Rural is Local

Rural is Local by Tom Crofton

One of the truly hopeful trends emerging in these difficult times is a return to local production of many of the things we need. Top on the list are food and fuel, and no longer are the local production of these considered fringe activities.

Fully 15% of our State’s Gross Domestic Product is exported out of the state for energy. In boom times this climbs to 22%. The local production of energy can keep those dollars in our counties and double our local economic bases. The multiplier effect of money spent in a region is 8-10 times the initial amount. As workers get paid and then spend their wages in the grocery or hardware stores, or buy homes, or dine out at restaurants they recycle that cash in the region, over and over again.

Economic reasons alone can convince us that we need to make our energy locally. The “Green Jobs” we keep hearing about are real and necessary. The additional results of reducing greenhouse gases and chemical pollution, and the reduction of risky oil drilling and mountaintop removal are the gravy for our homemade biscuits.

Which brings us back to food: why are we so willing to accept lousy food in our own homes, much less our schools and commercial establishments; when we live in a paradise of agricultural riches? The cost of raw materials vs. the cost of processed food has been documented but bears repeating. A one lb potato costing a dime at harvest time fills a 13 oz. bag of potato chips costing $3.59, (and on and on.) Neither economic, nor gastronomic justice will come from modifying that system. The middlemen are the same ones who play the commodities game and the stock market without ever adding value.

Fortunately, many of us have developed alternative marketing and purchasing avenues that keep the food near homes and reduce the processing and the speculation. These are small, intertwined with multiple networks, use some volunteer labor, and serve to distribute local products to those in the loop. (My family sells our maple syrup for half the “commodity price” to our food buying club members, and we all gain.) This kind of practice, sharing beef cattle and using local butcher shops for example, can and should continue on forever, but is not enough. We need a larger vision.

It’s time to paint a picture of a local/regional energy/food system that is sustainable and goes beyond efforts of small groups. As the saying goes, “all politics is local”, and a local political climate is developing that can deliver leadership to double the nearby economy, bring healthy foods to schools, do our part in reducing fossil fuel use, turning local government operating costs into revenue streams, and lowering taxes. State, County, and municipal governments could (should) take the lead to find places where home-grown energy can replace their “store bought” version and keep the bucks at home. The methods will differ in each area, but here’s a few places to start:

Diesel Fuel: My county buys a least a million dollars of road and equipment fuel a year, and is currently running a half million dollar deficit The standard rap is that we need to cut services or raise taxes. What if we contracted to local farmers to raise canola or a similar oilseed crop? We could purchase it from them at the going rate ($350 /ton.). We would press out the oil (one ton of crop per acre, 100 gallons of oil per ton), and sell the byproduct for a 38% protein, high value feed for nearly the same $350. (Canola oil burns in Diesel engines in warm weather with no additional treatment.) We could use stimulus or energy grant funding to help set it up. We could partner with local feed co-ops to market the feed, and let them use the $1 per gallon blending credit that we can’t use as a governmental unit. Our fuel dollar savings would more than eliminate our deficits in the first year, and then go on as tax reduction possibilities from then on. The local farmers would have a chance to see the process and decide to use it for themselves. Small co-ops of neighboring farmers could share a small press (a few thousand dollars) and have fresh cattle feed and fuel as they needed it. The local government could introduce the crop and the process to the area (it’s used in Europe and Asia extensively) and go beyond traditional reaction to external events and fluctuating revenues from taxes to create their own revenue stream.

Space Heat: Our area schools and local governments are all in financial troubles and they all buy lots of electricity and space heating fuel. At the same time, our counties and towns mow along the roads and chip trees and brush regularly. This bio-mass, along with thinned woodlots, plantation of fast growing trees, and fields of switchgrass can be processed into charcoal bricks to fire these buildings’ heating systems and to make electricity. Local loggers currently have no market for the thinnings and tree tops they create while harvesting timber. The decentralization of our power grid to use many small bio-mass plants for generating electricity and space heat is the wave of the future. We don’t need coal or oil. Bio-mass is carbon neutral, it emits the carbon pulled from the atmosphere while growing, and the new forest absorbs it back in. Advanced technologies such as Pyrolization leave a carbon powder as the end product that can be used as a soil amendment to sequester carbon in the ground (carbon reducing).

The jobs from this process are the immediate gain for the area. Special equipment to mow switchgrass on roadside banks or to grind up broken trees can be made in our region. Small local businesses can expand their operations. Governmental units will bring in revenue from traditional operating expenses. We could lower taxes.

Electricity: Every public building should generate more electricity from renewable energy than it uses. Operating costs become revenue streams. Solar, wind , bio-mass, canola powered diesel generators, the list goes on and varies from what each local area offers, but the idea is the same. Generate the primary energy, use the waste as something else.

Which brings me to the local bio-mass fired electrical generating plant operating in the industrial park of Small Town WI where the area sawmills, loggers, farmers, and governmental units bring in their material, it’s converted to charcoal, makes more electricity than the town requires, and uses the waste heat to warm the buildings in the park, and to grow produce in greenhouses nearby to feed the townsfolk and the salad bars at the schools.

Local food (agriculture) provides the fuel to power itself (oilseed crops) and the generating plant (bio-mass); and the generating plant grows the food (tomatoes in winter.) I’m talking about a sustainable, local, economy doubling, property-tax-lowering bridge to the future. That future can be peaceful (no wars for oil), those jobs can pay a living wage (rebuild the middle class), with health care (single payer anyone?) and retirement for all .

I say : It’s about issues and ideas.

You ask:Is that politics?

I reply: I am convinced that this is the politics of the present and the implementation needs to be from the lowest level. We can connect with state and national programs, but the heavy lifting needs to be done at home.

But you ask: What about electing people to office?

And I say: How do they stand on the issues?