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We need to lead the way

By Noel Josephson, CEO of Ceres Organics 

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The growth of the organic market is significant such that within a relatively few years every major food retailer has felt compelled to have an organic offering even though organics is still a very small percentage of the total food market.
Organics is a consumer-driven market, which caught many major food companies off guard, in that it didn’t fit their model and vision of the market as driven primarily by price. Consumers were more future facing towards their health and the environment, and organics rightly captures that through farming that works with nature rather than conventional farming that tries to control nature.

What’s more the organic movement embodies principles of fairness and trust, and holds some of the answers to climate change, working with social issues, economic development and community development. All of this resonates with the shift of conscious towards realising that capitalism, technology and science are not perfect and don’t have many of the answers we need to reverse the damage we are doing to the earth and humankind.
For these reasons the swing of awareness towards organics has passed the threshold where it has now become of interest to the government and the push to legislate for a national standard is overdue. But if we in the organic sector sit back we risk letting this opportunity slip away at the very time when we should be doubling our efforts.  

Speaking with one voice  

This is precisely the time to encourage good leadership in our sector organisations to unite the movement to speak with one voice to government, and create a comprehensive plan for organics that the sector fully supports.
Any division in the movement opens the door to others taking the lead and government downplaying our voice. We need to speak with one voice representing the domestic market, the export market, growers, processors, certifiers and consumers. We need one voice representing the larger commercial interests in organics and the innovators and leaders of the organic movement who carry its ideals and values. We need one voice to ensure the standards that sit behind the legislation are primarily held within the organic movement and reflect the common interests of those directly involved in organics.
What is our vision of organics and how can we inform government of what is required? We should be approaching multiple government departments talking about the benefits of organics and what is needed.  

Funding organics for success 

We should orchestrate multiple channels of funding towards sectors of organics that need support, such as financial support and encouragement of farmers to transition to organics, education and advisory services to farmers, research to establish best practice and quantify data to underpin those practices, consumer awareness of organics and its benefits. These all need funding if organics is to succeed.
We can’t just think when legislation passes it will all happen – that is too late. Do we know what will come our way in terms of financial support? Is this something we have contributed to or are we just accepting what’s given to us by a government that’s just starting to understand organics, let alone know what it needs? A whole plan, together with the funding channels, needs to be on the table now.  

The many solutions organics offers 

Organics Aotearoa New Zealand (OANZ) as the peak body of the organic sector is in the best position to canvass the organic sector, build a comprehensive picture of what is required, and place this before government.
It is in the interests of the government to listen to ways of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, getting a greater return from agriculture as one of the major pillars of the economy without further intensification of agriculture from existing land.
It is in their interest to understand how we can move towards less polluted land and more productive soils, cleaner waterways and air quality, greater biodiversity as well as how to spend some of their $3 billion on regional development for a good return. 
Some of the most pressing problems the government is looking for answers to are exactly the ones organics can bring substance to, and this places us in a strong position to engage and bargain with the government.  

We cannot leave the door ajar 

We should be keenly aware of the experience of organic movements in other countries at the stage we are at, where they didn’t ask up front for their needs and it goes on to the back burner as an issue to be dealt with in the future. Meanwhile the organic movement struggles and never fully develops its potential.
We should also think of the agendas of those interests that will lose out from a strong organic movement and in any vacuum we create, they will quickly fill it with their vision of how to proceed. 
The pressure created by consumer demand for organics growing far faster than farmers and land are converting to organics already creates a tension that could undermine the organic movement. Demand will push commercial interests to meet it, and if the supply is not there the temptation to lower the standards to up supply will work its way into the organic movement. Therefore a strong push from the outset with government support to convert more farmers to organics will help keep the standards strong.  

Our public image will make or break us  

In the minds of many we are still fringe. The more we enter public consciousness the more we need to be leading the story. 
Legislation will up our visibility and unless we are telling the story of the benefits of organics, interests that lose out (and who are more financial than us) will tell their story about Luddites and how we block ‘science’. You need only to see the bias in the Listener editorial at the end of April (on the purported benefits of GE ryegrass in decreasing methane emissions to alleviate climate change, and how science needed to trump the ideology of people who were opposed), to understand it doesn’t take much to paint us into a corner of being backward and blocking so-called progress. Once a public perception gains traction it takes a lot to change it.
This is the time we need leadership from our peak sector body, OANZ, to bring a renewed energy into our movement, together with a vision that encompasses the movement and stretches us to reach forward knowing that we are a strong partner for the government to work with.
The AGM for OANZ is yet to be announced but it is normally held in August. Through your membership organisation of OANZ encourage them to speak at the AGM with the purpose of activating organics in New Zealand. 

