to the problem of who shall be given this work. This is difficult to define completely but I think the following guidelines should apply:-

• preference be given to interim members and full members whose equity is low,
• preference be given to members who are spending their earnings in the community,
• the maximum amount of work a member can do in any week be 40 hours,
• the maximum amount of work a member can do in any year be 1500 hours (i.e. an average of approximately 30 hours per week).

I think these rules should give a sensible balance.

Finally we come to the problem of ensuring that members can always receive a fair value for their share of equity should they wish to leave. Strangely, I now need to introduce a restriction which, at first sight, might appear contrary to this aim – however I think it is necessary. The restriction is that:-

• a member (or past member) may not withdraw more than 20 hours of equity per week (unless it is convenient for all concerned).

The reason for the restriction is that it would stop a årun on the bankπ - which could happen for example if a minor disaster occurred to the community. This restriction means that no single person can make a årun on the bankπ and so it is fair to everyone. Under normal circumstances a person could sell their share at the going rate of exchange (if there were enough buyers at roughly that rate of exchange - as for any normal business). Thus a personπs savings would be secure and would be available as much as is sensibly possible.

However I think there is one circumstance where people could feel that they were not getting their fair share. This would be associated with a devaluation of our monetary unit – an åhourπs workπ. In the early stages of the community an hourπs work would probably correspond to genuine hard labour i.e. building the whole place. However, when this was all done and there was less essential work (that needed to be done), then it would be fairly natural for everyone to mutually agree to extend the possible jobs (that could be done) to ones that are less essential e.g. looking after children and tidying up oneπs natural land. Because these jobs would not correspond to a physical increase in the value of the property, the value of the communityπs åwork hourπ would then tend to drop in terms of the Australian dollar.

One could prevent this tendency by insisting that åwork hoursπ must only correspond to essential work. However I, for one, would be opposed to this. I think that the older asset rich members of the community should be sufficiently well off so that a slight devaluation of our åwork hourπ should not matter to them at all. It is more important that the younger members can take an active part in the community and so obtain work when necessary. However one does have to accept that this is a fundamental problem that stems from the fact the community would be run by the active members (and only to a lesser extent by the equity holders who might be more interested in maintaining the value of their equity).

There is one nasty subject that I havenπt discussed yet – namely forced åLoss of Membershipπ. Hopefully this should occur very rarely - but one must allow the possibility. Thus, if the community is to have rules (which I think is essential) and if a member consistently breaks these rules, then the communityπs only option is to eject such a member. Clearly this would require a full community vote. However such a member must still definitely obtain a just value for their share of equity. As before when a member wished to leave this process should be gradual (so that both parties can adjust to the new position - if there is any problem). Thus the same restriction should apply in this case as well. So neither party should have the right to force a withdrawal of more than 20 hours of equity per week (unless both parties agree to it).

Finally we come to a very pleasant question to answer – åwhat will the community do with all its spare time ?π (that its very efficient form of living will give it). First let me state the obvious – the communityπs spare time should not be used to support the åhighπ life of the external world i.e. travel, cars, big houses etc. The community wonπt try to stop this (it canπt even if it wanted to) but people will have plenty of time to earn money in the external world for activities like these (if they want to).

Preferably this time would be spent in the community itself. The obvious things are:-

• enjoying oneself i.e. singing dancing, doing sport etc.
• having and raising children. A self-sufficient community is an ideal place for having children. I think the community should at the very least provide child-care for the young and free extra accommodation for families with children.
• caring for people when necessary (but mostly just on a local basis).
• helping other self-sufficient communities to start up. It will always be very hard for a community to get started in the first place. When a community is set up and established then it will be very useful if they were to help such new communities with their knowledge and experience. I think people would find it very rewarding to help other groups to get started.

If you check back now to the beginning of this section hopefully you will find that I have achieved all the goals I set out there. Please check back if you doubt the fact. Thus the complete finance of the community can be organised reasonably easily and the important factor to remember is that our community would relatively quickly become wealthy in both money and spare time.

During the last week the following article appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald. You should read the article quite carefully because it will emphasise quite clearly how my self-sufficient community will differ from the normal concept of a commune. Thus my community will allow each individual to have more individual freedom and have more control over their assets than even their reformed åcapitalistπ versions will. Thus Mr Greenblatt could still have an outside life - run his own nature healing and massage centre and have his own house and car. It is a bit sad that he should want to - but he could certainly do it. There is just one thing I disapprove of - if a community wants to go out of its mind, mortgage its assets and indulge in external capitalist adventures then they should be at liberty to do so - but they should not be bailed out. That is what liberty means - you have the right to be stupid - but you have to pay the consequences.

Article from Sydney Morning Herald - 12/3/07

5.3 Officers and Courses

You should have gathered by now that the community I am suggesting must be fairly technically oriented. Thus there must be people in the community that will know this technical information and then direct the people associated with this work accordingly. How people learn all this information is what this section is all about. However, before doing this, we first need to know what the major areas of activities are likely to be.

I think the five major areas of activities are likely to be:-

1) Agriculture,

2) Building,

3) Transport,

4) Social Activities,

5) Care and Education.

It would seem sensible to have an officer in charge of each of these 5 areas.

Likewise there are 5 areas of activities associated with the essential services. These are:-

1) Energy,

2) Water,

3) Recycling,

4) Communications,

5) Work-shop.

Similarly it would seem sensible to have an officer in charge of each of these areas.

Finally there are the executive functions and again I think it reasonable to have 5 officers. These are:-

1) President – chairman and external representative,

2) Treasurer – finance and banking,

3) Membership – and hence discipline to some extent,

4) Secretary – internal affairs – chiefly in charge of employment,

5) Analyst – takes on the function of the opposition.

The scope of these 5 functions is nothing like as clear-cut as the previous 10 positions. However they are reasonably standard and of course I will define their areas of authority much more carefully later.

