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Alternative Communities

© Bob Ewing

We've been experiencing phenomenal weather here for the past 2 weeks. Warm days and cool evenings make the transition into Winter most pleasant. I was in Toronto, this past Tuesday, and it was 22 degrees Celsius, at home, a new record was set 18.3 degrees C. This weather can catch us off guard when winter finally arrives. We put off making the necessary preparations until the very last minute and far too often that is simply to lat. The snow and cold are upon us and we are out in the World, prepared only for a Spring day. We often feel that change comes without warning, but this is rarely true. The signs are there, we miss them or ignore them, ofetn to our own disadvantage.

The food supply system is at a crossroads, which way it will turn is yet to be seen. This week we continue our look at alternative food systems in our ongoing exploration of how food travels from the field to the table. The most basic design consists of a single family obtaining all they need from the land they live on. They will have an organic garden large enough to meet the family's needs for vegetables, herbs and fruit.

The most complex design is global in scope with food traveling thousands of miles and a number of middle-merchants between the grower and the consumer.

Between the two there exist a number of design options or communities, for that is what we are talking about here, community. How you obtain you food, may well be a defining factor in the type of community or neighourbood you live in. Communities vary widely in how they are structured. . For example, people have come together to form communities in order to resources, to create great family neighborhoods, to live ecologically sustainable lifestyles, or to live with others who hold similar values. Some communities are wholly secular; others are committed to a common spiritual practice; many believe in a spiritually eclectic lifestyle. Some are focused on egalitarian values and voluntary simplicity, or mutual interpersonal growth work, or rural homesteading and self-reliance. Some communities provide services, for example helping war refugees, the urban homeless, or developmentally disabled children or adults. Some communities incorporate rural conference and retreat centers, health and healing centers, or sustainable-living education centers into their grand design.

What they all have in common is a desire to live as they choose and to have the right to make that choice. They have made a commitment to each other to work together for their common future. How they feed the community is an important consideration and one which shows us alternative possibilities to the industrial mainstream.