Let's pull together

Submitted by jduri on May 30, 2008 - 9:30pm.

I would like to join up with others to move to a small town nearby, or join together to buy a large piece of property.
Let's get together and start a community of like minded neighbors to survive the upcoming oil crisis.
Anybody interested in discussing the feasibility of a plan like this?

Starting a community

Submitted by jimmiller5417 on June 16, 2008 - 7:57am.

James E. Miller's comments: 6/16/08

Me too. I have been trying to start an intentional community. Others have shown interest, but were too wedded to their existing location/job/community/way-of-life to want to change. Change is very difficult for some folks.

My I suggest that the area around Philomath, OR, would be an ideal place to start an intentional community? We could rent a small farm which has a large farmhouse and make it in a group home until we were able to buy a more suitable farm land and build some straw bale or other types of houses and community buildings. I want to start a biodiesel business and do permaculture for some cash flow and food and fuel for our use.

You might check out www.ic.org for ideas on typese of communitites. If you would like to talk, please give me a call at 541-757-9797 or email to jimmiller5417 -at- Yahoo.com.
Jim Miller

small town vs. large town

Submitted by chemist on June 18, 2008 - 3:43pm.

I agree with you, in the long term. But historically, it's the small towns that suffer first, and worst, in economic downturns. One reason we chose to buy here near the MAX line is because of the connection to metro Portland.

Think about the Great Leap Forward, 1959-1960 China: mass starvation, but what food there was had to be sent to the cities, to keep them stable and functioning. I see the decline here as following the same trends, like we see borne out now in North Korea and Zimbabwe. The leaders have to keep the lights on and bellies full in the big cities, or the central government will vanish.

Over the long term the lights will probably go out anyway, but it's prudent to plan for the next five or ten years of hardship, in which we will be more than isolated subsistence farmers. Or so I hope, anyway: Subsistence farming is brutally hard.

Crystal ball

Submitted by jimmiller5417 on June 18, 2008 - 5:13pm.

James E. Miller

I see a different picture emerging from my Crystal Ball. In both the short-run and the long run, the small, rural community will survive while the large cities will become ghost towns like Detroit.

The reason why small, rural towns have had a deflated economy is simply because the middlemen and retailers have hogged all of the profits. They do so because they can easily switch between suppliers. If you have a truck load of fresh produce, you don't have much bargaining room to stick by your prices.

Hence, the solution is farm to market; that is growers should own and control the entire chain from initial soil inputs (compost) to the end user at retail. Currenty, that is done by farmer's markets and CSA. We need to add food co-ops which are jointly run by farmers and consumers in a sort of CSA environment.

We can become self-sufficient and sustainable in food and fuel (algal oil to biodiesel for transportation, heating and generating elecricity). Solar, wind and geothermal are good choices if they work for the community. When the urban jobs disappear, rents sky-rocket and food becomes hard to afford, the city folks will stream to the rural areas. We need to plan for this exodus by creating intentional communitites and get them up and running and productive.

Jim Miller,
jimmiller5417-at-yahoo.com

a good model and a great dream

Submitted by chemist on June 18, 2008 - 9:43pm.

I like where you're going, Jim,

and I see it starting to happen in some especially well prepared areas, like Cascadia.

But it's still an oil-fueled dream. Rural life in general and farming in particular require tremendous amounts of fossil fuel, not just for the fertilizer, sodbusting, water pumping, etc., but also to simply get the food to the customers.

The question that I thought we were addressing is whether it's best to work the land close to a big town or a small town, not whether we need to farm. The answers I see revolve around minimizing our energy usage, not "growing our own" fuel.

Algal biofuel is IMO an example of those lab curiosities that have all kinds of problems when translated into a production-scale application. theoildrum dot com is a terrific resource for detailed analyses of EROEI for oil-bearing algae and other alternative fuel sources.

Not wanting to pee on your campfire! Like you, I'm just looking for that paradigm shift that can allow us to become "good," rather than merely "less bad." We'll have oil for the foreseeable future, although it'll ultimately become prohibitively expensive. So maybe learning to grow food with less energy inputs is a better strategy than devoting land for fuel production.

kNOWLEDGE GAP

Submitted by jimmiller5417 on June 20, 2008 - 9:31pm.

There is a huge knowledge gap as to algae and biodiesel. Much of the doubt was expressed after the Closing Report of NREL/USDA with the conclusion that biodiesel was not viable until fossil diesel reached $2.00 per gallon. That report was in 1995.

