'How to Become Food Self-Sufficient' Competition

In the last issue of MOTHER, we did two rather unusual things: [1] We asked how many folks would be interested in plunking down $10,000 for a 99-year lease on a small corner of our proposed Ecological Research Center and [2] we put up prize money totaling $5,000 for the best operational "food self-sufficient" idea that anyone comes up with within a period of one year.

Naturally, we expected very little response to the first action (who needs an excuse to spend money these days?) and a lot of interest in the second.

Well, it hasn't worked out that way. To date (mid-October) we've received at least 40 letters requesting more information, contributing further ideas or actually pledging money on the $10,000 deal . . . and one single, solitary piece of correspondence (but a good one!) suggesting a self-sufficient food concept.

Which proves, maybe, that there's more money than ideas floating around our culture . . . or that a lot of us are desperately hungry for a real people-oriented (rather than automobile-centered) community to live in . . . or that few folks have yet thought much about just how short food currently is in the world . . . or that it takes less time to write a letter about spending $10,000 than it does to put together a working prototype of a food production system . . . or something.

At any rate, we'll have a big feature (presenting ideas from the letters we've received) on the Research Center Community concept in MOTHER NO. 31. And, right now (just to emphasize the fact that we're serious about awarding a total of $5,000 to the people who come up with the best food self-sufficient ideas that we can gather), here's the story on that competition once again.