As part of a course I had to create detailed plan for a horticultural business. My plan was to attack everything I hate about horticulture at once: predatory business practices, ecologically destructive product, boring landscaping, alienating philosophy. Town and Country would be a unionised co-op dedicated to killing lawns and replacing them with biocentric alternatives, the whole thing serving as a way to study the kind of theory I want to write.
I decided to make it as confrontational as possible. Beyond the logo and name, my marketing shits on the industry as much as it does traditional lawns and suburbia. My pitch to the class used explicit left language to describe the problems and solutions. I made the case for an inclusive unionised workplace, left urbanism, and eco-Marxism at a fairly right-wing university.
Everyone I spoke to about it either agreed with the idea or wanted to work with it. None of the youth of today liked lawns or working in the green industry. Some of them even had pure hate in their heart after working in nurseries. I might end up starting it next year as my consulting business with a small crew of radicals.
Rad!
If I was less than 500 miles away from you, I’d offer you unlimited beetle frass for potting mix and top dressing.
Instead, would you have any interest in comparing notes on business plans and structure?
Also, the Seed Commons network has an operating member in your area, the RMEOC.
That is fucking sick comrade. Radical Agroecology hasta la victoria, siempre.
As a food and agriculture scholar, I will always love to see people resisting together with food.
BTW, check out if there’s any Slow Food activity near you. They’re very lib, but they’re also well established in the US, and might have some resources or direction, too.
