Local currency
The Brixton Pound
Toronto Star / D'Arcy Doran / 14 January 2011
Pubs, fish-and-chip shops and even lawyers and architects are among the more than 200 businesses accepting the Brixton pound, which is worth one British pound.
“With every transaction that occurs locally, more wealth is generated for the local area,” Annalisa Dorigo, the project’s manager explains. “The whole point of the Brixton pound is to increase local transactions.”
When people shop at a national chain, about 90 per cent of the money leaves the community, Dorigo says. The Brixton pound is billed as the money that sticks to Brixton.
Goodbye quick buck, hello slow money
Toronto Star / Vanessa Lu / 22 September 2011
With stock markets tanking and the chance of making a quick buck fades, a new style of investing may soon take hold: Slow Money.
The idea comes out of the slow food movement, in which people stop and enjoy what they put in their mouths and respect how food is produced.
In this version, instead of plowing savings into Bay St. or Wall St., people can invest in projects or farms they believe in. It could be small loans to help an organic dairy or to open a small butcher shop.
“At its core, it’s moving from a world where we give our money to people we don’t know to invest in things they don’t understand halfway around the world,” said Slow Money founder Woody Tasch, formerly a small venture capitalist and head of a network of angel investors based now in New Mexico.
Slow Money began as a fledgling non-profit with about 230 founding members, It now it has about 1,800 members, plus thousands more who have signed on to the philosophy.
In the past year, Tasch estimates $9 million has been invested in projects, from small loans to buying 24 hectares of land near downtown Portland, Oregon, to serve as an incubator for organic farmers.
Tom Manley, who owns Homestead Organics in Berwick in eastern Ontario, has cobbled together his own model.
Meat from Gate to Plate
Mother Earth News / Newsletter / 14 September 2011
For more than 30 years, master butcher Cole Ward has been teaching chefs, butchers, farmers, caterers and meat-lovers how to cut and prepare their own meat. Cole believes locavores are looking for healthy foods that are locally raised without chemical fertilizers, hormones or antibiotics. In a nutshell, food that's derived from a farming style that's sustainable and keeps dollars in our local community. In this blog, you'll learn tricks and tips for making the most of the meat you bring home from butchers with a passion for sustainable food.
Slow Money: Reconnecting the Economy to Soil, Biodiversity and Food Quality
Mother Earth News / Woody Tasch / 02 December 2010
A third of America’s topsoil has eroded since 1776. In the 1970s, the United States lost 4 billion tons of soil per year. Roughly a third of all farmland in the world has been degraded since World War II, with annual soil erosion worldwide equivalent to the loss of 12 million hectares of arable land, or 1 percent of total arable land. About a third of China’s 130 million hectares of farmland is seriously eroded, and Chinese crop yields fell by more than 10 percent from 1999 to 2003, despite increasing application of synthetic fertilizers.
Oil, health, and health care
British Medical Journal / Angela E Raffle / 01 September 2010
Some cities in the UK are aware of peak oil implications. For example, leaders in Bristol commissioned a report in 2009 on the implications of peak oil. This has helped stimulate work to develop a Bristol Energy Company and a local currency, to analyse the vulnerabilities of the current food supply system, and to adopt a “climate change and energy security framework.” Incorporating peak oil preparedness into England’s official local government planning mechanisms—local transport plans and local development frameworks—is an uphill struggle because central government policies still favour the needs of big food corporations, construction industries, and the road lobby above the need for resilient local systems.
The healthcare conclusions in Bristol’s peak oil report are that oil is a primary raw material for many drugs, equipment, and supplies; that transport for patients, staff, deliveries, and services is heavily oil dependent; that currently suppliers are not required to provide business continuity plans around fuel supply shortages; and that rising oil costs would seriously affect health service budgets. On the positive side, the report noted the resilience afforded by the following facts: most people live within a mile of their nearest general practice; the NHS is used to responding to emergencies and making rapid changes; walking, cycling, and locally grown food are good for health; and the NHS Carbon Reduction Strategy for England does acknowledge peak oil. What this means is that health care will change, whether we like it or not, and that carbon reduction, fuel depletion, and financial stringencies have to be looked at together.
Experts on peak oil and health experts have examined this challenge together at three workshops, and some common themes emerge. These concern the need for simpler more robust systems that are capable of local maintenance, and the importance of fairness regarding access to food, water, transport, and essential health care. The box [see Full Article] summarises possible features identified as characteristic of a healthy prosperous society in the future. Because the workshops explored success not failure the goals may appear idealistic. The alternative could be very different.