Thus, out of our community of 100 people, we will always need 15 officers, and so every member of our community should expect to be an officer for a reasonable proportion of their life. Thus being an officer is very important to everyone and so these are the basic rules that I think should apply:-

a) Each officer should be elected by the community on a yearly basis.

b) A member would only eligible to be elected as an officer of an area if he/she has passed the exam associated with that area.

c) A member may only hold one office at a time.

d) A member may only hold an office for 3 consecutive years.

These rules are designed to ensure that the officer positions are circulated fairly regularly among the membership. This is the healthy thing to do because our members can only make a fair assessment of an officerπs performance if they know the area reasonably well themselves.

I have said that an officer would only be paid at the same rate as normal members and so it might appear that many people would not be bothered to do the learning work associated with becoming an officer. I do not think this would happen because there would be a lot of prestige associated with becoming an officer. Besides the natural status that comes with being in charge of an area, the position of an officer could be further increased by the following:-

1) Each officer would be allowed 10 hours of unspecified time on their time-sheets to allow for general things like - thinking and producing reports.

2) Each officer would have a desk and a phone (in general these would be the only work ones available).

3) There would be a membership list giving the offices held and number of years held for each member. This list would play an important part at meetings and in voting (as I shall detail in the next section).

I would hope that one of the ultimate goals of every member of the community would be to try to have held every office in the community. Not the easiest of challenges - but a very fine one. {Clearly I donπt believe in this specialist rubbish that is preached so heavily in the current world.}

So that every member has the chance of learning all the technical details associated with each office, I think it essential that each officer gives a course on their area once a year. This course should be accompanied with a handout that specifies all the technical details associated with the area. This handout need only vary in minor ways each year - so it should not be too difficult to produce. I would imagine that these courses would need between 1 and 10 hours to cover everything that is necessary. {Thus Agriculture might need 10 hours but then all the executive offices would probably only need an hour each.} Thus, if the community reserved one hour a week for the giving of courses, then all the 15 courses would probably fit in this one hour per week.

Giving and attending courses will be the easy bit – it is the setting and taking of exams (that must follow at the end) that will be the hard bit. I personally have very old fashioned ideas on the subject of exams – I believe that exams should be absolutely and demonstrably fair. This will initially require some hard work - but it can be done. Thus the standard written driving tests we take are absolutely and demonstrably fair - but most University examinations these days most certainly are not.

In spite of all the raving that tends to go on, the nature and scope of a course is defined by its examination at its end – because this is what people must actually learn. So, if a student knows the full scope of questions that could be asked, then they know what to learn (which is what happens in the written driving test and more-or-less what happened in my maths university finals exam). I believe we have to do the same thing. Thus I think that the community (as a whole) must amass all the possible questions (i.e. problems) that they think are fair (probably about 10 times as many questions as an exam will contain). Then an exam will simply consist of a random selection of these questions.

In practise it is probably only the specialists in each field that will be capable of originating questions. Thus the normal sequence would probably be that each officer, at the end of their period of office, would add or alter a few questions in this accepted list of questions. These questions would then be presented to a general meeting of the community who would accept or reject these questions. It must be remembered that this system is very different to what happens in the current world. However, if you wish to create an egalitarian community, I donπt think there is any other choice – our advanced community must be reasonably technically based and so all the community must be fully involved in what knowledge needs to be gained. It is time consuming and a little bit difficult - but it must be done.

Clearly the officer in charge of each field must do all the marking for their examinations. In a community where the examiner and examinee are likely to know each other very well indeed, it would be far too dangerous to leave completed examination scripts as a matter solely between the examiner and the examinee. Thus all the completed examination scripts must be open for the whole community to check. I think the usual levels of degrees of pass are useful i.e. a pass – the person is qualified to be an officer in the field; a credit –a good pass; a distinction – an outstanding pass.

So far I have assumed that we will only have written or multiple choice examinations. In some cases of course a physical test is clearly preferable. In this case it is even more difficult to check that collusion cannot occur. Thus I think that physical tests must be carried out in a situation where the rest of the community can be present.

Finally - people do forget things. Thus I think examinations must be retaken if you want to stand for an office and 5 years has elapsed since your last exam. Retaking an exam should not be difficult if you work in the field and it is a sensible exam.

5.4 Meetings and Voting

A democratic community clearly must have a meeting and voting procedure. The problem here is that often these things donπt work too well. Thus for example - sometimes essential people donπt arrive in time and some people rant on about minor details that no one cares about. The net result of all this can be that everyone gets cheesed off with meetings completely and no one turns up at all. For the sort of community that I am thinking about, it is absolutely essential that the meeting/voting procedure works well and efficiently. Thus, in this section, I am setting out some definite rules that I hope will give this result. They will be far more rigorous rules than exist in current practise at the moment.

I think that my basic community needs a relatively short meeting every week. Let us be definite then and so let us assume that this meeting is on Wednesday evenings from 8 – 9 p.m. Most of these meetings can be fairly easy going and informal but I think that there needs to be one formal monthly meeting that will be a lot more serious. Let us start by discussing the nice easy and informal meetings first.

I think it is best to regard these informal meetings as simply preparatory meetings for the serious monthly meeting. Now, as there will normally be 3 informal meetings per month and as there are also 3 different types of officer (major activities, services and executive), then the natural thing to do is to associate one informal meeting with each of these 3 different functions. {Fully general issues would fall very naturally under the executive function.} Clearly it is essential that the 5 officers associated with the 3 functions turn up to their relevant meetings. The sort of thing that would happen at these informal meetings then would be:-

1) Members would discuss, with the relevant officers, any problems they are worried about in their areas and

2) Motions would be prepared that could be brought forward to the general monthly meetings.

I canπt say any more about these informal meetings until the nature of the monthly meeting has also been discussed.

My previous work, in this chapter, has now more-or-less already defined what must be done at these monthly meetings. This is:-

1) The most important thing of course to elect the 15 officers. If you think about it carefully, you will soon realise that it is much too difficult to follow normal practise and do all this at one great huge AGM meeting. Thus, even if members could carefully consider all the possible candidates for the 15 positions at once, the fact that some people might like to stand for alternative positions means that members would not know what candidates would be available. It is much better to tackle the job little by little and so elect 1 or 2 officers every monthly meeting.

