This idea has grown out of the Creative Space and community gardens projects which a group of us are, respectively, working on and planning.

Food in New Zealand is very expensive – the vast majority is sold through a nice duopoly made up of Progressive Enterprises and Foodstuffs.  This reduces choice, pushes up costs, and hurts suppliers similarly to how Tesco is causing problems in the UK for local farmers.  My particular problem is specifically with bread prices – $4 for a generic loaf of wholemeal that goes off in 3 days?  I don’t think so.

Additionally, the supermarkets tend to deal in food with dubious amount of artificial additives in them.  Thanks, guys but I prefer my food to come from a farm rather than an industrial plant – the day I see a ‘471’ tree will be the day I appreciate having additive ‘471’ in my food.  Not that farms are entirely free of blame here – growth hormones, pesticides, etc.  are all potential problem areas, but that’s one for the community gardens to solve.

This has prompted a small group of us to start producing our own food.  We’re starting simple  – there are currently two of us, with another one interested.  The plan is for us to cooperate on making bread and ginger beer.  We take turns about each week, and each make a double-batch.  Transaction costs explains why this will save us effort over making batches solely for ourselves, plus there are somewhat intangible social benefits from sharing in this way.

After the initial experiment over the next few weeks, we’ll review how well it’s worked, change anything which needs changing, and continue.  If it’s successful, we’ll expand to include another person, and repeat.  There are a few models we can follow:

• People pair up, and arrange between themselves to make some product, turns about each period (day, week, month, etc.) – this method has the benefit of  requiring little management from a third party, resting on one-on-one relationships to make sure people behave well
• We form a larger group, decide between us what foods we will produce, assign each a “cooking time”, and then barter the products between us – this requires more management, and is less personal, but has the benefit of potentially allowing very large batches to be produced at once.

Interested? Let us know, and maybe we can work together. Or go start your own.