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Opening Remarks of Michael Dimock, Session 1 Planning Fellows Retreat
Opening Remarks of Michael Dimock
Session 1, Planning Fellows Retreat
May 15, 2007

It has been a long journey, four years actually since Roots of Change was born, and this day marks the beginning of a new phase. We all know the hardest challenges, the highest most rewarding climbs, take a long time. I want to share my own and ROC's perspectives on this effort, this experiment really, to actually knit a network of diverse leaders with a network of diverse funders who share a passion and vision for reforming a food system that has run its course based on principles and practices framed and formed in an earlier era.
I would bet that everyone in this room could agree that today's food system works well for too few people. Not enough people think deeply or care sufficiently about the food system. Too many producers, co-producers (as the Slow Food movement calls consumers), communities, and businesses are suffering due to weaknesses in the system. Too many resources are used and too many ecosystems are degraded at rate faster than nature is able to regenerate. I am not saying it is true of all elements within the food system. There are many positive and emerging examples of people and companies doing it well. Those folks are hard at work fixing their pieces of the whole. But, if what I am saying was untrue, there would be less media coverage, less lawsuits, less poverty, less pollution, less food related illness, less debate and many more companies involved because the system would be working better for more people. So, in short, I would submit, that we could describe the current food system as ill and need of adjustment, improvement, or reform.

Which of those three words (adjustment, improvement, or reform) you prefer to use will probably reflect your own diagnosis of just how ill the system is. I would say that those folks guiding Roots of Change (and their is a diversity of viewpoints on the details) would tend to say "reform" the system. I myself would say it that way. I would say ROC seeks to re-form and realign the system, through a re-visioning, a re-conceptualizing, a reigniting and a reorganizing effort that will last at least a generation.

ROC believes you all are potentially very valuable allies in such an effort. You have vital knowledge, experience, and resources. If you are willing to partner (and your presence here must indicate an interest), then the body of leaders and their constituents seeking a better system will be enlarged. You all know where Roots of Change wants to go if you have had the chance to read or just peruse the New Mainstream Report. That document offers myriad concepts, pathways, actions meant to re-form the system by scaling the elements that are currently believed to be sustainable.

Despite the good work in this document, the question for us still remains: how do we heal the food system so that more people, segments, or sectors of our society truly benefit while simultaneously maintaining the health of the natural system underlying our civilization?  God knows, we must allow the ecosystem to regenerate perpetually in order to maintain a diversity of life and thus the evolutionary process, a process necessary to our continued existence.

My honest answer is that we do not know exactly how to heal the system given the complexity we find ourselves in socially, ethnically, politically, and economically. This does not mean we don't have values, principles, ideas, and policy or programmatic preferences that we feel will lead to a healed system. I personally have them. Each individual member within the ROC Stewardship Council has them. Clearly, they are in the New Mainstream Report. Still, I am aware that an agenda does not a change make. I know from first hand experience that we cannot get very far with just our own good ideas. There are other people and their institutions with alternative views. There are competing beliefs about priorities and what will work in terms of action. Some believe policy is more important than markets and other believe the opposite. This divergence allows anyone who actually benefits from the current system to blunt efforts at policy or market change. Politicians follow the votes. Capitalists follow the market. If there is stalemate or lack of clarity about the direction the culture wishes to take, both policy makers and capitalist will tend to stand pat with that which is well known.

So, I return to my question of how do we make the desired change to a sustainable food system. My belief is that, in the end, the most effective way to transform the system is to build cultural agreement on a pathway to reforming it. We need a broadly accepted course or strategy that contains active support and commitment from a body of entities that can demonstrate they represent a clear majority of voters and buyers. Hence, we come to ROC's theories of change.

As many of you may know, the concept of theories of change is a prime topic for spawning debate. If you attended the San Francisco meeting in late March you saw some of what I am speaking about. That meeting was important for me and for Roots of Change because it got us to think about the fact that ROC actually has three theories at work, which are closely related.

The first is the big tent, values and incentive-based, market oriented approach that Ecotrust describes in the New Mainstream. The second, is the Quality of Relations theory upon which the Ag Futures Alliances, known as AFAs, are based. It says that the quality of relations of any group, effects its thinking, thus its actions and thus its results. If the relations are good, meaning trust is at high level, then the thinking, acting and results will also be good and in a self- reinforcing dynamic, the relations will improve even more because of the good results. In short, everyone sees the benefits of building and maintaining trust. The third is a corollary, or perhaps it is the overarching idea. Margaret Wheatley, the organizational development consultant, and author of a book we will be giving you called Leadership and the New Science, argues that when a system is ill, the way to heal that system is to connect it to more of itself. Here is an example. Let's say you have a huge pest problem in an almond orchard, one way to reestablish health is to reintroduce beneficial predators that can knock down the level of harmful pests. This act is a reconnection to a subsystem of predators that may have been lost due to an earlier use of broad-spectrum pesticides. The AFAs are another manifestation of the same. For some of you whom may not know, the Ag Futures Alliances are a project funded by ROC and run by Joseph. They are consensus-building roundtables in six and soon to be seven counties. They allow communities to gather together in a roundtable format. They include a diversity of stakeholders that have not previously related or worked together on a problem they all share, which is the maintenance and enhancement of agriculture in perpetuity in their geographic space.

