Optimum size for community

[WolfattheDoor]

Has anybody any idea of the optimum size for a small farm/community?

Too small and you have the problems of being unable to cover illnesses and injuries; and not enough for emergencies and harvests.

Too large and you have the extra food and space demands, the problems of discipline and control, intergroup rivalries, etc.

I would guess it's somewhere between twenty and a hundred but has anybody seen any research?

[Billhook]

Wolf -

In his excellent book "Maverick" the brazillian Ricardo Semler gives great attention to the issue of optimum scale of an enterprise,
and finds that once it rises above 200 persons it's better to bud off new businesses than to continue expanding.
This is largely about the social dynamics of scale.

In terms of a new sustainable community I'd agree that we should look to something less than 200 as an eventual goal,
while starting with sufficient potential land resources and far fewer people.

Part of the need for that eventual scale is for the community's productive base (farming, energy production etc)
to produce sufficient surplus to meet not only years of bad harvests but also to carry specialized skills and professions, from blacksmith/engineer?
through to primary school teacher?, herbalist ?, etc.

Regardless of scale I'd further suggest that, coming from a society where there's been 25 years of "devil-take-the-hindermost" propaganda,
rather than relying on the divisive and sub-optimal winners-&-losers approach of voting according to the competing verbal skills of proposals' champions,
we'll need to get seriously skilled (i.e. trained) in the arts of consensual decision-making - the creative compromise is a fine old British tradition.
.
And social cohesion is the foundation of commonwealth . . .

regards,

Bill

[RevdTess]

I seem to recall looking into this in the past and discovering a general consensus that 150 was about the optimum (or was it maximum) for a self-contained community. Any more and you start to split into smaller camps, and less and you dont have the diverse skills and labour required. It's been said that this 150 number explains the long-term success of the tribal unit.

But I haven't looked for any research for a good long while.

[Blue Peter]

I seem to recall looking into this in the past and discovering a general consensus that 150 was about the optimum (or was it maximum) for a self-contained community. Any more and you start to split into smaller camps, and less and you dont have the diverse skills and labour required. It's been said that this 150 number explains the long-term success of the tribal unit.

But I haven't looked for any research for a good long while.

If you look at the communities (of the relevant sort) around the UK at the moment, they have far fewer people. E.g. Tinker's Bubble and Redfield have less than about 20 people. Neither are self-sufficient in the extreme sense. But I don't think that any of them would imagine having such a great increase in numbers,


Peter.

[skeptik]

I seem to recall looking into this in the past and discovering a general consensus that 150 was about the optimum (or was it maximum) for a self-contained community.

You'd be living in the Stone Age, which I dont really fancy. What would your self-contained community do when somebody comes down wth peritonitis, or bowel cancer? Watch them die in excruciating agony is the answer. How will it replace any metal tools when they wear out? Or the Marks & Spencer underpants... Cotton doesnt grow too well in the UK.

As far as I'm concerned the ideal size for a community is probably..hmm.. I dont know? 5 to 10 million? ( population of Iceland? ) to allow for a decently advanced level of technical specialisation and a container port or two.

I want 21st century dentistry - state of the art tools and drugs in the hands of somebody who's spent his entire working life studying and practicing the subject , not some yokel farm hand (pick one from one fifty! ) equipped with a pair of wooden pliars and no anaesthetic.

Genuinely 'self-contained' doesnt really comes into it. I dont think it ever has. If we want copper we'll have to buy it from places like Chile. There is no more copper ore left in the UK. The same applies to just about every other metal ore. Even a 'community' the size of the UK cant genuinely go it alone.

Human communities trade with each other as naturally as breathing, even in the Stone age communities weren't 'self contained' - many places in Europe don't have the most inportant stone, flint. As a consequence Neolithic flint from East Anglia has been found all over Europe. (there's a huge area of Neolithic flint mining near Thetford

Peak Oil is not going to mean the end of international trade. Shipping is the most efficient means of getting stuff around the face of the planet - even if eventually it comes down to ships mainly propelled by computer controllled kites - with their engines (running on hugely expensive diesel) reserved for manoevering in port.

...or maybe paddling a barge to the European mainland like they did in 2000BC!!

[Billhook]

Skeptic -

I share your distaste for, and lack of faith in, the community-as-bolthole outlook, and I'm certain Tess does too.

A community of 150 could not look to replace all of the present services from a society of 60m, and plainly wouldn't want to.

