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“It won’t work.”

“The vast majority of people believe in only the things that have already happened,” Wilkinson says, explaining the three-word response he has heard so often. “To me, the quickest way to change policy is to go prove that it works. Prove what’s possible–not the answer, ’cause there is no answer.”

Wilkinson calls his grand scheme, “The Whatcom County Project,” which aims to transform the county into a sustainable community. Within this scheme, his demonstration projects wobble like Weebles all over the place. An organic-farmers-growers club falls apart, only to resurface as Full Circle Foods, a food buying club. Local businesses tinker with their own currency; it fades out of use, then resurfaces in a different form. Rural communities propose ecoforestry experiments to the timber industry, despite skepticism and rejection. No matter how many times they get knocked down, these projects keep popping back up.

In the first example, Wilkinson sees Full Circle Foods as a demonstration project for others to look to as an example of how to make the county’s farmland more valuable. Instead of buying produce that has been transported from other states or nations, Whatcom County residents could start to support local farmers.

When he first started approaching people with his idea for supporting local agriculture, he was greeted with furrowed brows, skeptical attitudes and shaking heads.

“‘It won’t work,’ they all told me,” Wilkinson says. “‘Everybody knows that the cost of local food is much higher,’ they said.”

Unconvinced, Wilkinson wanted to see for himself. A grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture through Utah State University allowed him to study sustainable food systems for a year. He found examples of farmers who had managed to carve out niche markets for themselves, successfully competing against much larger agricultural conglomerates.

Full Circle Foods was conceived soon after. At first, Wilkinson based his business on the community-supported-agriculture (CSA) model, in which growers form cooperatives and then seek members of the community to commit to buying shares of the season’s harvest.

But even though CSAs have proven successful elsewhere (the United States has more than 500 CSAs, with a 12 percent annual growth rate), in this case, it didn’t work. The organic farmers already had their hands full simply getting the harvest out. The added time and energy required to coordinate the distribution to the customers proved too difficult.

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