2) Two things also need to be done at the monthly meeting before the meeting where an officer is elected. These are:-

a) the officerπs annual report needs to be handed out,

b) a list of possible new candidates for the office ought to be given out.

Both these items can then be discussed at the intervening informal meeting and then appropriate motions (or new candidates) be proposed.

3) New members (and possibly deletions of old memberships) need to be voted on at the monthly meetings. Again the list of such possibilities needs to be given at the previous meeting and discussed at the intervening informal meeting.

4) Motions (together with specific speakers for and against the motion) arising from the informal meeting must be carried forward into the monthly meeting.

You can see from all this that that it would be very easy to run out of time for the one hour that I have allotted for the monthly meeting. Let me now set down the set of rules and procedures that I think need to be adhered to. These are:-

1) All 15 officers must attend the monthly meeting (in very special circumstances the second-in-charge might have to take their place).

2) Normal and interim members must attend 75% of monthly meetings. If a memberπs level of attendance drops below this figure then they would automatically lose their right to membership. {One would imagine a member would attend almost all meetings for the few years. After that they could take quite extensive holidays etc without being too worried by the 75% limit.}

3) Each officer (for their area) must list the motions that need to be brought forward together with the speakers (for and against) and the time requested by each person (this must include their own needs as well of course)).

4) These 15 lists must be given to the chairman who must then apportion the monthly meeting hour as they feel best fits the actual requests (and also the communityπs needs). This may be a difficult decision but it must be done.

5) If a member (or officer) feels that they have been unjustly treated then they must refer the problem to the åanalystπ (equivalent to the opposition). The analyst, by adding total speaking times over the year, can then see if there is a genuine bias against a specific member or a class of members. {Each officer should also keep a rough running total of their areaπs speaking requests for the year and so check that this will add up to a sensible proportion of the total speaking time for the year. Each month cannot be a fixed time because, at the end of their year, a lot of extra time will be needed for reports and elections.}

6) Just for the sake of definiteness I will say that the monthly meetings should be the first Wednesday of the month - followed sequentially by the informal meetings on åmajor activitiesπ, åservicesπ and åexecutiveπ.

Before I do my best to defend these rather rigorous rules, let me first set down my little ideas on the subject of voting:-

1) At each monthly meeting each member should have in front of them a membership list which, for each member, would detail:-

a) the memberπs number of years as a member, their equity share and % of meetings attended,

b) the offices the member has held (together with the number of years and exam results for each office).

2) The voting form should be like parliament where a vote means each member walks to a specific spot to register their vote.

3) Voting should occur slowly so that people who feel strongly on the subject (or are very aware of the facts of the matter) can move first.

The result of all these measures will be that all members should know which members of the community are likely to know the facts of the matter best and so (if they trust them) they have the option of following their example by walking after them and hence to vote in the same manner. This, in a simple manner, allows the genuine expertise and strength of feeling, that some people might have, to be reflected in the voting. {Normal voting systems of course ignore these important matters completely.}

All these rules and procedures I have set down are a bit abnormal and on the whole unpleasant – you probably feel that our current procedures are adequate. You may be forgetting what actually happens in practise. The normal concept that people subscribe to today is that a community should be led by a leader (i.e. a president, a prime-minister or something like that) with a committee to support them (or a cabinet). However I certainly do not subscribe to this concept. The logic is a little complex but the basic reason is that the leadership concept clouds the issue as to who is responsible for the success or failure of a particular activity. Thus the leadership concept tends to work OK for the period that the leader is in office. However, when the community needs to elect a new leader then the community must know who will be capable of doing the job - and to know this the members must know in detail how well each sub-officer performed in the various departments previously. And of course it cannot know this if the responsibility is divided between the leader and the officers. So what I have done instead is to give you 15 different officers all with clearly defined responsibilities so everyone can see how everyone performed. My president/chairman is not the åleaderπ - he/she has their own clear cut duties to perform (on which he/she will be judged) and is in no way responsible for anyone else. This means that I have to give some firm rules so that the chairman/president knows precisely what their duties are and how far their authority extends (thus they cannot act like a benign autocrat). It also means of course that all members and officers must now have to take full responsibility for their own actions – which alas is one of the fundamental facts of life.

{In my åSociety of Choiceπ I gave a full chapter to both åvotingπ and åmeetingsπ and there I was able to give some reasonably complete and logical solutions. Unfortunately these solutions were far too hard for anyone to understand. åVotingπ in particular is a very academic, well-researched topic. However the main result of this research so far has simply been to prove that no åordinal voting systemπ (which includes all forms that are in operation today) can obey 5 very sensible logic requirements. Alas, fully logical systems are simply too hard for people to understand. I think the form I have given here is a reasonable compromise.}

6. A BASIC COMMUNITY IN TERMS OF ITS ACTIVITIES

A) MAJOR ACTIVITIES

6.1 Agriculture (Food, Crops, Animals and a Detailed Land Calculation)

The cure for this ill is not to sit still,

Or frowst with a book by the fire;

But to take a large hoe and a shovel also,

And dig till you gently perspire;

And then you will find that the sun and the wind,

And the Djinn of the garden too, . . . .

Clearly the world has gone mad about this globalisation thing in general - but its application to food just seems to verge on the ridiculous. Thus my family land exports baby squash to Japan by air – this must be extremely expensive, energy consuming and unsafe as regards diseases etc. The purpose of this section then is to show how a small community of roughly a hundred people can easily support themselves almost totally in food with comparatively little work and do all the perfect environmental things as well. Air-freighting baby squash to Japan isnπt really necessary (as you might guess).

You should already have a general idea of my agricultural form from what I said in section 4.4 on foot-prints and later in section 5.1 on the physical form. First let me remind you of what I said about our probable land requirements.

