Jennie Miles received her B.A from Antioch University West in San Francisco in Community-based Economic Development – a degree program which she self-designed. Jennie also worked in Washington D.C. for 4 years as a legislative assistant and researcher. Her career has spanned 25 years of experience developing and packaging community-based economic development projects in Northern California, Oregon and Nevada.
Over the past five to six years Jenny has been inspired by the writings of Anastasia in the Ringing Cedars series, and has been researching Sepp Holzer-style regenerative permaculture projects, as well other recent municipal projects occurring such as City Repair in Portland, Oregon.
Her passion is to make possible a new kind of land use planning, development, permitting and land management process to secure land in perpetuity. One of her dreams is to organize neighborhood clusters of permaculture-oriented landholders or renters into a kind of ‘green’ or permaculture zone trusts similar to the Cottage Grove Community Trust and Permanent Fund she developed in the late 1980s for the City of Cottage Grove, Oregon.
Anastasia-style permaculture enjoys 35 million-plus participants in Russia and Eastern European countries over the past 20 years. It is a working model, not pie in the sky dreaming.
Sepp Holzer attracts tens of thousands of people to his farm(s) (unadvertised) annually. Sepp Holzers' water retention landscaping techniques could be helping us mitigate drought conditions in the Western U.S. and prevent/deter catastrophic wildfires.
Portland, Oregon has a public/private permaculture land trust that can 'umbrella' non-contiguous urban properties -- “permaculture zones”.
A 501C3(a) Community Trust and Permanent Fund for the city of Cottage Grove, Oregon saved the City from bankruptcy and returns @ $1.2 million per year to the City budget.
Both kinds of permaculture can increase per capita, household wealth, and both kinds of permaculture show a decrease and stabilization of input costs (including labor) while overall production increases exponentially year to year.
1jmjmiles@gmail.com