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Rural System? Just Dreaming …
A For-Profit Conglomerate for
Meaningful Jobs
Healthful Communities
and Improved Natural Resource Management
by Robert H. Giles, Jr., Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus
Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia
2007
Chapter 24. Bushes and Berries: Small Scale Groups
Dreaming: Black air…and miniature daffodils clumped in a corner…the right corner… always right. Placement is very important…in time and in spaces…sequences in time…what does 'sequences in space' mean?…like everything, it depends… on perspective…no! the viewing point…that is what everything depends upon…where you stand…now…in the blackness. Just dreaming …
| "Start small" is a small statement. I began, but the effort was too small and the imbedded inefficiencies too great to tolerate. Here is described several start-up organizations, an organization of home-workers and two potential small agricultural enterprises with their linkages. |
Earth Quilt
Hoping and anticipating possible involvement in rural areas of the world, so much like those of the coalfield and "southside" Virginia and Northern North Carolina, and with people in such great need, I initiated Earth Quilt and secured www.EarthQuilt.com. I intended it to speak symbolically to all of us under the Quilt. I saw it as a means to get citizens in our communities equitably empowered by using Internet-related technology. I imagined it as a way to combine zeal for people to use computer-assisted decision power managing a large set of natural and other resources, collectively the rural human environment.
Finding and making innovative uses and structures for the things that are new, requires an organization. That requires brief, clean rules of governance. Earth Quilt was a corporation with an innovative business model. Citizens, as well as government organizations, other corporations, and Rural System itself may invest in it. Investors would benefit financially after profitability was reached.
We would present "cases," because reports of group business successes are valuable. We would suggest knowledge about efficient access to diverse sites and features among hundreds of sites because these help build capacities. We planned to teach about work in heuristic- or discovery-environments to develop personal skills and confidence. We would try to build all kinds of linkages (telecommunication, webcams, email, print, and person-to-person) so people working with and in some cases dependent upon us could benefit from shared knowledge, experiences, and expertise. We would study forming businesses and their relationships and would build fundamental structures of relationships among people with different upbringing, education, environments, and chance events. Collaborations would be encouraged to achieve the funds and equivalent human and technology-aided time that is needed to achieve stated objectives of a Panel in Earth Quilt. We were working toward universal "enfranchisement" via the Internet for the good of people dependent upon their environment …the changing, physical, cultural, social, and biological one. We were to engage continually in feedforward, the active work of today that we can produce through work now in preparing for our clearest view and belief in the future.
That effort languished. It was an over-extension of the system context since the greater Rural System did not develop as rapidly as conceived. I sensed that in an increasingly technologically dominated society, people who are socially or economically disadvantaged would probably become more disadvantaged if they lack access to computers and their related technologies. I saw a way to do late-stage pioneering to establish right relationships, to organize based on the discovery and expression of deep common purposes and essential shared human principles. I knew of the needs for praise and rewards for personal work and accomplishment and saw that this could be done, to some limited extent, by people linked by the Internet, by individuals between "nodes." I imagined that by linking ideas, information, new techniques, even grants and access to real resources, capacities within each node might be built for citizen members. I knew well that we all cannot be aware of new opportunities, services, and devices unless we are informed of them. We also need hints and examples so that we can see their potential roles in our lives.
I only heard what I wanted to from conferences and magazines and missed the realities. Rural System would have to place a person within groups of needy people for they are marginal and have needs. If they could solve problems by themselves they would do so. If they knew how to gain no-cost access to and operate a computer, they would be doing so. I would have to find the capital, after Rural System was operational, to support such a person for getting a start … so that tales of success could be told under the Quilt. It became a recurring dream element.
Homys.org
I heard the calls for help from the people living throughout the stressed areas of the eastern US, the coalfields and milltowns. The same calls had stimulated Earth Quilt. I saw the needs in the children's eyes, the high infant mortality rate, and the high high-school dropout rates. It took many years for me to realize that the people living there (I still do not know how) wanted to keep on living there.
I had heard of out-sourcing for years. There were accounts of factories closings and labor problems because corporate leaders had found cheaper means of producing their needed products and had contracted with groups in other countries to do the work. Labor was needed and costs outside of the US were much lower than in that country. In some cases, the only issue was in where to make the most money from investments in buildings, equipment, and access to technology. Leaders found answers anywhere outside the country.
