I love the Okanogan, the landscape, the forests, the shrub lands, the grasslands. I have a lot of friends there. At the same time there are things and people that I don't like. I would like us to all get along reasonably well and create a more vibrant local food economy.

 Last winter I gave a short presentation on formal and informal economies at a meeting held at the Okanogan Grange which was organized by Peter Myers. In retrospect, I wished I had talked about the topic of food self-sufficiency in Okanogan County. So I was inspired to write this article for my friends.

 Food security is a growing issue in today's world at all scales: global, national, regional and local. Communities throughout the USA and in other countries are looking at local food security issues and how to resolve them. National food security concerns are one of the biggest issues in world trade negotiations. "Dumping" of food had destroyed many local food systems worldwide. Never before has so much of the world been at the mercy of food imports. This includes Okanogan County. What can be done to improve local food self-sufficiency and hence local food security in uncertain times? That is the focus of this small article.

 Most people would agree that a high degree of local food self-sufficiency is a good idea even in good economic times. It will make even more sense in bad economic times. Okanogan could be 100% food self-sufficient if necessary. At the moment, steak and apple pie would be the main items on the menu if we were cut off from the outside world.

 This article is about exploring what it would take for Okanogan county to achieve a high degree of food self reliance. Much of this would be applicable in other counties as well.

 For those readers not familiar with the Okanogan. The county is located in north-central Washington State and is the largest county in the state. The county includes part of the North Cascades, the wide Okanogan valley and the Okanogan Highlands. The county is about 100 miles wide and 40 miles deep. It borders British Columbia. Average precipitation in the county is 12 inches in the driest areas and the more mountainous parts receive 25 to 45 inches.

 Okanogan is currently an exporter of several food commodities, primarily apples and cattle. However if fossil fuels and other outside inputs were not available, than farm production would drop. Outside inputs are undoubtedly going to get a lot more expensive. Orchardists, farmers and ranchers have been going out of business in droves for the past 50 years because of low commodity prices, high input prices and interest rates.

To read the rest of the article, please go to:

http://www.friendsofthetrees.net/2007article_localfood.htm

Community

The Outlaw…Survivor Above All

 The definition of the word “outlaw”in Webster’s Third New Dictionary (unabridged) is: “1. a person or thing excluded from the benefit of the law or deprived of it’s protection. 2. …to remove from legal jurisdiction or enforcement.” Also “Outlawry” is defined as “…the state of living outside the law: freedom from legal or conventional restraint.”

An Outlaw is neither male nor illegal by the above definition. An Outlaw is a survivor above all else. Society gives no rules for survival outside of itself, therefore an Outlaw must discover for herself what rules are essential to survive outside organized society. The purpose of this pamphlet is to allow as many people as possible to at least get an idea of what to do and how to survive without the “protection of law.”

 Who and Where are Outlaws?

An Outlaw can be anyone, and can live just about anywhere, even in the middle of a large city. This does not mean that there are many Outlaws. Many people have the mistaken belief that prison or jail inmates are Outlaws. Nothing could be further from the truth.

 Anyone who is an inmate is by definition not an Outlaw. An Outlaw always has the option of leaving society while an inmate obviously doesn’t. Freedom is the ruling characteristic of an Outlaw. The freedom to pack up and leave any situation at a moment’s notice is a trait of the good Outlaw. The better Outlaw already has caches along the preplanned escape route. The best Outlaw is one who already is living away from the catastrophe and has a sustainable lifestyle mostly divorced from dependence on society. Study permaculture.

Why and When to be an Outlaw

 The reason why to be an Outlaw is because of the freedom of action necessary in any coming catastrophe for the survival of the Outlaw and his family. The when of being an Outlaw depends on each individual and the circumstances of her life. While the best Outlaw is living partly or mostly outside the “Law” already, many potential Outlaws do not have the choice or chance to realize their full potential as an Outlaw until some catastrophe removes all law from where they live. Also, when laws impinge on one’s freedom to think and choose, it is definitely time to start practicing Outlaw tactics to survive the coming catastrophes, to be discussed next.

The Second Millennium
and Other Catastrophes 

Meteorites…How common?

 Obviously, the odds of being affected by a meteorite are very low. How low? Well, maybe not so low as we have thought in the past. There was a smallish bolide which struck Tunguska in Siberia before World War I, and caused quite a bit of damage. Luckily, this was an uninhabited area, and not many humans were affected. If it had struck around any major human city, the losses would have been like a small atomic bomb going off. Some new theories of geology have meteorites hitting the Earth on a much more frequent basis than earlier theories do. Just because we do not have any recorded history of major bolides hitting the Earth only means that one hasn’t hit the earth within recorded history, or about the last five thousand years, a very brief instant in geologic time.