A community of a hundred people should need about 20 hectares of which:-

1) 5 hectares are needed for growing food,

2) 4 hectares are needed for a dam and water collection (i.e. tiled),

3) 2 hectares are needed for living and recreation,

4) 9 hectares are needed for wild-life and possible expansion (I call this natural land).

Of the 5 hectares needed for growing food this would be made up of:-

a) 1 hectare for fruit and vegetables,

b) 3 hectares for grain (wheat and maize - mostly for the animals),

c) 1 hectare of pasture (lucerne).

I have assumed a rainfall of only 750 mm which is low (the sort of rainfall you get 100 km west of the dividing range - the world average is 1 m). Hence you need a reasonable collection area (the roofs and pavements of the living area help as well in this regard).

The basic purpose of this section is to substantiate these figures by going through everything in considerable detail.

Our 5 hectares of agricultural land needs to be of the highest possible quality. So let me again remind you how this can be done (given that one is expecting to spend $73 or so on every square meter of agricultural land):-

1) Level

The agricultural land must be reasonably level. Normally this shouldnπt a problem but, if it was essential, then we could terrace the land (as discussed in section 5.1).

2) Soil consistency and depth

The agricultural land must have the correct proportion of clay and sand. If incorrect then it can be corrected by taking appropriate ingredients from our other land. In the worst case we would have to buy the ingredients elsewhere.

3) Nutrients

The soil must contain all the nutrients one needs to grow food i.e. nitrogen, phosphates etc. This is easy - $1 per square meter will buy all the nutrients that you could need (provided of course that they are fully recycled).

4) Humus

This is just a question of time. Our soil must contain sufficient old organic matter to allow water retention and soil ≥clumping≤. If it doesnπt then one simply has to keep growing vegetation and ploughing it back into the soil until one does have enough humus. After 5 years you will certainly have enough.

There are two other facilities that I think also are needed to make life much easier. These are:-

5) Services

For ease of farming, one needs water and power to be on supply everywhere. This is relatively easy to provide and still stay within our budget.

6) Protection

Our agricultural land must be exceedingly well fenced to prevent nasty animals, bugs and diseases getting in (and stop our animals getting out). Besides this, we can also easily afford to have netting above our agricultural land so that: birds would be stopped from eating our grain; and moths be prevented from introducing caterpillars to our vegies. {But I unfortunately donπt know how to stop fruit fly infecting our soft skinned fruits. So my food does not include any fruit with soft skin.}

For a system like I am proposing to work, one clearly has to recycle absolutely everything. Thus there will be no need for further nutrients because everything that has been taken out of the land will be put back in a recycled form. This recycle process is reasonably easy to carry out because everything is close at hand and so all our wastes can be composted and ploughed back in.

This section is by far the largest of my sections so it is convenient to divide it up into four fairly clear-cut sub-sections. They are:-

1) Our Food (i.e. Bread, meat, cheese, fruit, vegies etc),

2) Our Crops (i.e. Wheat, maize, lucerne, soya beans, fruit etc),

3) Our Animals (Chooks, pigs, cows (both beef and dairy),

4) The Final Complete Calculation of Our Water and Land Needs,

5) It will be Fun.

Finally you are probably asking yourself just how much do I know about agriculture. Not as much as I should, I am afraid. My family owns some land in New Zealand and at times I have had a fairly close association with this land. I have bugged my friends and relations a fair bit to get some of this information. Mostly, however, Iπve relied on the various books, Ag Notes and District Agronomists of the NSW Dept of Agriculture (they have been very good indeed). I will give the details of all this in the relevant sub-sections.

6.1.1 Our Food

Before we can do anything in agriculture, we first need to know what crops we want to grow and what animals we want to keep. To work this out, of course, we will need to know what food everyone will want to eat. This is going to be difficult because everyone will have different diets and even one personπs diet will vary over time. Thus one simply has to guess as best one can. What I have done is to choose the most standard foods we eat in Australia but give a slight bias in favour of the healthy, nutritious foods and likewise include slightly less of the unhealthy foods (or foods that are very expensive in their land needs). I include slightly more food than is necessary so this will give our community more flexibility in what everyone can eat (if the food is not eaten then it can just go to the animals). If you donπt like my choice then please give me the full details of what you think is better. Growing extra crops is not all that difficult – the difficulty is rather the extra learning problem about the details of soil requirements, water needs and associated pests and diseases etc.

The table on the following page gives the details of my suggested food consumptions. The crucial column is the amount (in grams) that the average person is expected to eat per day (second last). The last column gives the energy (in mega-joules) associated with this amount. You can see that this food has a total value of 10.88 M.J. per person per day. A balanced diet needs between 6 and 9 M.J. depending on a personπs size and level of activity. Thus there will be a reasonable amount of spare food that can be given to the animals.

The next question is ≥ if you eat this food in the right degree (i.e. you eat the proportion that will give you the correct number of M.J.) will this constitute a healthy balanced diet≤? I can assure you that it is - but it would take a long time to demonstrate that it is. There is a very simple rule in nutrition which says that ≥if you avoid all processed foods then most mixed diets will be OK≤. Thus, if you were to miss out all my processed foods (i.e. the cheese, butter, oil, sugar, tea, coffee, beer and wine) that I have included in my diet then you would have a slightly better and healthier diet (besides being easier to produce). However, the normal Australian has certain expectations of a certain amount of ågood livingπ - so these evil items have been included.

Columns 3, 4 and 5 allow you to check that major ingredients of my diet (i.e. protein, fat and carbohydrate) are in a good balance (the figures are in grams per 100 gram portion). The other small essentials (i.e. minerals and vitamins) are too numerous to list. I happen to know this subject very well. When I was young, I went on several extended climbing trips so I bought a nutrition manual so that I could work out whether our meagre light-weight food was nutritionally adequate. Then, later in life, I had to lecture on Linear Programming (a mathematical optimisation technique) and by far the best example of this technique is the problem of finding the cheapest (or lightest) diet that obeys all the dietary constraints. In this work, my major problem has been dealing with changing fashions in units. My original books were in ounces and calories but the modern ones are naturally in grams and joules. Trouble is that the old books are much better because they do not include as many processed foods. If you look at a modern book then you get completely confused because of the myriad number of variants in modern processed foods. Thus I have had to compile this table from 3 nutrition manuals spanning 40 years.