Out-sourcing created problems for rural people since many of them occupied the countryside as "bedroom communities." They may drive one to two hours to work, work for 8 hours, and return for "a full rich life" of TV and sleep, one that is lived to catch up on weekends and to tend the steers on their nearby usually over-grazed pasture. Out-sourcing meant layoffs, job hunting, and visits to the unemployment offices. It also meant tendencies to ignore the land and to overuse it.
I looked at in-sourcing as an alternative to that gloomy picture of stresses families, poorly fed children, and abused land. Locally it meant work in nearby counties where there were tax gains for communities and social losses where the workers lived. Wireless computing was emerging but as part of my thought, there were only relatively slow computer speeds over telephone lines. There were reports of major communication advances.
I imagined farm homes surrounded by all of the advantages, beauties, and diversities of rural life. Inside, in a small space, any member of the family, perhaps several working together might be doing computer work. As so many have asked, why must everyone go to the same building each day for activity there to be called work? Perhaps much of it can be done, not from the desk in the cubbyhole down the long line of such places, but at home. The travel energy and related costs would be eliminated, the parking space needs reduced, the capital equipment needs reduced or dispersed for owners, and the workers could work at their best times and tend the often-interrupted, sometimes-disrupted needs of family life. There are other advantages of this imagined electronic snowflake of work going on in data processing, program writing, image scanning and processing, text writing and editing, page layout work, records being revised and e-catalog work. Home workers may process computer maps as new data become available; others take statistical models, run them on map data and produce computer maps for a knowledge base that is used by others across the company network.
Several of the companies of Rural System have memberships. These have many different needs varying from application processing, providing services, arranging tours and conferences, and preparing texts and membership services and materials. Several are involved with building and maintaining a database of information. One is RuraLives that collects, processes and stores small biographies or autobiographies, celebrating the life of rural people before the sub-humanly brief obituary is read and discarded. Another is NatureSeen, a collection and storage for Internet access of nature observations, usually singular, the ones that are no longer accepted by snobbish national journals devoted only to observations of vast, often-excessive numbers of observations of populations of plants and animals under "control conditions" (more correctly, "untreated" conditions).
Rather than thinking of businesses as offices and factories, it may be possible to begin thinking of them as scattered satellites, spots on a map, into each of which is brought work by an invisible overlayment of wires or wireless technology. From each, output is sent to customers, members, or enterprise members needing their work. Some delivery will be by mail and package delivery but that will still fit within the delivery systems of the fossil-energy-short future.
All is not beautiful (as those people out-of-work still remember factory work). Home work has disadvantages. Many of the advantages of group sharing, of getting a little help, gaining ideas, and networking are lost. Many of the social needs provided by a useful work environment are lost. The sensitive manager can accommodate many of these things that are missing from the dispersed work-places. Controls are difficult and fair payment for real work is a problem. Not "time spent" but "products delivered" becomes the basis for payments for labor and that creates new needs for precisely specifying the new product. … or new standards of ethical behavior as salaried workers.
The new work environment seems pretty exciting. Workers may be dependent upon specialists for hustling jobs and projects (as they are now). There will be uncertainties (as there are now). The better managed the participants of these satellite units, the better they will compete for productive workers over other emerging, dispersed companies. New criteria of competition may emerge. My excitement over in-sourcing is within the context of a rapidly changing national environment, untold stresses of energy shortages and interruptions, contaminated waters in short supply, the rapidly changing temperature environments causing crop, forest, and shoreline changes, and the frequent disruptions in enterprises and life in cities to which society has run. I cannot imagine and refuse to try to imagine the new disruptions in electrical systems, electromagnetic fields, and radio communications …for the future of all of us, in-sourcing or not.
So I secured the URL www.Homys.org. I imagined a company of people working with Rural System throughout the world. Rural System would arrange and manage a home-sourcing system. People within Homys would have expertise, have declared interest in and concern for natural resources of the world, and have pledged diligent and honest work. They would engage in all types of work and all is meaningful for it fits within a system dedicated to human benefits from rural resources. Many of the people imagined would be very well educated and they would either prefer the advantages and economies of working at home or find staying at home to be essential because of family, health, or other reasons. Maybe there have been layoffs or closures and temporary employment is needed. After the Katrina storm event of 2005, similar emergencies suggested other needs for membership. With distance learning evolving, home schooling, especially in clusters of homes and with sponsorship by Homys, might be a way for Rural System to achieve many of its objectives. Homys might work with Defense Department staff and security forces affected by their services to the country. High travel costs and risks would increasingly promote membership and Homys work. Rural System would solicit members, i.e., willing workers, finds their strengths and interests, and offers them piece or hourly-wage work. Members would become part of a diverse, dispersed, eclectic entity. They would gain funds for their work, experience a new kind of community feeling, and gain from offerings of Rural System - medical advisories, emergency links, health information, exercise routines, occasional conferences, news of Rural System, and catalog-offered discounts. Members would attend occasional meetings or engage in distance-learning to gain knowledge of Rural System and a variety of managed positive interactions.
