Please tell me why this basic income idea I had while frying eggs this morning will not work. Paul Alfrey Follow Sep 19, 2018 · 3 min read

A universal basic income that can only be spent on local grown bio food.

Local grown food has to be of high quality, grown biologically and growing methods used must be able to show measurable enhancement of soil fertility and enhanced biodiversity levels i.e regenerative

By universal income I do mean universal i.e across nations but this is obviously dreamland for now. Realistically this will be more likely to roll out within a region of a nation and then within a nation.

The only people/groups of people I see that will not like this idea are the industrial food processing industry and possibly big agricultural companies (depending on how large the basic income is) and perhaps local green grocers. Otherwise every citizen will have more money in their pocket to spend on this food, entrepreneurs have strong incentives to get growing, carbon gets locked up in soils, biodiversity levels increase, people eat healthier food, local community is created and employment is created(in the gardens, inspecting food quality, measuring soil fertility and biodiversity studies etc.)

How to pay for it? the same way we pay for everything else, just print it :) and when our currency hyper inflates because it’s been printed into oblivion, at least we’ll have local food to eat :)

This will run parallel with the existing food supply, so those of us in temperate climates, fear not, you can still buy your coffee in the usual places :)

By the way, technology to issue and keep account of currency that can only be spent with specific vendors is here already. This could be run on any number of blockchain based networks such as Ethereum

About me — My name is Paul Alfrey, I’ve been practicing and teaching regenerative landscape design for the last 13 years and have worked as a freelance Arborist in the UK for 20 years. I currently run a plant nursery, market garden and polyculture research program and consult and design for landowners and farmers across Europe.

What I do — I probably spend 95% of my waking time on our projects — Balkan Ecology Project and The Polyculture Project with my partner Sophie Roberts and our two children Dylan and Archie Alfrey and with the assistance of many wonderful people that have volunteered and contributed to our work here over the years.

Our project is dedicated to developing and promoting practices that provide nutritious affordable food while enhancing biodiversity. Basically we are looking at ways to feed humans without wrecking ecosystems. If you are not aware of the destructive practices that go into providing the majority of the day to day meals,drinks and snacks we consume ignore me, learn a little about how the mainstream food industry works and than come back later. Or you can be lazy and take my word for it. The mainstream food industry results in the destruction of ecosystems and resources that we rely on for our survival. It’s kinda like burning down the house to keep warm, but you really should not take my word for it. I am heavily invested both psychologically and financially in our mission to promote practices that provide nutritious affordable food while enhancing biodiversity so obviously oozing bias on the matter.

www.balkep.org

www.thepolycultureproject.com