Since then Earthrise, which grows spirulina for the health food market is very successful in mass production of algae. GreenFuels proved they could use flue gas to help grow algae. There is no great issue as to the need for algal oil-based biodiesel and there is no real problem in growing algae. The lack of means to extract the oil from the 25 micron spheroid cell has been the big issue.

I have the solution on paper and am working toward getting the money for a pilot plant. The science, engineering and technology has advanced from the lab stage to the commercial production stage. If you want to know, I'll email you some citations. Here's my pitch:

Executive Summary
AlgalOilDiesel, LLP

We have found the technological “sweet spot” for harvesting the Chlorella vulgaris cells and extracting the algal oil. The process of harvesting the mature “parent” cells and returning the “daughter” cells to the head of the growing system has been solved. The opening of the Chlorella cell is done by osmotic rupture, leaving the cell wall intact, looking like an opened flower. The cytoplasm and the cell walls are separated and then the lipids (oil) removed, returning the balance of the cytoplasm to the algae production system to add to the nutrient. The cell walls can be dehydrated and sold as a health food supplement or fermented into ethanol. The wash water used to clean the raw biodiesel is laced with potassium and serves as a nutrient for the algae or field crops.

We have completed the science and engineering phase and are now ready for the pilot project phase which includes the building a covered algae pond, building the algal oil extraction plant, and building the biodiesel refinery, all on a small scale. This phase will cost about $100,000. The next phase is a full-scale operation requiring about 1500 acres. We have a prospect of leasing a mothballed biodiesel plant and renting or buying the 1500 acres. This phase would cost about 15 million in capital costs and two million in start-up costs, and would produce about 10,000,000 gallons a year of biodiesel. You will want to read our paper, PROSPECTS FOR THE BIODIESEL INDUSTRY . Please email or call for a copy.

Contact:
James E. Miller, jimmiller5417@yahoo.com; 541-757-9797

Small town/rural area vs. Portland

Submitted by liz on June 28, 2008 - 12:16pm.

Maybe the solution is to have it both ways: form a community with an urban base and a rural base, with some high mpg and/or biofuel transport to get back and forth. Thus, one has not only the advantages of both ways of life, but more importantly insurance against the fact that no one really knows which is more likely to go sour. Of course, the urban base would need to grow some of its own food. I could actually be up for such an approach.

Have it both ways

Submitted by jimmiller5417 on June 28, 2008 - 6:01pm.

Yes, we can and probably must have to both ways. The entire cities are not going to depopulate. Most city folks would be lost trying to figure out how to plant and grow crops in a permaculture environment.

The MASA plan is to always have some cash flow coming from the cities. Initially, that would mean having a CSA and attending Farmer's Markets. Then we expand into serving restaurants, grocery stores and institutions with our high quality, fresh and ripe food products.

When we have a good brand and folks respect it by paying a premium, we create a stand-alone store in which we offer an organic market, a deli, a restaurant, a performance stage and a temporary child care room. Our pitch is that food should also be entertainment. I have a fully developed plan (on paper) which includes a four story building whereby the upper floors are apartments and offices and the ground floor is the store and the basement is for storage and utilities. Comments?

yeah, we need it both ways

Submitted by Jeremy on July 7, 2008 - 8:26am.

I think we might end up with actually needing school age kids having the summer off to go back out into the country side and work the farms.

Personally I would love to have a work schedule where I could work outside when the weather was reasonable and inside on the rather cold/rainy/hot days.

The Entire Chain

Submitted by Jesse Hunter on July 3, 2008 - 12:10pm.

James E. Miller said-
"Hence, the solution is farm to market; that is growers should own and control the entire chain from initial soil inputs (compost) to the end user at retail."

One detail is the source of compost. The farmer could also run collection of the, er, pre-compost her customer makes after enjoying her product. Something like in "The Humanure Handbook". In China, farmers compete with having the most attractive outhouse for passers-by.

the spirit is the ultimate source of renewable energy

Repopulating Rural America – Blessing or Curse?

Submitted by jimmiller5417 on June 22, 2008 - 12:13am.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--“Increasing numbers of people are moving to rural communities because they want to leave stressful urban environments and get back in touch with the land,” says Peter Holter, executive director of the international environmental non-profit, Holistic Management International http://www.holisticmanagement.org.

Holter, whose organization works on four continents with stewards of large landholdings to restore land to health, productivity and profitability, was reacting to a recent Wall Street Journal article, “The New American Gentry.” According to the author, reporter Conor Dougherty, gentrification is coming to “broad swaths of rural America” due to an influx of affluent retirees and people with high incomes.

Does this trend portend needed economic renewal and environmental sustainability, or a less positive future?

Read entire article: http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/template.NDM/news/more