Recently the Abundance Foundation did a screening of "The Age of Stupid" in the back yard at the Plant. A bunch of people showed up and cast ballots for projects they felt were "not stupid."

The winner was Crop Mob, that group of sustainable agriculture activists that travels from farm to farm-building fences and beds and putting up roofs for those who are willing to exchange labor and expertise. They are the brain child of Trace Ramsey and Rob Jones and others and their supposition goes back to my grandmother's time: many hands make light work. Not stupid.

It's funny. "Stupid" is not a word we use in our family. It's on the banned list. "Don't call your sister 'stupid'" is a common refrain. And yet it reminds me of the line that defined Bill Clinton's first term in office, "It's the economy, stupid."

Assuming I allow the word back into my vocabulary for a moment, it is easy to see the "stupid" mistakes we have made at Piedmont Biofuels.

When we embarked into the world, like so many other biodiesel projects, we thought it was about the fuel. We wanted gallons. More of them. We subjugated our personal interests in the name of the fuel. And we felt righteous doing so.

But we were wrong about that.

It was never about the fuel. It was about the people who wanted the fuel for motive power. We accidentally forged a relationship between people and their fuel. And what we missed along the way was that we had formed a relationship between those people and us.

That was stupid. We are starting to "get" that now. Lower fuel production, coupled with increased consumption from our members is making for a more sustainable biodiesel project. At long last our feedstocks are being collected from within a hundred miles of our plant, and the fuel is being sold back out into that same hundred-mile area.

Finally we are in a position to free our members from an oppressive top-down energy infrastructure with a community scale micro-nodal model in which energy is harnessed where it is used.

We made the same mistake with food. When we spawned a farm in the front yard, we thought it was about producing things to eat. And when we spawned another one in the vacant lot beside our chemical plant in town, we thought it was merely about increasing food production.

But it wasn't about the calories. It was about those people who wanted to eat sustainably grown local produce. It was about the eaters. It was about those people who would frequent the stalls at the farmer's markets, and select local food options from the menu at fancy restaurants, and walk through our gate to pick up their weekly box of food.

I'm not sure I want to call Piedmont Biofuels "stupid." That's not a word I usually use. But it is fair to say we might be "slow," in that we have not always twigged in to what was important about our project.

There is a very real chance that we have been focused on the BTUs when we should have been focusing on the people who care about those BTUs. It gets tricky. It's not the gallons, it's the drivers. It's not the food, it's the eaters.

Perhaps the start point on the path to sustainability is the people who are interested in the endeavor ...