October 29, 2015
Last weekend the Schumacher Center held the 35th Annual E. F. Schumacher Lectures at the beautiful Churchtown Dairy— a new raw milk dairy just outside of Hudson, NY. This year’s speakers, Allan Savory of the Savory Institute and Bren Smith of GreenWave, continued a long tradition of thoughtfully crafted talks on building the social, cultural, … Continued
October 9, 2015
In a little over a year from now, the 25 students taking part in Schumacher College for New Economists will shake out their boots and set foot on Sallie Calhoun’s 7,000 acre Paicines Ranch. Their week at the ranch will include a crash course in impact investing and designing new agricultural models. When Sallie and … Continued
September 22, 2015
If you asked Judy Wicks what she would say about economics in the wake of International Peace Day, she would tell you “The foundation for world peace is building an economy where every community is self-reliant in basic needs such as food, water and energy.” CODEPINK would elaborate, telling us “every transaction we make in our … Continued
September 15, 2015
Our friends at the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) are taking a lead on highlighting regenerative solutions for agriculture and resource management across North America. They have developed a toolkit of resources to help explore these areas, under the heading ‘Soil & Nature.’ As they point out, “Soil carbon sequestration is one of the most … Continued
August 28, 2015
Thanks in part to the popularity of Piketty’s book, the public better understands that in our current economic system income from stocks, bonds, and real estate is always higher than the income from wages alone. Those with inherited and acquired investment assets will therefore inevitably have an economic advantage over those without. Historically, the holdings … Continued
August 27, 2015
When, in his 1981 E. F. Schumacher Lecture, Wes Jackson gave a “Call for a Revolution in Agriculture” he was not simply talking about changing tools and techniques, he was talking about a shift in thinking, a shift of culture. The dominant agriculture then, as now, depended on the monoculture of annual crops tilled by … Continued
August 10, 2015
What do BerkShares have in common with Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma and the online marketplace Etsy? According to Dan Crane’s article in the Sunday New York Times, they are all part of a movement that is redeveloping small-scale, artisanal production and eschewing the monoculture of a global economy, which includes the anonymity of credit … Continued
June 22, 2015
AFTER NINE YEARS, THE U.S. TREASURY FINALLY CATCHES UP WITH BERKSHARES, PLANS TO FEATURE A WOMAN ON THE TEN SPOT Following the example set by BerkShares, Inc., the U.S. Treasury announced last Wednesday that a woman would appear on the 10-dollar bill beginning in 2020. The announcement comes nine years after BerkShares, Inc. issued BerkShares, … Continued
May 28, 2015
In the leaky bucket analogy for local economies, money flows into a region to circulate through local businesses like water into a bucket. Water that leaks out is money that escapes the local economy to pay for imports. The more watertight the bucket, the more wealth retained. In the early 1980s, unemployment rose steeply in … Continued
May 4, 2015
This past weekend, in over 150 cities on six continents, people joined their fellow citizens on neighborhood walks to discuss the history of their city, observe its current state of affairs, and imagine its future together. In New York City the Municipal Art Society of New York alone listed over two hundred walks throughout the … Continued
April 9, 2015
The transformation to fair and sustainable regional economies requires place-based, citizen-driven tools. The principles behind these tools are universal, but their effective application will be shaped by the landscape, the people, the history, and the culture of each particular region. On September 14, 2015 Schumacher College for New Economists will welcome its first class of … Continued
March 26, 2015
At the end of October 2014, thirteen delegates from the Schumacher Center for a New Economics traveled to Cuba to study its progress in developing sustainable food systems. We visited family farms in the Pinar del Rio Province, a large cooperative farm in the Alamar district on the outskirts of Havana, and the gardens of … Continued