A PERSONπS DAILY FOOD

% Carbo- -------Amount------

Edible Protein Fat hydrate M.J. Grams M.J.

Wheat Products 100 9.4 1.3 79 1.51 300 4.53

(Bread, Pasta etc)

Milk 100 3.3 3.8 5 .37 500 1.85

Cheese (cheddar) 100 26.1 33.8 0 1.69 50 .84

Butter 100 0.6 81.2 0 3.05 5 .15

Oil 100 0.0 99.7 0 3.72 10 .37

Beef (lean) 73 18.4 13.4 0 .84 30 .25

Beef (average) 79 16.3 25.1 0 1.24 30 .37

Pork (lean) 80 20.0 15.0 0 1.00 30 .30

Chicken 69 20.5 5.8 0 .59 100 .59

Eggs 88 12.5 11.6 1 .67 10 .07

Fish (cod) 66 17.0 0.4 0 .32 10 .03

Potatoes 86 2.0 0.1 19 .34 100 .34

Corn 65 3.6 1.2 21 .41 50 .20

Carrots 92 0.9 0.2 9 .15 50 .07

Onions 95 1.2 0.2 8 .15 50 .07

Broccoli 61 3.6 0.3 6 .15 50 .07

Cauliflower 50 2.6 0.2 5 .11 30 .03

Beans (soya) 100 10.9 5.1 13 .56 60 .33

Beans (runner) 86 1.7 0.2 6 .13 50 .07

Peas 43 6.3 0.4 15 .34 30 .10

Tomatoes 94 1.0 0.3 4 .09 60 .06

Capsicum 92 0.9 0.2 9 .15 60 .10

Lettuce 75 1.3 0.3 3 .07 40 .04

Mushrooms 75 2.2 0.3 4 .09 40 .05

Strawberries 97 0.7 0.5 9 .15 40 .06

Apples 78 0.3 0.3 13 .22 100 .22

Oranges 74 0.9 0.3 11 .19 120 .23

Bananas 70 1.1 0.3 22 .37 50 .18

Avocado 70 1.7 15.8 6 .67 60 .40

Kiwi Fruit 90 1.2 0.3 9 .13 50 .06

Grapes 95 0.7 0.4 17 .28 20 .06

Sugar 100 0.0 0.0 100 1.64 20 .33

Tea 100 0.0 0.0 0 .00 4 .00

Coffee 100 0.1 0.0 0 .00 12 .00

Beer 100 0.3 0.0 3+4 .17 200 .03

Wine 100 0.3 0.0 2+12 .36 100 .04

Total M.J. 10.88

The last 5 items in this table (sugar, tea, coffee, beer and wine) will be hard to produce in our community and so I have assumed that they must be imported. As I would like to feel that our community will, in some sense, be self-sufficient in food, I feel we must produce some extra food and export it to counter-balance these imports. {With our normal expectations it is almost impossible to be completely self-sufficient in food.} The easiest way to do this is to use the åtotal energy valueπ as the measure of equivalence (the usual criteria used to measure food quantity). However this would be a bit of a cheat because it would be far harder to produce those 5 imported foods than it would be to produce wheat for example with the equivalent energy value. So what I have done instead is to use the åmonetary valueπ as the measure of equivalence between our exports and our imports. This is much harder to do and it tends to break my heart to have to trade our healthy hard-won food for the iniquitous drugs that I am importing – but it ought to be done. The details of this are shown in the following table (the prices are a bit questionable – they are simply the standard values I saw in my local mall).

IMPORTS and EXPORTS (per person per day)

IMPORTS Total for

Price ($/kg) Amount (gm) Price ($) community

Sugar 1.20 20 .24

Tea 15.00 4 (2 serves) .06

Coffee 50.00 12 (2 serves) .60

Beer 3.30 200 .67

Wine 3.00 100 .30

1.87 $187

EXPORTS

Price ($/kg) Amount (gm) Price ($)

Bread (70% wheat) 3.60 256 .92

Milk 1.70 100 .17

Strawberries 7.80 100 .78

1.87 $187

The problem of how and where our food gets into the hands of the people that are going to eat, then it leads us on to the more general question of åwhere all our various agricultural related activities should be carried out within our communityπ? At this stage it is appropriate that you go back and look at the detailed map of our community in section 5.1 (Pages 33 and 34).

The major agricultural activities of course occur in the big rectangle on the top right. However, if you look at it carefully, then you will see that a big black line encircles this area even at the natural entry point at the bottom. This black line represents an exceedingly solid fence designed to keep all possible predators out and even the entry point at the bottom will consist of a very secure locked gate. This might seem a bit extreme but I think it is necessary. Thus, if a child was to walk into the agricultural area and accidentally let free their pet mouse, then the results could be disastrous. {I have twice camped in mice plagues and I assure you they are extreme.} Thus people should enter this area with care. So most of the buying and selling of food should occur outside this area - so this what the rest of this section is about.

Before we can go any further, you have to become familiar with one of the harsh facts of life in our community. This is that the cost of our electrical power will be about 5 times as much as you pay at present (made from wicked old coal). Now this is OK – we can live with it – but we certainly wonπt be wasting any of our electrical power if we can possibly avoid it. Now one of the big ways that we can avoid using extra electrical power is not to use individual fridges. This may seem a little extreme - but you must study the detail very carefully. If you look at my diagram carefully then you will see that the average distance of any unit to a large communal fridge is only 50 m (at the agricultural produce shop and the bakery/cafÈ). Also, as everyone would like everything as fresh as possible, it would be very natural that everyone would go to both these places at least once a day. Furthermore all things that need to be kept cool (e.g. milk, cheese and meat) can be sold in well-insulated containers (after all our containers must be reused many times - so we might as well make them well-insulated as well). So with these facilities, you can see that individual fridges are simply not necessary (and if there is a problem (i.e. you are having a party) then you can simply get some ice and use an esky). If, at sometime in the future, the price of PV panels become more reasonable then we can have individual fridges once again. Till then, it is better simply to use communal fridges and so save our precious electrical power for jobs that can save actual manual labour.