Homys staff would have great respect for adults at home. There are wonderful abilities and interests there, often unfulfilled. Homys would become an organized way for people who have only a few hours to work with us a day, even a few days a week. There are plenty of reasons why people want to be and need to be at home. We'll not concentrate on that, only on each person's abilities and interests, our corporate needs for quality work, continuing profitability, and support for improving conditions in rural areas of the world. We would seek out people willing to work and make honest money for special tasks, types of work, or assignments. The variety of work is almost unlimited - computer work, secretarial, gardening, craftwork, gleaning topics wood (used by the Topics Group to produce garden ornaments) from the forest, etc. We see Rural System creating opportunities and memberships, saving energy, improving the quality of life for hundreds. Homys became a major work force within Rural System. We recruit as if in a dating service, matching people and their interests and talents with important work at hand. The tasks can be seen as "piece work" or jobs. We deliver materials and assignments -- "homys," the people in that group, deliver high-quality results, and we pay well. The scale increases as the amount increases -- the better, the more...the more, the better the pay.
One or two homys could operate Earth Quilt. That required paperwork and it could be easily setup and supported by Q Works. Homys might be the first people to contact about creating home gardens (The Gardens Group) using Alpha Earth resulting from earthworm work. (I was under the cloud of advice to "start small" when someone said "give Challenge to a homy.")
Challenge
I might be able to find a "health nut" among the homys, a physical-fitness enthusiast and university graduate who might organize and create Challenge. Challenge is an enterprise within Rural System that sponsors an annual field event on a Rural System Tract. Some lands under contract are public areas (e.g., state wildlife management areas). The objective of Challenge is to profit from:
The company would
The annual event on a Tract could be considered an "outdoors advertising event" for Rural System paid for by others. Rural System would promote the area, its principles and uses, and sequence participants through a "county-fair" or commercial-convention of displays and events. There are major events such as weight lifting. Special "toughman" and strong-person events are sponsored - weight lifting, rope climbing, stone tossing. This is regional and needs to be pioneer/outdoor/low-key in personality (not pulling aircraft, etc.). Rope pulling by participants and even guests may be considered. A contest for pulling a stone sled by mule and by people (increasing numbers) might be considered. Weights (bales of hay suspended on both sides of a lift-bar up to 500 pounds need to be used to give visual impact to the feats of strength (vs. the iron weights of the exercise room.)
Another homy was called upon to organize and conduct a tug-of-war team. From her work there developed a regional sport … that with people who started issuing challenges.
People who have lost weight, run distances, overcome health problems, changed their Chi-index (offered by Rural System) significantly are recognized with major prizes. Memberships include a web site access, special low-cost deals, health food rebates, articles on health, rebates for memberships in corporate participants, menus, news flashes about health and nutrition, first-aid advice. Winners of events are recognized and promoted. Books on named diets and a new one developed for the Challenge were sold. A lowest-cost/maximum nutrition diet was studied and computer program developed. Purchase of personalized reports was soon possible. Eating organic foods was encouraged, especially that grown in Rural System Gardens. A special program for health and participation for older people gained national notice.
One unit of the annual event highlights strength contests in otherwise-handicapped people. Insurance related health programs were sponsored. Bus transportation from gathering centers economized on transportation for everyone. Local college students and faculty joined in studies and reports were sold of their findings. Colorful tee shirts helped advertise the annual event and Rural System.
The small start, a small event on a county farm became very large and while it was handled over eight months by members of Homys, it still needed on-the-ground work. The Land Force pitched in and three new staff members were added.
Challenge and all of its parts and activities became a clear example of abundant income added to Rural System by dispersed citizens communicating electronically. Profits did not come from soil or water but from services and events. The other benefits were social, esthetic, forming memberships, and products. The opportunity was like some old ones but with a very new cast.
