Financial permaculture

Some notes about an appropriate style for working up a portfolio of eco-social enterprise designs in Hohenwald, TN, USA this coming October.

It's a great opportunity to notice that there are probably no exact fits as regards up and running business in the USA and certainly not in the rural south. I'd be happy to be proved wrong in this and wish for folks with direct knowledge of rural southern US'ers who have successful micro enterprises up and running in the following fields make contact.

Here's the specification, wish list (which has arisen from local Hohenwald visioning sessions): -

Micro and small enterprises that meet the following descriptions: -

• Contractor Association / Green Design Business Directory
• Community Food Processing Kitchen & Plant
• Farmer/Artisan Markets and Co-ops
• Recycling Center & Transfer station
• Supply & Salvage Store

For sure there are folks with experience with these enterprises if we can search beyond the rural south of the USA - how about the rest of the world?

And I'd work from the place of understanding that we're dealing with an emergent situation here and thus we better off coming from a jazz style approach than attempting to play from a prepared score. There can (and should be) chord sequences, some known tunes, an arrangement or two.... Attempts to prescribe solutions ahead of time are likely to suffer from a lack of local adaptability.

A second issue is to do with the presence or not of the practical people who are going to pioneer these enterprises in Hohenwald/Lewis County. That's a big, big job and, whilst it seems we have heard from the good citizens of the town as regards what they would like to see emerge we have not heard from the likely do-ers. This is essential for me as, unless we get to know these brave folk, we won't know how we need to be in order to help them.

I can see that in the medium term there needs to be a franchising energy around all this. For example, if we could lift half a dozen eco-social franchise operations into the mix this would surely speed up the regeneration process, not just in Hohenwald but elsewhere too. That would be a great way to go and, meanwhile, Hohenwlad might like to think about what it already has in place and/or could soon develop that it would like to offer out as a franchise to the rest of the transition town/re-localization field. We could survey that when we are there in October as part of the Gaia University team.