In this article from The Salt, NPR’s food-focused blog, we learn that community farming often doesn’t work. (One piece of evidence cited: 70 years of hunger and spare harvests in the Soviet Union.)
Among the complaints of cooperative communities farmers such as ourselves is that in the hotter weather, work crews dwindle. “Our experience is, it’s an unequal participation, and an unequal sharing,” says Judy Elliott, who’s the Education and Community Empowerment Coordinator for Denver Urban Gardens.
The way we get around that is to link work and share: If you don’t produce, you don’t get the produce.
Meanwhile, the story does say that if members get beyond that problem, the community that develops is even more valuable than the food.
