Reclaiming the Commons: Community Farms and Forests in a New England Town

The title of Donahue's visionary, green blueprint for transforming the face of America's suburbs is no mere metaphor. He wants each suburb or town in the U.S. to establish a local commons, a swath of the surrounding countryside that would be jointly owned by the citizens and used for local, sustainable food production, forestry or both. Donahue, who teaches American environmental studies at Brandeis, speaks from hands-on experience: in 1980, he and fellow activists launched Land's Sake, a nonprofit community farm in the Boston suburb of Weston, Mass., a model of organic farming and local self-reliance. To critics who blast the local commons concept as a form of creeping socialism, Donahue replies that common land ownership--a system brought over from England--was an important yet largely forgotten feature of the first New England towns. His grassroots, dirt-under-the-fingernails autobiography is interwoven with an eco-history of New England, showing how the mixed husbandry practiced by colonial farmers gave way to commercial livestock production, which ultimately yielded to today's factory farms, automotive suburbs and clogged cities. Donahue advocates a national shift away from agribusiness toward increased local food production for reasons of health, energy conservation, climatic stability, and reduction of pollution, pesticide use and fossil fuel consumption. His radically conservative manifesto offers new approaches to make suburbia economically healthy, more livable and ecologically balanced. Photos. (June)