Living Local Blog

Community Farming – Guerilla Style

Guerilla Gardening is the act of planting flowers, vegetables, fruits, herbs and trees in public spaces without permission. It is a little movement that is flourishing in the UK and US and is now taking hold here in Australia.

In a recent article in the Age a Melbourne guerilla gardener discusses some of his handiwork. Gardens have popped up across Melbourne sporting vegetables, herbs, stone fruit trees, apple trees and olive trees. Local residents are encouraged to tend the gardens and enjoy the harvest.

The objective is to find some public space that is totally useless and turn it into something beautiful and useful.  Land alongside railway lines is a favourite target.

It's an interesting idea. Imagine being able to forage for olives, fruit and herbs in your local park. The food would be fresher and healthier and there is no need for transportation or packaging which saves resources.

Possible Lifeline for ABC Learning Childcare Centres

The global credit crisis has claimed many corporations but none of the failures have been as disruptive to local communities as the fall of ABC Learning.

ABC Learning provides care to over 120,000 children across Australia and the company has recently hit the wall.  The future operation of all ABC centres is now under threat.  Working parents are no doubt concerned about the availability of childcare services in 2009.

Bendigo Bank, the community bank born in Victoria and now national, have put their hand up as potential buyers of ABC Childcare Centres. Bendigo bank CEO Rob Hunt says that strong branches will look at new business opportunities outside of banking that would further embed them into their local communities.

According to economist Robert Gottliebsen:

"Childcare is an essential part of many communities, so the acquisition of individual ABC Centres is a very logical move ... Childcare is just one of the areas where community banks are looking to exercise the power of their customer base. One community bank in a remote location built a medical centre to attract a doctor to its town. Another is looking at buying or establishing a fuel distribution business to distribute biofuel to farmers. This is a whole new concept."

Trust and Credit

A newspaper in Wisconsin USA ran a peice this week about local economies and trust.  The writer's grandmother would buy groceries from the local shop and the shop owner trusted her with a credit account even during the Great Depression.

Jamie’s Ministry of Food

Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver has a new show called the "Ministry of Food".  The name comes from a UK government initiative during World War II that helped people make the most of wartime rations and avoid malnutrition. A network of Food Advice Centres sprang up around the UK that gave cooking lessons, provided recipes and advice. Women who could cook were sent out to factories, schools, businesses and shopping strips to teach people good cooking and good nutrition.

Jamie Oliver is breathing new life into the concept to help tackle chronic obesity and related health problems in the UK. And he is taking a very "local" approach. He has chosen a town in northern England - Rotherham - and is working with locals to create a kind of wave of cooking education.

The key to the scheme is a system called Pass It On. Basically it's word of mouth. When someone signs on to the Pass It On scheme they agree to share each new recipe they learn with two or more other people, who then share it with more people and so on. This way the recipe spreads through the population very quickly. Say 12 people learn a recipe, they pass it on to 24 people, who pass it on to 48 people, who pass it on to 96 people, then 192 people, 384 people, 768 people, 1536 people, 3072 people and so on. If this is happening every week, then cooking knowledge will spread very quickly.

Jamie's ambition is to set up Food Centres in every town throughout the UK. They will act as local hubs for good food and cooking skills. The Food Centres together with the Pass It On scheme will hopefully get eating habits back on a healthy track.

Localisation

What is localisation?  I guess it can mean many things but a broad definition is "living more of your life locally".

Globalisation is "the process of transformation of local or regional phenomena into global ones" (Wikipedia).  More commonly it refers to the "integration of national economies into the international economy through trade, foreign direct investment, capital flows, migration, and the spread of technology" (Wikipedia).

In our daily lives globalisation means access to products and services from all over the world. Globalisation has delivered many benefits including relatively low inflation rates and access to deep pools of foreign capital. However the flip side of globalisation is now appearing. The vast "international economy" is faltering and the impacts are being felt in communities all over the world.

Localisation is an idea gaining traction for many reasons:

• If the global economy falters we are again reliant on our local economies
• Climate change and oil depletion require less reliance on transportation - for people and products

So localisation is the process of transformation of global phenomena into local ones. At a basic level it is the strengthening of local economies within the global economy. By working, buying, trading, investing and playing locally we strengthen our own communities.