What is more, unless it is actively involved in sufficient production to be able to trade locally and to some extent nationally,
it misses its prime means of diseminating knowledge of whatever examples of sustainable living it can provide.

Maybe the term "self-contained" is too easily misread in this context -
Seymour's "self-sufficiency" doesn't seem to me much better (and he himself wasn't entirely happy with it)
"self-reliant" repeats the notions of spurious independence and indifference towards society as a whole,
while "Intentional" community means whatever one happens to want it to mean.

To my mind the term "Interdependent" is probably the best option for describing a small rural community with aspirations to serving sustainability,
in that, unlike the currently normal "Dependent" rural communities, it would not only aim to provide the bulk of its own food, clothes, energy, shelter & drink,
it may also grow its own medicinal herbs (opium poppy has been the pain-killer of choice for many millenia)
and may deliver most of its own babies, and perhaps mend a broken limb at a pinch,
and it would also trade its produce & services for goods and services it could not produce.

Perhaps the best of such a community's potential contribution to the larger society would be in terms of its passing on the skills of sustainable living
both through formal training and via passing visitors & publications.

However, such a life requires a lot more work, both physical and within, than present generations are accustomed to,
and for all it offers a way of life that is grounded in reality, it's plainly not for everyone.
So please don't read this as some kind of recruiting blurb !

regards,

Bill

[skeptik]

<snip>unlike the currently normal "Dependent" rural communities, it would not only aim to provide the bulk of its own food, clothes, energy, shelter & drink<snip>

So please don't read this as some kind of recruiting blurb !

Homemade Hooch is Hokay, but Burgundy is Better... and I dont think I could cope with the Wool underpants. I've always suffered from sporadic excema (fortunately not on the normally exposed parts) and cotton, silk and a synthetic called Tencel seem to be the only things my skin will take without breaking out.

So 'independence' and 'self sufficiency' are an aspiration rather than a reality... like a New Labour policy. A matter of degree rather than an absolute. In which case, I'm staying in London, where I live quite happily without a car. I think I would miss the car much more out in the country.

(Exits left, on foot, down to the local Odeon multi-screen to see 'Vendetta')

[MacG]

Has anybody any idea of the optimum size for a small farm/community?

Too small and you have the problems of being unable to cover illnesses and injuries; and not enough for emergencies and harvests.

Too large and you have the extra food and space demands, the problems of discipline and control, intergroup rivalries, etc.

I would guess it's somewhere between twenty and a hundred but has anybody seen any research?

Even if I belive the we wont go "back" to something, historical and current examples might be interesting.

How have people cooperated before? How do people cooperate today?

One of the most extreme forms was probably the medieval monestaries. No women or kids, just prayer, food and work. No wonder they got materially well off! Apparently they had some drawbacks also, otherwise they had still been around and well off. Personally I dont like the idea of conformism, and I'm fond of both women and kids (albeit in different ways).

It is often stated that companies are most effective and adaptive as long as they have 100-200 employees, but then they are specialized.

This "self sufficient" thing is probably not a very viable idea in the long run. Maybe for a year or two if the world is in turmoil, but as soon as society is reorganising on a lower energy level, specialization comes back.

[snow hope]

sceptic said,

"You'd be living in the Stone Age, which I dont really fancy. What would your self-contained community do when somebody comes down wth peritonitis, or bowel cancer? Watch them die in excruciating agony is the answer. How will it replace any metal tools when they wear out? Or the Marks & Spencer underpants... Cotton doesnt grow too well in the UK. "

Completely agree. But unfortunately sceptic, you may not have much of a choice......

I think when people on here talk about sustainable communities it is in the light of a considerable breakdown in society as we know it.

I suppose the community idea is much more preferable to solitary or family existence even with inlaws. Even when a few extended famalies get together, there may not be enough of a critical mass to eek out a living (used in the real sense of the word). So I would have thought a couple of hundred people seems fairly logical. Any larger and it becomes unmanageable and groups potentially break off or become a threat to the larger community.

I think we all want what you want (as mentioned in your post) but depending on how things turn out, it could be quite likely that we just don't get what we want! This is the scary thing about it all and I think some of us are able to take it onboard more than others.

[Billhook]

Has anybody any idea of the optimum size for a small farm/community?

Too small and you have the problems of being unable to cover illnesses and injuries; and not enough for emergencies and harvests.

Too large and you have the extra food and space demands, the problems of discipline and control, intergroup rivalries, etc.