This last paragraph will have more or less indicated that the buying and selling of food will occur at our bakery/cafÈ and our produce shop. Clearly my bakery/cafÈ has been set up as an ideal place to sell some of our fresh produce. However, it is also an ideal place to introduce outside people to the wonders of our community. It would also be beneficial that outside people could mingle with people of the community - so our community should use this cafÈ as well. As I think maintaining a good relationship with the outside world is more important than selling our food, I have placed this area under the control of our social department rather than our agricultural department. The bakery part must clearly have a small flour mill.

Our produce shop, however, does very much come under our agricultural departmentπs jurisdiction. As this food will only be sold to community members, we can allow members to mostly serve themselves. For this sort of thing to work, however, there need to be some strict rules. These are the 2 rules that I think should apply:-

1) Our produce will be taken to the shop in boxes and only one box of each food will be available for members to choose from. Each open box will have an entry list and members will add their name and the amount they have taken to this list.

2) the rule åif you touch it then you must buy itπ ought to apply. Feeling produce is not a very hygienic thing to do and it also gives the community the problem of what to do with left-over picked-over produce. If some produce is sub-standard then the member should show it to the person in charge.*

*{One could argue this case in many ways on the basis of hygiene, fairness, time consumed or wastage - but many people would disagree with all such arguments. However, if you were to carry out a practical test and put out two sets of boxes and allow all people to choose either the åtouching allowedπ boxes or the åno touching allowedπ boxes (but not both) then I think you would soon find that people would prefer the åno touching allowedπ system. Feeling fruit first is nice – but, if everyone else that you share with is also a fanatic fruit-feeler and sometimes you have to put up with the left-over, well-felt dregs – then it ainπt so good.}

There still needs to be someone in charge who will: price items, discard bad produce, put out new boxes, check that the completed entry lists add to the original amount and occasionally check that people are not cheating. However, this system will still basically allow members to serve themselves when they like. At the end of the week, each personπs total usage would be calculated and priced and this amount be deducted from their account.

Some of our produce must be in cold storage and it might be too demanding on the cooling system to allow everyone to enter this area when they like. There probably needs to be a side bench (available through glass hatches) where members can choose what they want without going inside. Members should be able to get ice here as well.

Pricing our produce will be a significant task as pricing needs to vary according to the changing supply and demand situation and also on the difficulty of production. Our pricing structure will not be the same as the external Australian price structure because their prices are too high for grain products (thus the price of pasta, bread and wheat-biscuits are roughly 10 times the raw price of grain) and too low for meat.

6.1.2 Our Crops

As we have now worked out our food requirements then clearly the major task, of this section, is to work out how much land we will need to grow our relevant crops. However this is clearly a relatively hard and detailed task. I thought it would be a lot more pleasant if we started by answering the nice, general question of åhow can we grow our crops in a truly ågreenπ fashionπ. I personally can dream for hours on jobs that need to be done in the easiest and simplest manner – I hate the thought of the possibility of actually doing any hard labour.

If you look at my physical diagrams in section 5.1 then you will see that I have put a central paved path (2 m wide) up the centre of my agricultural area with branching paved paths (1 m wide) every 20 m apart. Thus every bit of my agricultural land will be within 10 m of a paved path. This is because I think this form of agriculture will be ideal for manual transport. Using a small well-constructed cart, one person can easily push 100 kg of produce on relatively flat paved paths. Thus, as we all need an occasional bit of exercise, I think the need for tractors or trucks for cartage is entirely unnecessary. I have assumed that our carts would be about 80 cm wide – thus the carts could pass eachother on the central path but not on the branch paths (unless they are moved onto the land).

I have said that our agricultural land should be well supplied with water and power. Clearly the major water pipes, drainage and power lines should be situated beneath the paved paths (otherwise they are likely to interfere with the ploughing operation). As regards servicing the individual plots of land, I must first remind you that I also wish to be able to place suitable netting over every part of our agricultural land. Now netting would require about a 3 m post every 5 m and these posts would need to be connected by strong metal wires at the top to stabilise them and support the nets. Appropriate nets could then be slipped over the top of all this when the need arose. These posts can also be very useful as a means of delivering power or water to any part of our land. Letπs deal with the easiest facility first which happens to be power.

As our posts are placed 5 m apart, our agricultural land can be considered to consist of 10m squares with 8 posts on the outside and a central post in the middle (see following diagram as to how this would work out in practise). We can take a power lead to the top of this post (using the top connecting wires) and, if a further lead of 8 m is connected to this, then power can be brought to any part of our 10x10 m little square. However, there are still 2 awkward problems if you wish to use this power in the easiest possible manner. {The same sort of problems apply when you vacuum the house or mow the lawn with an electric lawn mower.}

1) In normal circumstances, the power lead will get caught in the vegetation (as one progresses in the operation). The solution to this problem is to keep the power lead high. Fortunately the power lead starts from the top of the post. What is needed then is a retractable power lead to keep the lead taut and a rod on the implement to keep the power lead high at the implement end as well. It is best that this retractable facility is kept on the implements rather than the power posts as there are likely to be about 500 power posts and only about 20 agricultural implements.

2) When ploughing or harvesting this 10x10 m region, the normal operation would be to cycle around the central post. If this operation continues for too long then the power lead will get snared around the central post. The solution in this case is to have a socket at the top of the post that can easily swivel around. I am not sure that such swivel sockets exist - but it shouldnπt be too difficult to make them if necessary.