OANZ 

Organics Aotearoa New Zealand (OANZ) is the national voice of the New Zealand organic sector. Its member organisations include organic producers, processors, consumers, exporters and domestic traders. Soil & Health, the publisher of Organic NZ, is a member of OANZ. 

Sharon Stevens looks at the connection between local, regenerative food production and homegrown currencies such as her local ‘Loaves’.

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From local markets to direct farmer-to-consumer relationships, regenerative agriculture is bonded with place-based economies.

To support local food and other relocalisation initiatives, many communities have turned to homegrown currencies. In the rural Pohangina Valley and in Ashhurst village (where I live), volunteers are developing a multi-business voucher currency called Loaves (Local Origin Ashhurst Voluntary Exchange System).

Developing Loaves is a slow and small-step process, inspired by the successes of more established initiatives in other New Zealand communities. Even at these early stages, Loaves is serving as a tool for awareness-raising and small behaviour changes. For my part, as a Loaves volunteer, I hope to see Loaves serve as a subtle catalyst, stimulating the innate power of community and developing our connectedness to one another and to nature.

The problem with bank money

Local currencies support the development of healthy, small-scale systems. In a well-designed local economy, goods and services cycle in trading patterns that counteract the extraction-oriented economy promoted by the global monetary system.

I often hear that money is neutral and that all that needs fixing is our individual attitudes and spending habits, but the reality is that bank money (such as New Zealand dollars), has built-in flaws. Money is created by banks as interest-bearing debt. As a result, while individual uses of money may be positive, on a collective level money circulates in ways that harm people, harm the planet, and exacerbate inequality.

Exponential growth on a chessboard

This problem is often explained by reference to an ancient Chinese fable in which an inventor develops chess and gives the game to the emperor. (There are other versions of this fable in India, Persia and elsewhere.) Delighted, the emperor offers the inventor a gift: name your price.

The inventor, appearing modest, asks for one grain of rice for the first square of the chess board, two for the second, four for the third, and so on. This quickly adds up, because it is a doubling pattern, a type of exponential growth, analogous to rapid, exponential population growth. There are sixty-four squares on a chessboard, or (20 + 21 + 22 + 23 + … + 263), equal to (264 – 1). That’s eighteen-and-a-half quintillion grains of rice – more than the empire could provide. Incensed, the emperor orders the inventor’s execution.

Let’s translate this to a contemporary bank money example. When someone mortgages their house, they agree to a modest interest rate. Over the life of the mortgage, they

usually pay the bank about twice the value of their original loan. This is doubling, and it requires extracting extra money from the economy. That extra money enters the economy as somebody else’s debt, so that, for example, new mortgages pay for old ones.

For debtors to remain solvent, and to prevent financial uncertainties that might contribute to a run on the bank, more and more money needs to be pumped into the economy. Until the bubble bursts, this causes exponential growth of the collective private debt burden, price inflation, and pressure to create real wealth – goods and services – to back up the ever-increasing money supply.

On-farm pressure to create real wealth

On the farm, what does the exponential increase of interest-based debt money look like? Too many farmers worldwide carry debts they can barely manage. Even those who don’t are pressured by a global market structured by inflationary costs. Consequences include farmer stress, chemical and fossil fuel inputs for short-term production gains, cash crop monocultures, forest-to-farm conversions, carbon released from poorly managed soil, and other practices that degrade people and the earth. Indebted farmers are under pressure to play the wrong game, trying to feed bank profits instead of people.

In short, the exponential growth of the interest-oriented money supply drives the intensification of agriculture. The efforts of regenerative farmers are all the more heroic because there is so much stacked against them.

A different game

Let’s return to the emperor. That execution is horrid – but what if the emperor had tried to deliver? How many farmers would have worked too hard? How many would have exhausted their rice paddies? How many families would have starved to redistribute rice to the games-man?

Violence isn’t the answer, but neither is giving away power. I prefer to imagine the emperor replying in good humour: “You outsmarted me, so take back your competitive chessboard. I refuse a gift exchange that harms my land, harms my people, and concentrates wealth while others go hungry. Go design a cooperative game, one grounded in farming rather than battle strategy.”