This room today, now, is another manifestation. By convening the Fellows, Roots of Change is implementing the AFA and Wheatley theories. We believe that you represent a significant portion of the system and that by being connected, you, working together, can formulate a concept for a change agenda, a campaign, a series of initiatives.  Call it what you will, the point is that you all can better formulate a strategy for change than the Council alone or the Council and Coordinating Team alone. We believe that a clear agreement on approach and priorities, which to me means good thinking, will enhance the impact of action. Resources of all kinds will be better used.

So, now we get to the real nub of the issue: trust, flexibility, faith, esprit de corps, and most important humility. I am going to get very philosophical here about this nation and this point in history. I do not claim that I speak for ROC in what I am about to say and I am speaking from the 30,000-foot level.

In broad terms, I think what ails this nation above all else is a denial of the need to change. This denial or resistance appears as a great hubris that is rampant in this nation. I see it in companies, in government, in NGOs, communities, individuals, and in myself. It is not one political party or the other. It is a nation, made up of 300 million people, that at a gut level sense, a major change is underway. There is fear in the land that we might need to alter things a bit. Rather than admit the resistence, and seek a way to creatively engage the realities, and work out the least painful and most productive outcome for the largest number of people, a kind of growing free-for-all is emerging. Think of the many examples of graft and corruption, lies and half-truths that have come to light over the last few years. Why do I bring this up?

I bring it up because I believe that the antidote to this frenzy of self-interest is the emergence of an alternative approach to the current situation by masses of good people from all political, economic, ethnic and spiritual sectors. This approach is one in which individuals actively choose to become more flexible of mind, more self reflective in order to see their preconceived notions, so that they might pierce the mental models that keep us collectively in the past.
If we can think anew, and include the collective interest as much as we focus on our own interest, I trust that we can find a way to cope with the challenges.

The food system to me is a key system in which to demonstrate this approach. It is the base system of civilization, connecting to everything else. If we here, can devise a means to model a new sustainable approach to creating the food we must all eat, we will have done a great thing for this planet and it will make history.

Thus, I am asking us each to seek a place of humility so that we can be as open as possible in this process, to think critically about our own beliefs, beliefs and opinions that we may have developed over decades of reading, thinking and acting. I posit that not one of us here in this room can by themselves see enough of the complex reality to chart the course that will serve the largest number of people in this state, nation or world. We need to find a powerful synthesis that integrates the complexity of views and reveals an elegant course, a course that captures hearts and minds up and down the state from producers to consumers, politicos to priests, republicans to democrats, children to old codgers.

An important point: we do not need to produce a perfect product. We can have faith in others in the future that will add to what we begin here. We must have faith that the power of the network will work for us. The process of perfecting will occur over time in response to what we learn along the way.

This iterative process, this back and forth will begin with the Roots of Change Stewardship Council, your allies in this effort. Involving them and integrating their views will be the first step in building support for our work. You need the Stewardship Council and the Stewardship Council needs you. This ROC Community must be united. By ROC Community I mean all of us here in the room and the organizations with which we affiliate or identify, as well as the other grantees who are already part of the Ag Futures Alliance roundtables, the California Roundtable on Ag in the Environment, the Workforce Action Group, and Business Advisory Council. We need to unite all these people and institutions in order to build the power base required to change the system.

We here have an opportunity to emerge an approach, a strategic set of actions that will coalesce the state's energy, clarify the new paradigm, and then scale up the changes we seek. Our success will be a shared success that relies on the unique contributions of each of our home institutions and us: business, government, NGOs, farms and ranchers.  

So with that vision in mind, I urge all of you to think beyond the current organization you serve, beyond your current theories of change. I urge you to look for the new path that will energize a mass movement and not be undermined by the turf wars and resource scrambles we all know so well. If we can actually pull off what I am describing, we will have the influence we need to get the resources we need. ROC is committed to working with you to get those resources. We will leverage what we hope to directly garner internally by advocating for other entities to invest in the projects and programs that you help define.

I have said more than enough, except that this is a dream come true for me. I have long fantasized about such a gathering and such a collective effort. Joseph McIntyre our trusty lead facilitator may remember our conversations about a concept I called the Sonoma Sessions. This was back in 2000. Well this ain't Sonoma; it's Solano and in my mind this is actually a better place to meet because Solano is closer to the heart the State. So thank you for agreeing to come and join in.


 
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