[P2P-F] how-1-million-pounds-of-organic-food-can-be-produced-on-3-acres

Fri Jul 15 17:30:28 CEST 2011

hi Steve

I haven't seen Growing Power's operations first hand, but I did meet him at
a talk he gave in Berkeley and spoke, off-the-record to one his volunteers
about the experience of working there

the volunteer told me that Mr Allen runs a very tight ship, very long hours,
super hard manual work and the labour is volunteer. i.e. no or very little
costs. The systems tend to be very manual and there is no real incentive to
make things efficient or automated because new volunteers keep streaming in.
Also the management is very much centred around the charismatic and hard
working founder and principal, all the way up to the board level. Again,
creating a situation where there are few feedback loops that make better
management and better processes a reality.

There is an worker cooperative project in the UK that might fix some of the
agency problems http://www.organiclea.org.uk/ although I am not sure it has
the same drive and energy as Growing Power. Will Allen was a professional
athlete, corporate exec, businessman and has a family background in farming.
He is basically an establishment figure, the Organiclea project ... well, I
am not sure

...

as to automation and efficiency, there is a funded, automated, organic
aquaponic growing system being developed in Australia
http://www.urbanecologicalsystems.com/

On Fri, Jul 15, 2011 at 7:13 AM, Steve Bosserman
<steve.bosserman at gmail.com>wrote:

> Hi Michel,
>
> These articles have some truth, but they don't tell the whole story.  For
> instance, here's a similar operation to what the Wake-Up World post
> highlights in the Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA area:
> http://www.growingpower.org/.  They have a spin-off facility that
> specializes in aquaculture: http://sweetwater-organic.com/.  They offer
> training programs to help people in communities across the U.S. setup their
> own food / composting / aquaculture systems.  The founder of Growing Power,
> Will Allen, even won a MacArthur Foundation "genius award" to promote his
> program
> http://www.macfound.org/site/c.lkLXJ8MQKrH/b.4537249/k.29CA/Will_Allen.htm.
>  And he was selected as one of Time Magazine's Top 100 influential people in
> the world for 2010
> http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1984685_1984949_1985243,00.html
> .
>
> The problem is, as even Will Allen will say, that these food production
> systems require constant subsidy through gifts of time, materials, and
> money, grant funding, or high-end markets where clientele can afford to pay
> a premium for local food.  In other words, they are not sustainable.
>  Furthermore, they only provide a small percentage of the calorie
> requirements for the local populations they serve.
>
> The answer rests in the community adopting a production-to-consumption
> local agriculture system rather than attempting to establish a sustainable
> food supply through production only.  That means the entire value chain gets
> taken into consideration when designing the local system.  And it means
> starting at the point of consumption, i.e., total number of affordable,
> accessible, and healthy calories required to sustain local community
> members, designing the system backwards to the points of production, and
> allocating the revenue from sales of calories to community members such that
> all participants in the value chain, i.e., preparation, processing,
> production, and distribution, can, at a minimum, cover their costs.  Such a
> system is very different than a "destroked" global system which is what one
> has when only localizing production.
>
> My opinion for what it's worth...
>
> Steve B.
>
>
> On Fri, Jul 15, 2011 at 8:47 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>>
>> http://wakeup-world.com/2011/07/14/how-1-million-pounds-of-organic-food-can-be-produced-on-3-acres/
>>
>> it would be great if someone more versed in agrifood production could look
>> into this,
>>
>> Michel
>>
>> --
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>>
>>
>>
>
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