A cooperative economy would start with the soil and people that produce our food, because this is the most basic aspect of our livelihood. Growth would be linked not to exponentially increasing debts but instead to whatever real wealth could be sustainably produced. Trading tools would make equitable mutual support more straightforward. Just by keeping things more local, for example, a cooperative economy would increase face-to-face accountability, reduce transport footprints, and provide a barrier to how the global concentration of dollars systematically increases the gap between rich and poor.

An evolving Loaves model

Our society is not yet ready to release its reliance on bank money. The Loaves local currency accommodates this with a transitional design.

For now, Loaves are issued by a not-for-profit organisation, LEAP (Society for the Local Economy of Ashhurst and Pohangina, leap.org.nz). New Zealand dollars (NZD), used to purchase Loaves, are kept in the bank and listed as a liability in LEAP’s accounts, in case a business needs to redeem Loaves. This strong NZD link makes Loaves more manageable, but it also leaves it vulnerable to the same dynamics as bank money. For now, Loaves’ focus is on buy-local awareness raising and on creating a direct experience of how a community can invent its own solutions.

Recently, LEAP has taken another small step towards local self-reliance. In the current ‘Loaves 2.0’ approach, only three businesses redeem Loaves for NZD. These businesses all have a rural base and a track record of community support. All are well established in the local economy, and therefore risk over-accumulating the currency, which is designed for spending, not saving. Two of them resonate strongly with the values of the organic community, but, like most other local currencies, Loaves’ focus is on the general system conditions for regenerative economy, without additional criteria for business participation. Loaves is not a money-maker for businesses that already have strong demand, so the generous participation of these three helps develop – and anchor – the following community benefits.

Nature is the foundation of wealth

Wealth begins with nature and human co-creativity. Loaves’ ‘anchor’ businesses are a cheesery (Cartwheel Creamery), a specialist fruit and nut tree nursery (Edible Garden), and a roadside fruit and veg shop (Riverside Orchard). Rural supply to the local economy grounds all other Loaves exchanges; that is, all others participate in Loaves because they can spend with one another and at these shops.

In the long run, an even more robust model would be to have regenerative rural businesses issue Loaves as a promise to provide future goods or services, such as sustainably grown food boxes. This approach would be similar to a CSA (community-supported agriculture) fruit and veg box subscription, but it would also involve multi-party voucher circulation backed by the recognised value of those boxes.

Local currencies strengthen communities

Friendship, business loyalty, and community accountability are all enhanced by the face-to-face connections that physical voucher spending requires. Local currencies are also proven to increase the identification of people with place. Additionally, increased local purchasing is a positive correction to an overemphasis on global corporate trading.

Local currencies make small and start-up businesses more visible. Evidence indicates that any ‘buy local’ campaign – from posters to currencies – raises awareness and increases support for small- and medium-sized private businesses.

Local self-reliance requires a local economy

For a community to be resilient to outside shocks requires collective capacity to meet needs closer to home. There’s a chicken-and-egg issue, with local production and local distribution networks needing one another to keep developing. Local procurement policies, local currencies, and other local economic tools create the conditions for regenerative economy.

Reconnecting with nature and community

In their truest form, economic trading tools help people cooperate to meet their needs and wants. Like other small currencies, Loaves shifts the focus away from money accumulation and back to the basics – back to the deep value of human connection, back to nature as the deep foundation of our collective wealth.

Living Economies Educational Trust

Living Economies (LE) is a national charity that provides information on how interest-free financial solutions can foster community wellbeing, help sustain regional economies, and respect living planetary systems. LE volunteers do not provide financial advice, but do provide information on a range of initiatives:

• Local exchange trading systems (LETS): membership-based networks that use book-keeping to track flows of credits and debits;
• Time banks, or time-based exchanges that value all participants’ time equally;
• Community-issued vouchers such as Loaves;
• Private tradable coupons issued by a social enterprise to finance growth, backed by future goods and services;
• Savings pools, or interest-free savings and loans within small, closed networks of people who wish to provide reciprocal, mutual support;
• Mutual assurance through networks of people who wish to join forces for risk management. Information and specialty books are available at http://livingeconomies.nz

Dr Sharon Stevens is the volunteer project coordinator for Loaves, working on behalf of LEAP.

Frith Chamberlain outlines a system that uses money in a fair and reciprocal way.

