Localisation
This Plan explores the nuts-and-bolts practicalities of relocalising the economy of the area. It argues that in a world of highly volatile oil prices, the need for stringent cuts in carbon emissions and economic uncertainty, the globalised economy upon which we are so dependent can no longer be relied upon, indeed it leaves us highly vulnerable. At the moment, Totnes and its surrounding parishes act like a large leaky bucket. Money pours into the area through wages, grants, pensions, funding, tourist revenues and so on. In our current economic model, most of it pours back out again, and its ability to make things happen locally is lost. Each time we pay our energy bill, that money leaves the area. Each time we shop in a supermarket, 80% of that money leaves the area. Every time we shop online, that money that could have bolstered our economy leaves the area. All the while, pressure grows on our local shops and businesses.
At the same time, local agriculture employs fewer and fewer people each year, more and more food is imported, new buildings are created from materials from around the world, and most of the goods sold in the shops of Totnes have travelled long distances to get there. The concept of localisation is about shifting the focus of production closer to home. It is not something that can be done overnight, it is a long-term process that requires planning, design and innovation. In many ways, the area is poised to take a national lead here, being home to a strong local food culture, and many innovative businesses.
Localisation is a powerful concept. Clearly Totnes cannot become self-sufficient, nor would it want to be. It will never be able to make computers or frying pans. However, as the oral history section of this report shows, it used to be far more self-reliant than it is today, functioning far more like a bucket than its present day leaky sieve. There is significant potential for Totnes and District to, for example:
- Produce most of its food locally, and create a range of livelihoods, processing and value-adding that food in the locality
- Source a significant proportion of its building materials, for both new build and retrofits, either from the local area or from recycling from the local waste stream
- Buy its energy from locally owned and managed energy companies rather than distant ones
- Maintain and enhance the proportion of shops in the town that are locally owned, and avoid the ‘Ghost Town Britain’ phenomenon seen in so many High Streets across the country
- Bring land for development into community ownership, so that the financial gains from that development accrue to the community, rather than to speculative developers
- Make medicines using local plants to treat common ailments
- Use its food wastes to create bio-methane to power vehicles
- Use local currencies and local investment mechanisms to enable more money to be invested in the immediate area
None of this will happen by accident, it needs careful planning and design. This Plan is a first attempt at trying to map out what the process of re-localisation might look like.
7 comments on “Localisation”
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None of this will happen by accident. (or ;) It needs……
Paragraph 1: “In our current economic model, most of it pours back out again, and its ability to make things happen locally is lost.”
This would be correct, except that the money ‘pours back out again’ because Totnes people are trading with their neighbours. Not neightbours within Totnes, but outside of Totnes. In fact, with the same ‘outsiders’ who enabled the money to pour into Totnes in the first place!
Paragraph 1 reads scarily isolationist.
The emphasis of the proposed changes to our economic model are to promote understanding of the difference in investing in locally produced goods and services compared with more widely based goods and service providers, particularly imported ones. The local model is based on the Totnes and District, a traditional local market economy currently comprising 22,000 + inhabitants which was pretty sustainable and resilient up until the 1960′s. This local economic model we propose does incorporate imported goods and services from national to international but moves away from the current imbalance and dependence on them, based on the premise of oil dependency of goods and services in their production and transportation. Local resilience is based on local needs being able to be met locally. The globalisation model is not working, it drains local economies and has created ever greater disparity between rich and poor due to capitalist trading, monetary and unrealistic credit systems which currently favour larger conglomerates rather than local economies. Local economic resilience is not isolationist, rather it underpins a vibrant community
There is nothing wrong with being self sufficient. You mention that you will never be able to make frying pans…why not? Never be able to make computers…maybe true but you could learn to refurbish old ones that would work for your applications. Let’s face it the computer technology is way over-rated at actually helping any of us save time or produce anything that we can eat, live in or wear–so in reality computers are NOT really needed. Yes, grow your own food and use that food to feed the people inside your community, any excess sell to the outside communities. Become a force with the surrounding communities instead of a consumer for them. Let people put their heads together to figure ways to help each other out–without the thought of profit or charging each other. But, rather what to do to help each other which in turn helps your entire community. It’s a simple concept.