Bushes and Berries
I once suggested that wildlife and fisheries should be included under the Department of Forest Products in a conventional college of forestry. Fish, game, and a variety of related products and services, like wood and the esthetic appreciation of wood and the forms it takes, are forest products. (I wanted to suggest "water" as one of the products of that department but another department had already cut that out of the herd of forest goods and services.) Like many of my other ideas, that one went nowhere. There are, however new interests in the non-timber forest products. These include Christmas and holiday greens, medicinals, seasoning, nuts, berries, resins and oils, dyes, mushrooms and lichen, moss, flower parts, honey, and some people include ecotourism along with arts and crafts that use items from the forest in creative ways.
I've considered these non-timber products and their business potential for inclusion within Rural System. ("Non-timber" has all of the sophistication and appeal of "non-game." Excessively inclusive, it probably does not include any of the tree values to people for products must be bought and sold or consumed. I hope not. Non-game is also excessive but intended to mean songbirds, snakes, toads, etc. A ruffed grouse becomes non-game on the closing day of the hunting season.) The Jones et al. (2002) text has been helpful but I have left them for later considerations. The markets are small, the laborers uncertain (but potential within the Homys), the safety, efficacy, and health tests not complete, and the harvest procedures are labor-intensive and costly. These seem serious limitations on "non-timber" forest products as a source for significant profit. More important than these are the uncertainty of desirable harvest levels and harvesting limits that must be enforced to assure continuing natural production of plants. These are major impediments. The risks, not only of exterminating local populations, but also of not sustaining a productive base for employment of profits, are excessive. I have seen brush fields over-browsed by deer (removal of more than 60% significantly reduces the plant vigor for the future and results in death if a stressful year appears during possible recovery periods). I can imagine the difficult-to-see over-exploited forest, devoid of a key player (the role for which I may or may not yet know and am not willing to gamble…even when playing aggressively).
It now seems likely that ginseng (Panax quinquifolius) has been over-harvested in many forested areas. Princess pine (an ancient pteridophyte used for floral decoration) has probably been lost in some areas for the same reason. Poaching of mosses from federal land (sold for floral and landscape uses) has been reported in regional newspapers. There is every reason to find and grow commercially desirable plants and to manufacture their equivalent healthful organic compounds; there is no reason to exploit any species in modern times for alleged sexual potency, disease prevention, flower arranging, or alleged curative functions.
There may be a collection of gatherers (Homys) and their businesses but they will be small, difficult to control and regulate. High prices for some roots, for example, generate abnormal behavior. Rangers on some national parks now place dye on rare plant roots to be able to detect poachers. There can be no "chain-of-control" established…poached materials may be mixed readily with those legally and carefully produced. As prices increased, gatherers have increased and competition, even boundary/area disputes have arisen. I have included developing only two classical non-timber forest product component of the system (The Moss Group, of Topics group …but maybe others later). It may be that human needs for such products can only be met by commercial production, thus alleviating pressure on wild populations.
Deciding on and sticking with the right system context is difficult. There can be penalties, lost opportunities, or wasted efforts when choices are poorly made. The micro-example over which I labored briefly, the "too-small context," was whether to include the topic of witches brooms in the system, and if so, where. Might these micro-ecosystems, these freakish stem growths on shrubs and tree limbs, be a floral product, a topic for display to tourists, a research opportunity, a unit of the forest for special protection? Puzzles remain.
For the near future, the work of the Safety and Security Group will include protecting such non-timber forest products and communicating their value to the greater enterprise. Together they may be developed as a rare entity to be seen, jewels of the forest and field, and their protection system taught to people on tours. I have confidence that almost any plant population can be "sustained" but only after careful definition of that meaning. I can only imagine such management and control being very costly and that in some final court battle, I'll not be able to prove to a jury that I was successful. Neither the jury nor I will know that I have maintained a viable resource.
I know that there are people who harvest things from the wilds (and are looking for other possibilities). There is a sport, a fun game of finding hidden things (like eggs at Easter-time), and the fun and variable pleasures of "making a few bucks." While recognizing the fun and mixed rewards of an almost historical enactment of survival in very hard times, these activities must not be touted as the future of Rural System action and thought. They, as a whole (not a little recreational-time activity), are wasteful of time, too labor intensive with low expected income to be considered. Travel costs may be high. The expected financial returns per hour of fairly-difficult and often-dangerous working time are minor. No cost effectiveness studies are done because the largely negative results are known beforehand.
The message must be learned anew by each generation: The returns are seasonal and minimal, and potentially destructive of the resource. Sufficient studies have not been done to even be able to recognize when the harvest limits are being approached, what controls might be effective, or how to increase production in periods of decline. Competition is assured and with their success, the market prices will decline, eliminating all but the most diverse producers. The market is highly controlled by the buyers and the labor turns out to be personally subsidized, unsupported "gathering" for unregulated buyers.
