Farming Tilapia fish is indeed a good idea.

As usual I have something a bit out of left field. Earlier this week was Blog Action Day when about 20,000 bloggers wrote about the same issue--the environment. I was one of them. Most of the time when I write the good idea of what I'm going to say doesn't come first. I just start typing and figure out where I'm going from there.

Most things in life, it seems, we get to choose around the edges. The subject of "the environment" is such a big issue. I certainly support doing the little things we can do as individuals. But it's hard to get really excited about them. So I tried to talk about my own feelings about big problems and what I as an individual can do.

In the process of doing the post I can across a great blog post from Dave Smith co-founder of Smith & Hawken at a site called Briar Patch Network. The post is about ideas and writing of Wendell Berry Seventeen Rules for a Sustainable Community. Le me copy the rules here:

1. Always ask of any proposed change or innovation: What will this do to our community? How will this affect our common wealth.
2. Always include local nature - the land, the water, the air, the native creatures - within the membership of the community.
3. Always ask how local needs might be supplied from local sources, including the mutual help of neighbours.
4. Always supply local needs first (and only then think of exporting products - first to nearby cities, then to others).
5. Understand the ultimate unsoundness of the industrial doctrine of ‘labour saving’ if that implies poor work, unemployment, or any kind of pollution or contamination.
6. Develop properly scaled value-adding industries for local products to ensure that the community does not become merely a colony of national or global economy.
7. Develop small-scale industries and businesses to support the local farm and/or forest economy.
8. Strive to supply as much of the community’s own energy as possible.
9. Strive to increase earnings (in whatever form) within the community for as long as possible before they are paid out.
10. Make sure that money paid into the local economy circulates within the community and decrease expenditures outside the community.
11. Make the community able to invest in itself by maintaining its properties, keeping itself clean (without dirtying some other place), caring for its old people, and teaching its children.
12. See that the old and young take care of one another. The young must learn from the old, not necessarily, and not always in school. There must be no institutionalised childcare and no homes for the aged. The community knows and remembers itself by the association of old and young.
13. Account for costs now conventionally hidden or externalised. Whenever possible, these must be debited against monetary income.
14. Look into the possible uses of local currency, community-funded loan programmes, systems of barter, and the like.
15. Always be aware of the economic value of neighbourly acts. In our time, the costs of living are greatly increased by the loss of neighbourhood, which leaves people to face their calamities alone.
16. A rural community should always be acquainted and interconnected with community-minded people in nearby towns and cities.
17. A sustainable rural economy will depend on urban consumers loyal to local products. Therefore, we are talking about an economy that will always be more cooperative than competitive.

What struck me reading through these ideas is they make sense for the Opok Farms Village planning, and they make sense for the local economy where I live. At least, I'm very interested to see how the economy in my area could become more resilient and ssustaining of the people here.

Dave Smith also links to another piece by Berry Think Little. Berry is much more in touch with the Earth than I--he even plows his fields with a team of mules. Plus Berry is a wonderful writer and poet. I was so impressed with the essay "Think Little" because it is so easy to feel a bit overwhelmed by how big the problems facing us all are. And in feeling overwhelmed not knowing what to do next.

I guess the idea of thinking little is in the eye of the beholder. Opok Farms Village seems pretty big to me, but it's along the lines of the scale Berry is talking about. So the challenges are small, but still of a scale where individuals can imagine acting.

Sure, what needs to be done in Northern Uganda differs in many significant details with what needs doing here in Western Pennsylvania. Still going down Berry's list, many good things that can be done at Opok Farms Village are good things things that can be done where I live too. I like that, because as we try to move forward together we can compare our experiences.