Whether one ever hits the Earth while the reader is still alive may be moot, since the best Outlaw is prepared for almost any catastrophe which could create lawlessness, including religious and political upheavals which will be discussed next.

Religious and Political Upheavals 

The Outlaw should always be prepared for upheavals in the society in which they presently live. Human civilizations for the last five thousand years or so have tended toward empires which divorce the citizens from the means of production of food while giving them the illusion of a great choice of goods from other localities. The distribution of these goods being in the control of the authorities or their friends; these days the “friends” being mostly large multi-national distributors of food, drugs, fuel, and vehicles for transport. History has shown that these empires always collapse in time due to religious or political upheavals. To the Outlaw it doesn’t matter whether done side or the other wins, as long as the Outlaw survives.

Diseases

In these few years before the end of the twentieth century, modern medicine has made great strides to alleviate human suffering, and genetic medicine seems to pave the way to perfect health for all, perhaps even anti-aging drugs. What then should the Outlaw be aware of? AIDS is still with us, as are many newly resistant strains of viruses and bacteria.

Some doctors are beginning to wonder if we aren’t setting the human race up for disaster with our genetic tinkering, which could create new, unknown diseases which could possibly wipe out a large percentage of the human race in a short period of time. Sound far-fetched? Maybe, but an Outlaw can’t afford to be caught napping just because everyone else is. If you’re dead, you can’t b an Outlaw. The next chapter will discuss some of the advantages and disadvantages of living within society and still retaining Outlaw survival outsight.

Survival Inside Society 

To survive inside society one is bound to obey the laws of that society. To an Outlaw this means not being caught disobeying the laws. This does not mean that an Outlaw intentionally breaks laws, it means that an Outlaw has the option of disobeying the laws or not, as the situation warrants with the knowledge that with incarceration comes loss of Outlawry. Therefore, it is best for an Outlaw not to advertise her status. In the present society people abound who love to “rat on their neighbor.” The Outlaw, as the fox, reveals only enough to other citizens to continue his journey unmolested.

The duty of the Outlaw inside society is to always have a way out if things get bad. The Outlaw learns to be fluid as water, creating no resistance, appearing to all as one who does not stand out. This chapter will attempt to list some of the advantages and disadvantages of living within society as a “citizen of the Empire,” for only by comparison can one learn “the rest of the story.”

Advantages 

Any lawyer can tell you the main advantage of organized societies—such as we have today—is the body of law which protects its citizens. They don’t say what the citizens are protected against, although there are vague references to “…all enemies, foreign and domestic.” This doesn’t include large corporations that seem to be intertwined with our present society. Outlaws are not natural enemies of organized societies, they just claim the right to leave that society whenever it infringes on their right to think and choose freely, or also to leave that society. The Declaration of Independence is good to study for the rights of the people to leave their present government.

Obviously, another main advantage is that access to “things” is unmatched. Many things from around the earth are available which the Outlaw would have to (and should) fabricate closer to home and community. In order to “buy” these things a medium called money is used which is based on labor performed for the government or a corporation, which uses the labor to create more servitude by “banks” which issue money. One way to survive quite effectively is to have lots of money. In fact, it is valuable only within society, so it would be best to use it up as quickly as possible and exchange it for goods one plans to take away from society. Using the system against itself may be folly if one becomes too dependent on it for one’s survival. With the collapse of the society one is not prepared for the future. This leads to the disadvantages of living within society, which will be discussed next.

Disadvantages 

The disadvantages of living within society for the Outlaw are many, and most people who think as Outlaws do are usually already on the fringes of society.

The main disadvantage is how the society makes it very difficult or impossible for a single person to control the means of production of her own food, shelter and heat. When these things are taken away by the society, the individual either has outsight and foresight and survives or perishes along with the larger percentage of the population. Another disadvantage is the presence of institutions designed solely to deprive one of his freedom, such as jails and penitentiaries. Obviously, these have no parallel outside society, and are meant only for those who are too poor to pay money to the authorities or their friends (lawyers, in this case). Outlaws or anyone else can get away with murder if they have enough money. Witness the O.J. Simpson trail. Another disadvantage is the physical distance to the means of production of food, fuel, and sustainable shelter and community. Another problem is being too close to infected people if a really deadly disease starts another plague. The next chapter will deal with basic survival outside society, also known as Outlawry.

More to come…stay tuned.

© Copyright 1995 by Bruce C. McAuley