Scale

Posts

Support wires

Power Lines

Water Pipes

Water Sprinklers

Swivel Power Points

The natural way to deliver water evenly to this same 10x10 m piece of land would seem to be to have a sprinkler pipe across the middle, resting on the same posts (as shown in the previous diagram). If one then has sprinkler nozzles every 1 m then, when the pipe is oscillated appropriately, it should be possible to obtain a reasonably even spread of water over the whole square. The difficulty is again that one might have to make it oneself. The problem with the normal circular sprinkler devices is that it is hard to get an even spread of water. One could use just one normal circular sprinkler at the centre and then have special sprinklers at the 4 corners - so this could be an alternative option. This whole system needs to be reasonably automatic because water needs to be delivered in the middle of the night (to avoid too much evaporation loss).

We now come to the details of how we should actually do our farming. I will cover this under the following 6 natural headings but, before doing this, let me first talk about our general degree of mechanisation. I like mechanisation (Iπm lazy) – but I donπt like large scale mechanisation. Fortunately large-scale mechanisation is not necessary in our case. If you bear in mind that:-

a) the average crop line width is about 25 cm and

b) a person only has 500 m² associated with them

then the crop line length associated with one person should only be 2 km long. Now, as a person walking slowly should cover 2 km in about ½ an hour, this should indicate to you that our implements should only need to deal with about 25 cm at a time - thus they can be quite small. Furthermore a person can easily guide a small mechanical implement from behind- and so every task could be done on foot. Our problem, of course, then is that modern agriculture is designed for large-scale operations and so small-scale implements are hard to obtain. So we have a problem – but I will deal with this at the appropriate time for the different operations.

1) Soil Preparation

Soil preparation in normal terms means: getting rid of the weeds, ploughing the land and returning the basic nutrients into the soil. In normal agricultural practise, the basic nutrients are returned to the soil in the form of fertilizers and are placed on top of the soil. In a self-sufficient community we must return all our nutrients in the form of compost. It is also far better if this compost is returned beneath the soil so that the nutrients do not partially evaporate into the atmosphere. Thus we have very significant problem as to how we get our compost into the soil. There seem to be two ways by which this can be done:

a) We can more-or-less follow standard farming practise and so we can:

i) plough one furrow at a time,

ii) put the compost in the following trench,

iii) cover this compost during the next adjacent ploughing operation.

b) The other way is to drag a vertical pipe through the soil and, while doing so, pump the compost into the soil.

Neither operation is standard practise but I know of parties that have used both methods. I, personally, tend to favour the second method for the following reasons:

i) The vertical pipe method is much more flexible as to how it can be applied. Thus the pipe can be applied at any depth and at any width (depending on what is required).

ii) Dragging a vertical pipe through the ground may sound very expensive in energy and it could even be destructive to the soil. However this need not be the case at all. Thus, if small åwinged flangesπ are attached to the front of the pipe, then these flanges can lift the soil and guide the soil to either side of the pipe. This means that the pipe could travel through the soil reasonably easily and also carry out a very beneficial operation by lifting and aerating the soil at the same time. In the following little two diagrams I have tried to show what these flanges would look like – but with very dubious success.

It is best to think of these flanges as two tiny, linked ploughs that guide the soil to either side of the pipe. There probably needs to be about 4 such flanges per pipe (with a flange depth of 10 cm giving a pipe depth of 40 cm). These flanges will also mean that our compost can simply be fed into the soil without the need for a pumping operation. Thus immediately after the pipe, an empty space will be created by the flanges. So our compost can simply flow out here (although the compost will need to be liquefied a little by mixing with water first).

iii) The above operation should then have already broken up and aerated the soil. The weeds and roots can then be taken out of the soil by a deep raking operation. They can then be composted with all the other compost. This means that there should be less chance of weeds regenerating again in the same place.

iv) These two operations (ii) and iii) should mean that a major ploughing operation is now unnecessary. The ploughing operation is difficult for a small community, like us, because it is very hard to buy small electric ploughs. Also the ploughing operation moves the soil laterally to small degree. For a small community where we have to plough many small patches, this movement can become quite a problem.

Of course it is terribly hard to know which of these two methods would be best in practise. But it is good to remember that there are at least two options as to how oneπs compost can be returned back to the soil very effectively.

2) Sowing

Sowing is normally done using an automatic sowing disc and there is no reason for us not to follow this standard practise. Clearly we will only need to sow with one disc at a time and so I think it should be possible to push this manually. For some crops it is better to grow seedlings (I have organised that the roof of our crop storage area should be used for this purpose). The planting of the seedlings would presumably be done manually.

3) Nurturing the crop growth

This principally means watering the crop and this is now very easy for us as we have a sprinkler system in place all the time. {As mentioned before this should be done in the middle of the night to minimize evaporation losses.} Some nutrients could be added to the water as well (i.e. urine or its broken-down products). Some books recommend the addition of mulch around the crops but I have included all possible forms of mulch already in my compost. So this is not possible. Possibly one should lay down lines of black plastic between crop lines to minimize evaporation losses.

Weeds and pests need to be dealt with as usual. This should occur less with us because our nets should keep pests away and we should give very few opportunities for weeds to grow. The problems can therefore be dealt with manually and so if chemical spays are needed then they can be used precisely in the appropriate places and only when necessary.

4) Harvest

The normal complex harvesting machines will tend to be too big and expensive for our kind of operation. The easiest thing to do then seems to be to use an electrical cutter (mounted on wheels) and this would normally cut each crop near its base (i.e. taking the whole of the crop). The crop would then fall into a following collecting bin and, when full, this would be taken to our processing building. This process would be the reverse ploughing – thus one would start on the outside of each 10 m square (connected to the central power lead) and then go rotationally around and end up at the centre. The operation will involve quite a lot of cartage - but this is essential because everything that is not eaten will need to be composted in any case.

This would be the general form but each crop could be different. Thus some crops need to be picked daily while root vegetables need to be yanked out of the ground. For wheat it could be better to initially cut the crop high (mostly only including the ears) and take this to our processing buildings. The remaining stalks could then be cut later and then this be taken directly to our compost buildings. A similar situation could also apply to corn. There could be variations for almost every crop.

