Sometimes it takes a can, to make a CAN… Canada’s Persephone Brewing shows how beer-making can be a platform for community power
Advert for Persephone Brewing’s Covid solidarity beer
We’re often asked: what might make up a CAN (standing for a “citizens action network” or a “community asset network”, and probably a few more to come)?
We point you to Indra Adnan’s presentation on our CAN page - but one element of this container for community power is certainly economic and enterprise-oriented.
How can small-to-medium sized business, embedded in communities, trade-in ways that improve the quality of life of those they live among? And on various indices of well-being, aiming at zero-carbon operations, and social justice?
We’re happy to have been pointed to a beer business in Canada’s Sunshine Coast which looks close to how a CAN - appropriately enough! - might begin from the provision of something hitting the pleasure centres - craft beer.
The Persephone Brewing Company’s cheery slogan is “great beer out for the greater good”. And they demonstrate that in a number of ways:
Their hops and supplies for the beer are grown on their own farm (five acres of barley). They farm under the following conditions: “We acknowledge we are farming, brewing and building community on the unceded territory of the Skwxwú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish Nation). And thus, we are committed to the utmost sustainable and responsible land management practices.”
They run under a “community supported agriculture” model, taken from commons thinking (see our coverage here), which means that people pay in advance of the cropping season, for produce that is then delivered to them when ripened. This both links the community to the farmers, and provides the farmers with much more financial security. This is manifested by Perspehone’s Community Food Box programme
They also employ people from the area who have developmental issues, part of their qualification for the ethical business standard, B-Corp. See this interview with the team: “We’ve been a certified B Corporation since 2015 and were honoured as a Best For The World Business in 2018 in large part due to our partnership with The Sunshine Coast Association for Community Living to employ adults with developmental disabilities in our business and our ongoing efforts to adopt sustainable environmental practices and systems”.
More on the Community Living association from Persephone founder Brian Smith, in this podcast (from 18.31 in): “People with disabilities are feeding our community and we’re starting to flip the assumption that people with disabilities are net deficits to our society, they take more out of it than they contribute. Not on our farm.”
Another quote from Smith, on the rural location and openness to community of their farm: “What I like most about this approach is the way I see our customers and members of our community connecting the dots about the importance of local agriculture…You can bring the kids to check out the chickens, look at the hop yards, see the gardens, watch the bees, check out the ducks eating the spent grains in the compost pile. It brings people back to a simpler place. It’s kind of like removing the curtain that covers the black box of how all the stuff we eat and drink is made.”
The gif at the top of the post shows their response to COVID - producing a range of “solidarity beers” whose profits are directed to the Community Living Association
More on brewing beer as a foundation stone for community power, from Rob Hopkins at the Transition Network.