Building the Agricultural City

These tools including worker-owned cooperatives, municipal owned utilities powered by renewables, and community development banks (which are scattered across the country) can be assembled within a region to establish a self-reliant, sustainable economy.Such an economy would provide an ark to help us survive our turbulent times. Times that will certainly become even more difficult.

Praise for Building the Agricultural City:

“You are a voice crying in the wilderness! You are a prophet of rural revival.”
—Jack Beatty, senior editor at The Atlantic, author, and News Analyst for NPR’s On Point.”

“I have read it several times and it continues to inspire and encourage me.  I have also recommended it to most of my colleagues and will encourage them to take advantage of this too.  . . .. [W]e will need inspiration and hope and Building the Agricultural City can provide that!”—Fred Kirschenmann,  Former executive director, Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture

Kirschenmann’s full review: https://rootstalk.grinnell.edu/index.php/article/building-agricultural-city-handbook-rural-renewal-robert-wolf

Food Tank: A Think Tank for Food picked Building the Agricultural City as one of 17 books to read in 2017.  ” Wolf offers a plan for the future of rural economies based on the concept of regionalism, in which widespread, isolated communities become large cities, or agricultural cities. He implores rural communities to decentralize the wealth, work cooperatively to rebuild their economies, and move toward a stronger future.”

The College, a publication of St. John’s College:
https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/2155

Also available from Amazon in paperback and e-book: https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Building+the+agricultural+city

View this short 16 minute film that condenses the ideas: https://vimeo.com/261211826

WHAT IS AN AGRICULTURAL CITY?
Imagine that neighboring towns and cities in a rural region no longer competed with one another for a business or industry.  They have buried rivalries, and each now considers itself a neighborhood within a new kind of city. Call it an Agricultural City.  Not all rural regions are capable of building Agricultural Cities.  In the Great Plains, for example, towns are separated by such great distances that a cooperative economy and culture are virtually unimaginable.On the other hand, some rural regions have so many towns in close proximity that the region can contain several Agricultural Cities.Agricultural Cities cooperating within a region have the potential to create a regional economy and culture that will function as an ark, a cooperative network of farms, businesses, industries, towns and cities that will help us survive our turbulent times that almost certainly will become more difficult.

The Agricultural City Project is an informal collaboration among individuals and organizations in the Driftless region of the Upper Midwest that are helping to create a self-reliant and sustainable economy and culture. These individuals and organizations may not realize that they are helping to create such an economy. They did not establish their business or farm with that in mind. Nevertheless, their work contributes to that end.

What do the Collaborators Do?
One. A collaborator lends his name in support of the vision of a self-reliant and sustainable regional economy. The fact that a collaborator lends its name to the concept strengthens the vision. The more collaborators that endorse the vision, the more likely the public will be aware of our need to become self-reliant.Two. In order to promote the vision, the collaborators will need to spread the idea through radio and television interviews, newspaper opinion pieces, films and broadsides, a presence at local fairs, etc.The growth of the number of collaborators across the Driftless will make collaborators aware of each other’s existence. Those with common needs (say organic farmers decide they need a mill) may decide to create a cooperative.

Growth is Organic, Not Planned
First, there is no need for more than a minimal organization to push the vision forward. In fact, a heavily formalized organization would be counter-productive, depressing creativity with bureaucracy. Second, the process should not have a master plan; instead, it needs to grow out of the informal relationships of collaborators and their shared needs. This should be a process whose outcomes grow as we learn more about our needs and capabilities.

Learn more on FACEBOOK: Building the Agricultural City