As a classical antique outdoor activity, gathering is only supported for recreation and education. Rural System seeks to move sustaining activities to those that are cost effective, providing time for decent work and activities that contribute to a lasting high quality of life for the people of the region. The Berry Patch Group worked to produce a crop of berries, but that was trivial, only a title for a host of other activities
The Blue Berry Patch
Rural people have picked wild blueberries (several species of Vaccinium) from forest openings and along exposed mountain sides since they were pioneers. "Pick-your-own blue berries" (Vaccinium and several other berries) is not a gathering activity and quite a separate, realistic enterprise within Rural System. The Patch is an under-stated system. It is created for private profit, employment opportunities, and heightened value of land that makes it especially worthwhile tending well. It is more than a "patch," really a system of patches and the total system that includes them.
Abundant medical research suggests that blueberries are disease fighters. They have high antioxidant activity, probably associated with their blue ingredient, anthocyanin. The antioxidants help neutralize harmful byproducts of metabolism, the free radicals which seem to lead to cancer, age-related memory or vision loss, cardiovascular disease and stroke.
Blueberries can be grown well with expertise (e.g., contoured rows (some on strip mined areas for reclamation), hexagonal spaces, special pruning, acid soils, Alpha Earth.) Appropriate sites can be selected using GIS. The first-order creative juices for the enterprise staff needed were for how to add value to products of the land. Not at all limiting, the needs were for related (extra values) as well as enhancing (additive) values. These, for example, are:
Like Rural System Gardens, these berry Patches were widely distributed, some on Rural System Tracts but others were on select sites to meet the plant requirements for sunlight, water, and acid soils. The combined acreage and production per unit area were optimized (optimum amounts and products sold among the alternative markets such as suggested above). The Land Force developed specialized equipment for cultivating the Patches and taking their harvests. Their work was seasonal. Pruning took time from one season. The Pest Force addressed bird damage and the Safety and Security Force addressed thieves.
Black-Eyed Peas
Not the music group (of 2007), black-eyed peas are an important hardy pea that can be cultivated well. It is known to improve soil nitrogen and to have reasonably high payoffs when marketed with specialty interests of New Year. (New Year tradition has it that each pea eaten brings a day of good luck in the coming year.) Also called the cowpea and China bean, the black-eyed pea is native to Asia and Africa. It is one of the most widely dispersed beans in the world. They are grown throughout the southern U.S. as a hay crop and for human consumption. Southerner, from plantation owners to former slaves, subsisted on them before Reconstruction. Peas, hog jowls, and corn bread were viewed as standard parts of a meal. They have an aroma, creamy texture, and distinctive flavor. Black-eyed peas have rapid cooking potential, with no pre-soaking needed.
Rural System staff saw peas as an alternative to "tobacco land" management. The cow pea is invaluable as a soil protection crop and can become part of a plan for soil building toward certified produce. It can be used as an annual soil protection and nurse crop for new pasture lands and with rest rotation of pastures. It can be a major cover crop for gardens and a key crop within bird-food patches planted for wild turkeys, grouse, in managed rodent areas for owls (The Owls Group) and birds of prey, and other wildlife. Beans can be sold for home bird feeders and hay for The Rabbit Group.
Unusual potentials are seen for its new, revived uses in lives with a "return to nature" or to "re-touch history" theme. Peas provide substance, fiber, and a host of nutrients that can be promoted for appeal within special diets. Comparisons can be made and marketed with the southern tradition mentioned above with "jowls" substituted by grass-fed beef from the Cattle Group or meat from the Goats System. A special booklet of recipes may be produced.
Invariably, the computer maps came into focus for specifying the places where the fields should be planted to assure plant success, minimum fertilization waste, minimum pesticide requirements, and energy-economies for processing for hay and beans. Q Works' marketing and profitability analyses were needed as was the service of Inquiry, the laboratory. A bean of an idea became larger and larger … and the potentials for useful relations with other groups became more numerous … and the economies of scale more numerous … and the isomorphisms so clear … that not being able to use and propagate them became almost hurtful. Some enterprise-like things already existed but needed marketing. Some needed greater size so that someone would buy the products. Some needed a little more money. They, like rural people with marginal lives on the farm, had a marginal idea … just a few more bucks would make a world of difference…salvation of the land for the family. Other ideas were too big… others just no good.
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