By Shawn Dell Joyce

I was invited to speak to our county’s Planning Board about ways to localize our economy. We first have to realize what our assets are, what resources we have that we can build on. In Orange County, we have a picturesque countryside, a rich history, a growing arts community, many small family farms, a few large scale industries, an international airport, and an underemployed population.

We also have to take notice of where our money leaks out of the local economy (called an “import leak”) and how we can plug that leak with a local source to keep our money flowing in the local economy. Two big areas are energy and food.

Lots of our local bucks go to pay for electricity and oil generated outside our community. This is a huge export leak, with a good chunk of our paychecks going to home heat, electric, gas, and fuel oil. A leak this big will need more than one plug.

–If we support large scale local power generation like Taylor Biomass, we can generate power locally that stays in the region. If we could work with Taylor, we could make it our own local utility and get a much better rate than dirty coal, or nuclear could provide. It would also generate local jobs.

–Home heating costs could be localized by creating our own local source of biofuel; pellets made from crop residues. This is already in the works, and provide local farmers a use for crop residues (press them into pellets) and local homes a source for inexpensive carbon-neutral heating. Let’s incentivize this program and encourage this local industry.

–Other home heating and power costs could be greatly reduced and localized through the PACE program (Property-Assessed Clean Energy) This national-level program encourages counties to offer low-interest rate loans through property taxes to pay for solar hot water, solar electric, energy-efficiency upgrades, and other “green” home improvements. This involves a local bank loan, local green energy provider and builders, and generates great LOCAL economic impact while lowering homeowner’s monthly bills.

Probably no other program, instituted on a county level, could have a bigger impact on reducing our monthly bills and generating local green jobs and economic impact than the PACE program. A similar program was set up in Cambridge, MA, designed to lower small businesses operating expenses by connecting them with energy efficiency auditors, local banks and local upgrade providers (insulators, contractors, etc). The money all stayed local and small businesses were more solvent.

Additionally, Orange County is part of the food shed for New York City. Much of what our farmers grow gets shipped elsewhere, meanwhile we import tons of food for our schools and restaurants from other states. It is criminal that our schools buy apples from Washington State while our apple farmers have surplus crops rotting in storage. This is a huge economic leak.

If our county mandated local schools and kitchens to order directly from local farms, even incentivized the process to level the cost difference, it would make a huge difference in the bottom line of our local farms. A way to plug this leak is set up an agent who would have local farms grow specifically for several school districts. Perhaps work with PTA’s to offer local apples as fundraisers instead of Florida citrus as well. Create salad bars as part of the school lunch program, and connect farms and schools through a county agent to make it happen. Winter Sun Farms in New Paltz already offers industrial-scale lots of frozen produce from local farms to school districts.

Other communities depend on attracting large corporations and big box stores as a way of bringing in more economic activity. This strategy has been proven to work in reverse as small independent businesses make up about half of the economic backbone of our communities. A recent study revealed that $1 earned by a local farmer had the impact of $2 on the farmer’s community because it changed hands so many times locally.

“About 42 percent of our economy is “place based” or created through small, locally-owned businesses,” notes Economist and author Michael Shuman. He estimates that we could expand this figure to 70 percent or more, by localizing some of our main expenditures. In the process, we would boost our local economy, and save money at the same time.

Shawn Dell Joyce is an award-winning sustainable artist and writer and director of the Wallkill River School in Montgomery.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 16th, 2010 at 12:49 pm and is filed under Shawn Dell Joyce. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.