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Dear Ashwani Vasishth,
In 1994, Wendell Berry delivered a talk at the 23rd annual meeting of the Northern Plains Resource Council. Included in his remarks was a list of enduring principles for communities seeking “to cohere, to flourish, and to last.” Rooted in care for the land, our neighbors, local culture, and common wealth, these seventeen tenets paint a picture of what a truly sustainable economy requires.
His words remain deeply relevant to the Schumacher Center’s guiding principles and our work of building thriving and resilient local economies. We are happy to share them with you.
Warm Wishes,
Staff of the Schumacher Center
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How can a sustainable local community (which is to say a sustainable local
economy) function? I am going to suggest a set of rules that I think such a
community would have to follow. I hasten to say that I do not understand
these rules as predictions; I am not interested in foretelling the future. If
these rules have any validity, it is because they apply now.
Supposing that the members of a local community wanted their community
to cohere, to flourish, and to last, they would:
- Always ask of any proposed change or innovation: What will this do to
our community? How will this affect our common wealth?
- Always include local nature – the land, the water, the air, the native
creatures – within the membership of the community.
- Always ask how local needs might be supplied from local sources,
including the mutual help of neighbors.
- Always supply local needs first (and only then think of exporting products
– first to nearby cities, then to others).
- Understand the ultimate unsoundness of the industrial doctrine of ‘labor
saving’ if that implies poor work, unemployment, or any kind of pollution or
contamination.
- Develop properly scaled value-adding industries for local products to
ensure that the community does not become merely a colony of national or global economy.
- Develop small-scale industries and businesses to support the local farm and/or forest economy.
- Strive to supply as much of the community’s own energy as possible.
- Strive to increase earnings (in whatever form) within the community for
as long as possible before they are paid out.
- Make sure that money paid into the local economy circulates within the
community and decrease expenditures outside the community.
- Make the community able to invest in itself by maintaining its
properties, keeping itself clean (without dirtying some other place), caring
for its old people, and teaching its children.
- See that the old and young take care of one another. The young must
learn from the old, not necessarily, and not always in school. There must
be no institutionalised childcare and no homes for the aged. The
community knows and remembers itself by the association of old and
young.
- Account for costs now conventionally hidden or externalised. Whenever
possible, these must be debited against monetary income.
- Look into the possible uses of local currency, community-funded loan
programs, systems of barter, and the like.
- Always be aware of the economic value of neighborly acts. In our time,
the costs of living are greatly increased by the loss of neighborhood, which leaves people to face their calamities alone.
- A rural community should always be acquainted and interconnected
with community-minded people in nearby towns and cities.
- A sustainable rural economy will depend on urban consumers loyal to
local products. Therefore, we are talking about an economy that will always be more cooperative than competitive.
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