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In November 2015 I had the pleasure of attending New Zealand’s first national ‘savings pool’ hui. This was held in beautiful Opotiki and hosted by the wonderfully talented team at the Awhi Tautoko Trust (if you need some daily inspiration for your community spirit then look these guys up). We had a fantastic time with incredibly inspiring people where we discussed savings pools and where we see them in the future.

Pooling resources to help each other

For centuries, people have recognised the benefit of pooling their resources, through co-operatives, buyers’ clubs and investment syndicates. Savings pools, where individuals combine their savings into a larger pool of funds, can bring with them similar benefits. Members deposit funds into the savings pool, and then take turns to access the pool’s funds (to buy the fridge, the holiday or pay off a loan) on an interest-free basis.

There are savings pools in New Zealand and in other countries – for example, the JAK Members’ Bank, which launched in Sweden in 1965. There are around 30 pools operating in New Zealand at present, with more starting every year.

The basic operating principle of savings pools is that a member who uses the pool funds in the form of a loan is obligated to make available to the pool the same amount of money for an equal time period. Once this reciprocity requirement has been satisfied, the member is free to withdraw that money, or continue to leave any part of it in the pool. This ensures fairness and guarantees the continued availability of funds without the need for interest or fees.

Kiss that interest goodbye!

Here is a simplified example of what usually happens when dealing with a bank. An individual applies for a bank mortgage of $225,000. After 25 years of payments, they have a freehold house to live in. They have also paid over $225,000 in interest to the bank, with nothing tangible to show for this money.

An individual belongs to a savings pool and applies to borrow $225,000. After 25 years, the individual has a freehold house to show for the $225,000 it paid the vendor plus $225,000 in savings! This is called reciprocity, where you have lent this money to the pool to borrow from in exchange for no interest. At this stage the individual can either leave their savings in the pool (where they enjoy the benefit of helping others reach their goals), or they can remove this money and leave the pool.

Our savings pool

The savings pool I am part of has completed two loans in the year we have been together. We had the joy of paying off the remaining mortgage of a wonderful retiree. She is now paying her $10,000 loan off to us interest-free. The other $8000 loan has been used to pay the debt of a young family. This has helped to reduce the financial burden while one family member is fighting cancer. The family have used their caravan as security and are paying the loan off interest-free. After these loans are paid they then have the added bonus of knowing their savings are secure and available if required.

We are inspired by another pool in New Zealand that has recently facilitated a $200,000 loan for a mortgage, and hope to tackle some bigger loans for our members this year.

It is exciting to eliminate the amount of interest we pay, as interest represents an enormous waste, a constant flow of wealth out of our households and out of our towns. A savings pool is a way of conserving local wealth, where we all have something to offer and we all have scope for initiative and leadership.

Fair, transparent and member-controlled

Because members don’t earn interest on their contributions, savings pools are not money-making investments. The following key features, however, make them extremely effective cost-savers.

1. No interest is charged for the use of pooled funds and no one creams off any profit, thus there is value and equity.
2. Contributors themselves decide how their funds are used and purchased assets belong to the pool until they are paid for in full, creating control and security.
3. There are next to no costs; members balance received benefits with matching contributions, and accounts are open to all members. This makes for a simple, reciprocal and transparent system.

Setting up a savings pool

Anybody can start a pool in New Zealand. It requires a group of like-minded people, good communication and some courageous forward thinking. One organisation that can help with this is Living Economies. The Living Economies Educational Trust is a nationwide charity dedicated to strengthening regional economies by conserving local resources, nurturing local talent, promoting regional self-sufficiency and developing community- and business-friendly means of exchange.

Organisations like Living Economies are not afraid to ask these probing questions: What if we could trade without paying interest? What if communities could replace debt-based money with forms of exchange involving no waste? They alsoeducate and inform communities and individuals (whether or not they are members of savings pools) on how savings pools can work.

Savings pools are legal – provided the pool members take care to ensure they abide by applicable legislation. Living Economies can provide information about the legislation that can apply, but its advice is necessarily general, and those involved with savings pools as members or prospective members, and persons considering forming a pool, should seek their own legal advice.

If you’d like to know more about the savings pool system or be part of one in your area, then contact either myself or Living Economies for further information.

More information

• Living Economies: www.le.org.nz, www.facebook.com/livingeconomies
• tvnz.co.nz/seven-sharp/interest-free-mortgage-video-5873349
• www.jak.se/jakexplained

Frith Chamberlain is the chair of Soil & Health’s Mid Canterbury branch and a passionate believer in the savings pools concept. havelockseakayak@clear.net.nz