Our series “Schumacher Conversations: Envisioning the Next 50 Years” continued last week, bringing together stories of community-led transformation—from the remote Fogo Island of Canada (population 2,244) to the dynamic Bronx county of New York (population 1.4 million). The full recording of “Localizing Production: Communities Supporting Industry” is now available on our website and YouTube channel.In this Conversation, Zita Cobb of Shorefast and the Fogo Island Inn, Michael H. Schuman of Bard College, and Michael Partis of the Bronx Cooperative Development Initiative exchange experiences and insights. Schumacher Center Board Member Alice Maggio moderates. Afterword, one panelist summed this discussion up as “a wonderful mix of analytical, theoretical, and applicable.” We couldn’t agree more.
Highlights from our March Conversation
Zita Cobb on the prime importance of local ownership
Zita opens the conversation by introducing us to Fogo Island, a fishing community off the coast of Newfoundland. There, Islanders had been living in a largely self-determined, sound ecological manner for three centuries—until rapid industrialization began taking a toll on their livelihoods. The operation survives, according to Zita, because the fisherman responded to these shifts by organizing a worker cooperative. “I am certain that we wouldn’t be living on Fogo Island today if our fishery was owned by a distant capital owner.”
Zita goes on to tell how, alongside her brothers, she founded the registered charity Shorefast to “try to put another leg on the economy that complements the fishery.” This led to creating the award-winning Fogo Island Inn, a celebration of Islander hospitality and craft. The central principle of local procurement is brilliantly illustrated by the Inn’s economic nutrition labels, showing exactly where the money goes.
More recently, Shorefast has broadened their activities through the Community Economies Pilot Project, engaging multiple areas across the length of Canada to chart unified strategies for place-based development.
Michael H. Schuman on global banking instability and shifting money locally
Next, Michael H. Shuman shares some of his own personal connection to E.F. Schumacher and the relevance of Small is Beautiful to his current work. Through the Vibrant Tribal Economies initiative, Michael is working alongside others to map community business networks in Federally-recognized Native American Reservations, surfacing best practices that may be replicated among the country’s 550+ Indigenous territories.
Michael is asked, given recent headlines surrounding big banks, whether savings and capital can actually be turned into a democratic instrument for investment in various forms of community enterprise. “We have to push in that direction,” Michael replies:
“You cannot have local ownership without local finance and local investment— and very few of us have money in the local economy. Creating instruments that allow people to invest in co-ops or community enterprise is essential… ”
Offering an example, Michael points to L.I.O.N., the Local Investment Opportunity Network of Port Townsend, Washington. Started in 2007 as a simple potluck where entrepreneurs and potential investors could meet to discuss ideas, he says, L.I.O.N. now mobilizes ~$1M a year within a town of only 10,000 people—an impressive shift of savings out of the global economy into local industry.
Michael Partis on a human-centered approach to economics
Rounding out the panel, Michael Partis shares how the Bronx Community Development Initiative’s democratic approach centers human stories and draws on residents’ own creativity for community development in the New York City borough.
In the Bronx, Michael says. “Our residents are productive. They are abundant in ideas, vision, practice and values.” He describes the alternative solutions that can emerge “when the unit of analysis is the people who live, work, play, and worship in these places…” BCDI’s mechanism for surfacing ideas from the community is the Citizens’ Assembly: an invaluable tool for analyzing the area’s economic strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities.
Their Bronx Peoples’ Planning Initiative has so far sourced twenty-one economic development proposals from the community—ideas centering justice, equity, worker ownership, and redistributive wealth-building. The lesson this whole process reinforces is that “production is not just an economic process—something Schumacher so clearly highlights for us—its also a social and cultural one.”
“Our analysis [is] that the extractive part of the economy—when you take a qualitative lens, and look at production not just economically, but what it’s doing socially—lends itself to something different: something more human-centered, more holistic.”
The next 2023 Schumacher Conversation, “Reallocating Land: From Market to Commons,” will take place Thursday, April 20 at 2:00 PM EST. The participants will be:
- Satish Kumar of Resurgence Trust (U.K.)
- Sjoerd Wartena of Terre de Liens (Europe), and
- Severine Von Tscharner Fleming of Agrarian Trust (U.S.)
The Conversation will be hosted by Natasha Hulst, Director of European Land Commons at the Schumacher Center. Register for this upcoming event here.