From here on we are going to be largely associated with what goes on in our agriculture buildings so I now need to describe them in a general sense. As you can mostly see in my diagram (page 33), my complete agricultural building is 65 m long and 15 m wide. It is divided up so that crops have 20 m, chooks have 10 m, pigs have 8 m, cows have 12 m and compost has 15m. It is 4 m high and built with plenty of insulation and thermal mass and so a very steady sensible temperature can be maintained (in fact the same as all my other buildings). Thus, for all the various activities, there should be a comfortable, spacious area. Usually I wonπt go into any further details because I donπt want to expose my ignorance on all the essential detail.

Our actual crop processing could be different for every crop - so I canπt go into details. However, I should say something about our most important crop - which is wheat. Here one would use (or mimic) the later stages of a combine harvester. This operation consists firstly of threshing and this is done by feeding the crop into the gap between a concave plate and revolving wheel (with knobs on) which crushes the crop a little and thus separates the wheat from the ears. After this the resulting mixture is fed in front of a blower - the wheat grains will fall down and will be sieved out while the chaff will be blown further on and this will eventually be taken to our compost facility. A similar operation could apply to maize except that the gap in the threshing operation must be much greater. Thus you can see that the lack of a full combine harvester should not cause us too many problems.

5. Composting

I donπt know much about composting - so I am limited in what I can say. However I do know that it is important that it is done well so I give a fairly large building for the purpose (225 m²) that can be kept at the correct temperature with good aeration facilities. Clearly all greenery will need to be shredded - so we will need a shredder. Originally I had intended to keep the faeces and urine separate but that turned out to be too difficult. However, on arrival, it is probably best if the urine is separated out and treated separately (as one then has the option of using it in the watering system). Other than this, all I know is that you add worms (or bugs) to the mixture and wait till these noble creatures turn this awful mess into nice good compost. {I have a feeling that the worms may need a little bit of normal earth as well to feel at home.}

6. Storage

For a community to be able to regard itself as self-sufficient, I think it should have some capacity to deal with the bad times. To put this into quantifiable terms, I propose that the community should be able to cope with one year of crop failure. This means that we will need a substantial amount of storage space but, before going into details on this, let me first specify how our crops will be stored.

Our produce would be stored as normal in sacks (for grain) and boxes (for the rest). However, so that everyone in our community can easily handle these things, the items should be of a sensible weight. I think a sensible weight for this is about 10 kg (as opposed to normal current day sacks which weigh 25 kg). As our sacks and boxes will be used many times over, they can be light and of a very good quality (the sacks must be tied rather than sown at the top).

Produce, stored for human consumption, should probably be stored at a cool temperature (i.e. about 10 degrees Celsius) - so I have assumed we will have a large cool room. If this was made of Styrofoam 10 cm thick with internal dimensions 10 m x 10 m x 3 m (high) and, if we assume that our average external temperature is 20 C, then our energy losses will be about 8 Kwh per day. Of course there are a large number of assumptions here as there are a large number of possibilities that can make this figure higher or lower. {The factors that could make it lower are: 1) modern refrigeration machines use the Carnot cycle and this can give better results than the unity that I have assumed here; 2) one can use the cold air at night to refrigerate and so the temperature differential need not be so great and 3) in dry climates one can use water evaporation solely as a means of attaining this only moderate temperature.} I donπt want to argue this case too strongly – the point is that this facility can be attained at a reasonable price. When I first envisaged this system I imagined that the bottom meter would be for grain storage (in compartments) with a light floor above with trap doors as access (giving a cubic meter space for each person). The top part would have shelves for all the boxes. But it could be done in many ways – I have probably allowed for far too much cool storage.

Putting produce in the cool room for only short periods of time can involve extra work (and be expensive in energy) so, when possible, it is far better to pick only the required amount of food that day and use it that very day (perfectly fresh). The same boxes can then be used for picking the produce and then taking it and selling it at the agriculture shop. So, with a bit of luck (i.e. the food is clean), the produce can go straight from picking to the shop. One should also work on the assumption that, after purchase, everything would be eaten in the following 24 hours. Thus things like avocadoes and bananas should be chosen individually so they are in perfect condition for eating either that day or the next. {This then eliminates the need for people to actually hand feel the produce before purchase.} The only need for grain is at the bakery or for the animals so it could continue to travel in the sacks. {The bakery would have a small mill and the wheat would only be milled when needed. This makes it easier for us to use wholemeal flour because then it wonπt have the chance to go off (the kernel of grain has a tendency to go off).}

We also need a reasonable amount of storage for our animal fodder (i.e. corn and hay). There should still be ample room in our crop area for this purpose.

Finally we come to the major task of this section and this is to work out how much land we will need to grow our crops. This will mostly be done in the table on the following page - but it might take a little while for you to understand it. Firstly let me explain the units I have chosen (which are not entirely standard – but no units are). The table, as a whole, refers to a year because agricultural productions always are (and always have to be) in terms of years. This means that åour daily food requirements in gramsπ (see table 6.1.1) must be multiplied by .365 (the requirement column) to turn the figures into kilos per year. Our land requirement then is given in square meters - because you can then fairly easily visualise how much land you will need per person (last column). Our basic calculation is simply that

Land Needed = Requirement / Production Rate .

CROP LAND REQUIREMENTS (per person in m²)

Ref. Period Harvest Production Requirement Land

No. (Days) (Month No) Form Kilos/m² (kilos) (m²)

Wheat 1 180 11 0.75 110+65 ½ x 233

Potatoes 3 130 C 4x2 8 37 4.6

Corn 3 100 C 3x2 6 18 3.0

Carrots 3 130 C 4x2 8 18 2.3

Onions 3 120 C 4x2 8 18 2.3

Broccoli 3 100 C 2.5x2 5 18 3.6

Cauliflower 3 100 C 6 11 1.8

Climbing Beans 3 100 C 5x2 10 18 1.8

Soya Beans 2 120 C 1.5x2 3 22+78 33.3

Peas 3 70 C 1x3 3 11 3.7

Tomatoes 3 120 C 5x2 10 22                  &nbs