RE: My ecoVillage model
First, thank you for the upvoted and your wise words!
I whole heartedly agree, selling agricultural produce is the most wasteful and pollutiing of possible revenues. In fact, my dream is to one day have a small scale delivery system, entirely clean energy. Something along the lines of a tesla fleet and sailboats, or the new electric aeroplanes.. But that's a long way down the road.
As for the time when the village has members living comfortably and ready to earn revenue in their own endeavours, that is definitely the goal. But in the beginning, there are mostly expenses, and not very much for people to live off the land yet. Ie, a house, water supply, food production, etc.
At this stage, the revenue will be used to fund the founding and infrastructure (not the concrete kind yeah..?) necessary to start the project.
But I do agree, food sale is the last resort, after hosting, retreats, festivals, courses, and various small scale one off projects. I believe this will be more than enough, but, as the saying goes, hope for the best prepare for the worse? If we have to sell produce just to kick start this thing, I will not refuse..