I would guess it's somewhere between twenty and a hundred but has anybody seen any research?

Even if I belive the we wont go "back" to something, historical and current examples might be interesting.

How have people cooperated before? How do people cooperate today?

snip . .

It is often stated that companies are most effective and adaptive as long as they have 100-200 employees, but then they are specialized.

This "self sufficient" thing is probably not a very viable idea in the long run. Maybe for a year or two if the world is in turmoil, but as soon as society is reorganising on a lower energy level, specialization comes back.

Mac - I'd observe that the land that a community grows on to a degree imposes its specializations on the range of what they produce.

For example, even within one climatic region you'd need to run an immense area to include everything between a river-delta ecology and that of high mountain pastures.
Feasible organic mixed farming, foresty & fisheries will reflect the constraints of whichever bit of that spectrum one occupies.

To what extent a community succumbs to the pressures of globalization
and, for instance, allows its sheep to graze off and kill the new growth from recently felled plots of woodland,
(thus losing its forests in favour of more grazing, hence we have <5% in England)
will reflect its commitment to maintaining both its local ecology (the organic basis of its prosperity) and its freedom of choice within the larger society.

Given that globalization is already being affected by public distaste worldwide as well as by looming PO,
as I see it, to the extent that generalizations are helpful, well-organized local volition is more liable to gain rather than lose in the coming decades.

regards,

Bill

[RevdTess]

I think I should have used the term self-identified instead of self-contained.

The point about the 150 number is that it's commonly quoted as the largest size population that can really exist as a single community that identifies itself as such.

Any larger and the group as a whole becomes too anonymous and people start to identify more with subgroups than the whole. This has implications if there are any shared services, industry or resources as conflict is likely to arise.

We dont suffer these problems in our current society because good communication technology, strong rule of law and social welfare renders local communities much less necessary than in the past, though society's dropouts keep the old ways alive...

Communities can be smaller than 150, but then they may find it harder to gain access to anything but the simplest resources.

So the argument goes that 150 is about the number where the fear of anonymity and weakness balance out.

These things are overruled by a strong lawful welfare state, but should that authority break down, I think the 150 idea would re-emerge. That's not to say that we'd necessarily have to lose all the glories of global neocon civilisation, but it might take a bit more work for multiple smaller communities to send delegates from among themselves to some central university or hospital so that they can continue to provide world class science and medicine.

I'm not sure skeptik and I are really talking about the same issues to be honest. I don't particularly disagree with what he's said.

[Bandidoz]

I thought I'd heard numbers of around 500, certainly no more than that.

Perhaps the typical population of villages in the 1950s.

[skeptik]

Completely agree. But unfortunately sceptic, you may not have much of a choice......

.

Oh I dont know... I think I'll still be able to get my teeth fixed in 20 years time, if I live that long. Might be expensive, but I bet Mr Wong round the corner will still be in business.

The people who wont have a choice live in places like Africa , South America and parts of South East Asia. They will be outbid. It already seems to be happening in some parts of Africa - they're dropping out of the petroleum age, reverting to simpler less energetic ways that they'd only just left behind.

[RogerCO]

Two things:

The minimum sustainable size for a community must be sufficient to produce babies with problems from inbreeding - I think the geneticists have something to say about this.

Some things that are called communities are really large families (say 20 or so). A full family consisting of four generations with two children per couple including spouses (assumes monogamous nuclear family units within extended family) will consist of about 30 people (2 great grandparents and 16 babies)

There was a thread somewhere on this board about a year ago about different social distances - friends, neighbors, acquantainces, etc relating to size of communities but I cant find the link.

[MaxWahlter]

What size would work to be self sufficient and what size would work to be efficient? What size would feel insular. What question are we trying to answer?
Ecologist Folke Gunther www.holon.se has looked into this from the view point of being large enough to maintain a level of self sufficiency and efficiency without demanding large hierarchies.
His research into size of farm came up with a farm large enough to feed 150 - 200 people. this is the mainstay of his Eco unit approach. That translates into about 50 - 80 families. He tolde me that ading more units - tractors, cows, etc does not produce gains of efficiency but creates more need for communication and coordination! (Management?)

My viewpoint on it is that nature gives individuals various skills and 80 families should contain the range of skills and personalities required to solve the challenges faced by the community.
Read the bit about go along societies in my book.
http://porena.blogspot.com/2005/03/lets ... works.html