Mycofarm
Mycofarm is a community-based approach to implement needed housing and addressing climate change, food security, economic equity, and waste regeneration, and, in the process, transform our city into a livable, joyful and just place.
Welcome!
Thank you for visiting the mycofarm project repository. This document (the README file) is a hub to give you some information about the project. This project will follow the practice of “working open” to use the power, knowledge, and skills of a diverse community of contributors to accomplish something that a single person or a small team couldn’t do alone. To get involved, contact sielicki@gmail.com.
The problem
- Our community needs shelter. Lane County has one of the highest per-capita rates of homelessness in the nation, with 80% of the unhoused population unsheltered, living in places not meant for human habitation. With existing providers at capacity, implementing effective interventions that leverage our existing systems, build on our existing assets, and provide a diverse array of alternative, non-congregate housing options in a time of COVID-19 is a moral imperative and a public health necessity. Community support is essential for siting and supporting developments to meet the need. Identifying appropriate locations and overcoming objections from neighbors concerned about negative impacts to the surrounding areas will require a community-first approach that builds upon strengths and strengthens areas of weaknesses in the area where it is located.
- Our community needs food security. Some 527,000 Oregonians are food insecure, including more than 173,000 children and Lane County’s food insecurity rates are among the highest in the state. Food security is “condition in which all community residents obtain a safe, culturally acceptable, nutritionally adequate diet through a sustainable food system that maximizes community self-reliance, social justice, and democratic decision-making.”
- Our community needs a sustainable ecosystem. Climate studies by Oregon State’s Oregon Climate Change Research Institute (OCCRI) predict population growth in the Eugene and Willamette Valley area as we begin to experience more extreme weather, and as the climate and environment changes. A systematic response to the crisis that creates jobs and housing, fosters reduced emissions and increases community resilience to these effects will help us to sustain more liveable cities, distributing value more widely in the economy, and spurring innovation.
What are we doing about it?
We are creating a community regeneration model anchored on regenerative agriculture practices and deployed via a place-based hub and spoke system. Mycofarm will increase the amount of healthy, local food purchased by local institutions, such as schools and hospitals, as well as restaurants and hotels, and support the marketing of the local food and human service industries.
Mycofarm’s economic anchor will be mycofarming, urban agriculture and biocycling.
- Outputs: fresh produce, educational opportunities, edible and medicinal mushrooms, mycelium composite construction materials, mycoremediation installations, compost and soil mixes, biogas and fertilizer, earthworms
- Inputs: organic waste, sawdust, coffee grounds, spent beer grains, compost, greywater, solar energy, humanure, plastics, labor
Mycofarm’s deployment strategy will be a place-based hub and spoke system.
- Hubs will be the primary space for food services, such as aggregation, distribution, processing, and cold and dry storage. Hubs will host basic needs services for affiliated workers including showers, storage lockers, and community kitchens. Transitional housing opportunities will be available onsite.
- Spokes will be the primary materials reuse collector sites hosting donation drop off, bottle drop, plastics collection, and food hubs. Spokes will provide pickup locations for affiliated human service and healthcare, day labor, and education service organizations. Transitional housing opportunities will be available onsite.
Why are we doing it this way?
The time to address the issues our community faces one-at-a-time is over. Interconnected problems require interconnected solutions. Systems theory tells us that a single intervention designed to address a specific problem is not likely to produce satisfactory results in the long term. We recognize the importance of social networks and community participation in large scope and large scale problem solving and the power of our collective imagination to sustain a cohesive solution.