Next up: Deep Economy by Bill McKibben

In Deep Economy, Bill McKibben offers tantalizing glimpses into a saner world, one we may be on our way to creating, one in which economic decisions are made using a different, broader, deeper set of criteria. It's a hopeful book, and McKibben's smart but engaging, conversational style makes subjects that could be dull-as-dry-toast (U.S. foreign aid policy? farm subsidies? rural and urban poverty in developing nations?) fascinating.

Crop productivity is a great example of the changes we might be encouraged to make, if we change the economic decision-making criteria. If you measure agricultural productivity on a per-dollar or per-work-hour basis, then large-scale monoculture, using lots of big petroleum-burning machines, is usually considered the best way to go. Fewer people need to be involved when you reduce the number and varieties of crops, increase the acreage per farm, and increase the chemicals applied (herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizers).

What McKibben points out is that the productivity of the land in that scenario actually decreases, compared to more labor-intensive farming practices. You can grow more food per acre using sustainable acricultural practices. But most economists (except those few who have begun to practice the types of economics McKibben describes as "deep") would tell you that it's less productive to do it that way, because of the way they are measuring productivity.

McKibben encourages his readers to take a different view of productivity and economic growth. The book is a series of anecdotes, stories of communities finding different ways to improve their lives than "economic growth at any cost." The examples he gives, from new organic farming efforts in Vermont and Bangladesh to rabbit-raising training schools fighting rural poverty in China to a clothing mercantile created by the residents of Powell, Wyoming to combat an incursion by Walmart to a small company building "bike mills" (human-powered equipment to mill grain, pump water, etc.) out of abandoned bikes in Guatemala—there are lots of cool things going on in the world.

Whether they are bucking the trend or creating a new one is perhaps open to debate, but some of them are clearly catching on. McKibben says that farmers' markets in the U.S. are growing at a rate of 25%, which is more than respectable.

I was happy to see just how many community-strengthening, local-economy-improving projects McKibben cites are also happening in my own back yard here in Lawrence, Kansas:

• Cohousing - Delaware Street Commons
• Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) - Rolling Prairie Farmers Alliance
• Farmers Markets - Lawrence has expanded this year from two to three weekly markets
• Community-owned mercantiles - the Community Mercantile (McKibben's example is a clothing co-op; the Merc is a grocery store)
  

There are also community vegetable gardens, restaurants which proudly serve local organic produce in season as well as locally and organically raised meat, public transportation (which the city is threatening to reduce!), and more.

These are projects that work. They are not subsidized or imposed by the government; people have created them because they wanted them, saw the value in them, and made them happen. And there's lots more to be done; improving public transportation may top that list, as well as increasing the amount of local food served in local school cafeterias, and many other things. But it's easy to see how life can improve by doing more in these areas.

Even more drastic improvements are possible for people in the "undeveloped world." McKibben believes that it isn't necessary for them to destroy their natural resources and their communities in order to industrialize and escape poverty. Using the principles McKibben champions (sustainability, emphasizing strong local communities and preserving local resources) some families, villages, and regions are finding creative ways to do just that. One remote Tibetan village is exploring carefully planned (and village-run) ecotourism as an alternative to hunting local species to extinction. A group of organic farmers in Bangladesh is providing a real alternative to chemical-intensive farming, and getting respect (and higher prices for their food) at the market.

McKibben also points out how U.S. foreign and domestic policy undercuts, sometimes very actively, these efforts. Farm subsidies as they are now doled out are especially destructive, undercutting local prices worldwide for staples like corn and rice. The World Bank pushes projects that replicate large-scale monoculture farming, whether that's appropriate to a local economy and ecology or not.

Strictly speaking, this isn't a how-to book, but it does show a number of possible paths to improving the lives of not only those in developed countries, but those who have less and struggle more, while protecting the natural resources that we all rely on for our survival.