DJ
DJ, as someone who spent his career in manufacturing, i have to say you quite out of touch about what computers are employed to do and what they are capable of doing.
1) eating: computers (as microprocessors) help level farm fields with lasers to significantly reduce runoff. Computers automate testing and sorting of food, monitoring such parameters as PH, temperature, level, pressure and oxygen levels in processes and taking appropiate actions to keep those quantities within limits.
2) Clothing: Computers run automated looms and knitting machines. Computers are used in automating dying of cloth.
3) Transportation: Computers are used to oversee transit systems. Computers are in transit vehicles, such as trains and cars. ABS, Traction control and electronic stability control would be much more difficult and even impossible without computers. Computers are used to develop transit vehicles to increase efficiency and safety and reduce cost. You just might ow your life to a computer.
4) Health: Computers are extensively used in health monitoring equipment in hospitals. The Human Genome project woud’ve taken decades to complete even with thousands of bio techs without computers. They are also used for molecular modeling for new drugs.
5) Saving time: Just look out how many people you have reached using your computer on this website. How long would it take you to reach the same amount without them? there wouldn’t be an internet without computers.
Need to write a report? Then edit it ? Oh, put a section back in that you took out but in a different place? Check your spelling and grammer and then correct? Send a copy to a 100 or 1000 people? That used to be a nightmare on the old typewriter! Now it’s a piece of cake. And you don’t even need whiteout anymore.
Need to check a few scenarios out? You could try each one physically or you can write up a spreadsheet to do it for you. Need to pick up some stuff on the way home? Ring the spouse up to find out what on your cellphone ( a computer). It only seems, sometimes, that computers don’t save time, but they do. People just choose to do more rather than the same as before.
Localization is really a resilience strategy, a local economy builder and a necessary tool to negotiate with “price setters” like the oil companies. One cannot argue with “price setters” unless one has a negotiating position. You cannot be a “price setter” unless you have something to fall back on. This is basic negotiating tactics.
Today “oil companies” know the consumer does not have a position to fall back on and so they keep jacking prices up. The truckers go on strike but they get no concessions from the oil companies. They get subsidies from government (gifts from the tax payers, after all) and the oil companies continue to take their cash all the way to the bank.
With globalization we allowed our negotiating position to erode to the point where we cannot negotiate anymore. This has to change… if for no other reason as to be able to regain control of our economies.
“Money pours into the area through wages, grants, pensions, funding, tourist revenues and so on. In our current economic model, most of it pours back out again, and its ability to make things happen locally is lost. Each time we pay our energy bill, that money leaves the area. Each time we shop in a supermarket, 80% of that money leaves the area. Every time we shop online, that money that could have bolstered our economy leaves the area.”
Interesting. Money pours in (presumably from the outside) via wages, etc, as you say. This implies that the outside is employing the Totnes local people and buying their local goods (as a tourist often does). But, the Totnes local people now don’t want to employ outside people nor buy their goods in kind? Take that supermarket. Doesn’t at least some of the 80% money come back to buy the local production of food? And, don’t other supermarkets around the country also partake in buying the Totnes local food for their customers? Don’t some Totnes businesses also sell their services/goods online ?
Since significant wages, pensions, etc are coming from the outside, what would happen if all the country’s towns became mostly economically local? And what of economies of scale? A lot of useful and, even critical, items that are inexpensive when made in quantity, in a few dozen factories, can become fairly costly when made in small patches in thousands of town shops, like, nails, screws, wire of all sorts, batteries, watches/clocks, buttons, zippers, electrical/electronic components, cement, clothing, steel, glass, bottles, ceramics.