| Campaign Strategy Introduction - Including Values, Principals, and Goals |
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THE VISION California’s food system will become sustainable and lift the fortunes of the food industry, demonstrate the highest standards of stewardship, create pride of place, offer meaningful opportunities for workers in the industry and accelerate world-wide demand for health and quality in everyday living. INTRODUCTION This evolving New Mainstream Campaign Strategy outlines the work of California’s Leadership Network for Food System Reform for the period 2008-2012, the first stage in a 25-year campaign to create a sustainable food system for California by the year 2030. The Leadership Network is open to every Californian aligned with the values, principles and goals within this Campaign Strategy. The Leadership Network is served by Roots of Change. In December of 2005, the Roots of Change issued the final report of its Vivid Picture Project. Entitled The New Mainstream, this report outlined a vision for a sustainable food system and a menu of recommended goals and initiatives meant to make the vision become reality. In the summer of 2007, Roots of Change awarded Planning Fellowships to twenty-seven members of the Leadership Network, who represent the diversity of California’s food system, for the purpose of developing a detailed implementation strategy. The Fellows spent nine intensive days collaborating, brainstorming, dialoging, crafting and finally ranking a list of objectives needed to accelerate the move towards sustainability. The following document resulted from their work. PURPOSE The purpose of The New Mainstream Campaign is to create a sustainable food system in California by the year 2030. Sustainable means that the system must allow the State to produce food perpetually and requires that ecosystems and resources from which food is grown remain abundant and viable. The system must sustain the health of the people, animals and plants within it. The economics underlying the system must allow workers, owners, and investors to live and to profit at a level that maintains their participation in and commitment to continuous improvement of the system. THEORY OF CHANGE The best way to enhance the system is to connect the people and parts within the system that have the knowledge, links, and commitments required to successfully manage a rapid transformation. The core organizing action is to convene stakeholders in the system in order to maximize effective collaborative action. Convening provides stakeholders a means to build new relationships and institutions and to organize and implement large-scale projects and initiatives that transform the system. PRIMARY ASSUMPTIONS 1. The food system is a central and defining characteristic of California. This system must become sustainable in order to achieve the long-term environmental, economic, and public health of the state. 2. A sustainable food system is possible. 3. Sustainability is not an endpoint, but a continuous process of discovery and refinement. This discovery process will allow Californians to realize and assume their responsibility to future generations, with the goal of perpetual viability. 4. Trends indicate that the time is right for change: low income eaters and public and private institutions (schools, health care organizations, government agencies, and businesses) increasingly seek organic, seasonal and local food; healthy eating is a priority for the state’s aging population; more than 60,000 small and medium-sized farms are looking for direct markets; and climate change, globalization, loss of food production infrastructure in communities, and food safety challenges mean all producers need new strategies to remain viable. 5. The current financial paradigm favors rapid return on investment at the highest rate possible, generally at the expense of the social and ecological returns. This creates significant challenges for businesses seeking to pursue a ”triple bottom line” (economic, environmental and social returns). New business models and investment systems are needed for triple bottom line businesses seeking to access capital. 6. Time is of the essence and we must do all we can to accelerate the move to sustainable systems. 7. A strategy and initiatives designed to create change will be most effective if they:
The following values form the foundation for a sustainable food and farming system. They emerged from interviews with nearly 200 stakeholders within the system from all areas of California. Accountability Accountability acknowledges and assumes responsibility for actions, products, decisions and policy that effect any or all parts of the California food system. Accountability can be achieved by creating direct links and opportunities for communication between all parts of the value chain from producers to consumers. Competition Rather than traditional winner-take-all competition, stakeholders will use a nuanced approach to competition that allows for lasting relationships and the perpetuation of diversity. Healthy competition creates a larger marketplace that is valuable for growing individual businesses. In addition to providing incentives, competition provides opportunities for collaboration that can sustain individual businesses. However, stakeholders have also witnessed the effects of consolidation and worry that competition can create undesirable power structures and undermine equity, a core value for many. The relationship between competition and equity creates an uneasy tension for some. Participatory Democracy Participatory democracy creates opportunity for all members of society to make meaningful contributions to decision-making, and seeks to broaden the range of people who have access to such opportunities. To achieve sustainability, all members of the food system from eaters to workers to producers must participate in decision making. Diversity When stakeholders describe their vision for California’s food and farming system, they want more diversity to support their vision of an abundant future. More wildlife species, more varietals, more local specialty items supplied through more shops, more business. Diversity represents more choices. Additionally, diversity of ownership and products matches California’s growing cultural and ethnic diversity. This abundant diversity is held in stark contrast to the present and possible futures dominated by sameness, lack of real choices, and consolidation in the food and farming industry. Efficiency Efficiency is recognized as important at all levels of the system. Climate change, rising oil prices, degrading environmental quality, and the success of highly efficient “economies of scale” have all taught stakeholders valuable lessons in the importance of using resources efficiently. However, where conventional concepts of efficiency attempt to minimize labor and capital inputs while maximizing outputs, the stakeholders’ quest for efficiency seeks to produce the highest-quality product with the least natural resource use. In addition, stakeholders often cite the efficiency of natural systems as an underused model for human systems and technology. Environmental Health Many stakeholders, including both environmentalists and agriculturalists, place a high value on the stewardship of natural resources, including water, air, habitat, soil and energy. A sustainable food system will not only enhance these resources for all, but will reduce the need to regulate food producers in the future. Environmental sustainability is linked to Health, below, by reducing contaminants in our food, water, workplaces and communities. Public Health Health is an extremely robust value, applied to numerous parts of the food system. Personal nutrition, community economic stability and a general sense of well-being were all associated with health. In fact, stakeholders clearly equate a sustainable system with a healthy system. Personal health is often seen as linked to healthy environments and healthy communities. In addition, a sustainable system must provide for working conditions that do not degrade workers personal health. Innovation Innovation has been a linchpin of the modern conventional food and farming system and has traditionally focused on technological solutions that replaced human labor with mechanical labor, biological cycles with one-way industrial throughput, etc. Stakeholders expressed reservations about this type of innovation, yet passionately pointed out innovative solutions driven by a quest for sustainability, ranging from biological pest controls to creative educational programming. Many stakeholders believe that systems they are currently employing are on the cutting edge of innovation. They believe new players will use innovation as their leverage point to enter the marketplace. Interconnectedness Almost without exception, stakeholders described a vision of 2030 that related shifting the food and farming system towards sustainability using partnerships and personal relationships. For stakeholders, a sustainable food system is one that both recognizes and embraces connections across the system in terms of the relationships between people and the relationships in the natural environment. Conceptually, for many stakeholders, “a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.” Ownership The new model of the American Dream for California is not only about consumer ownership (homes, cars, material goods) but also about access to the means of production and control over them. The new system allows for diverse ownership structures in which workers have access to ownership as an employee benefit. Higher local ownership rates bring with them myriad community benefits. Stakeholders insist that ownership of the new mainstream must be transparent and accountable. Profitability The new marketplace ensures profitability at all points in the value chain and respects social and environmental limits for stakeholders. An opportunity exists for early adopters and innovators to gain greater profitability, providing an incentive to adopt sustainable paradigms. In the new system, companies will use profitability as an opportunity to provide fair wages rather than keeping wages low to achieve higher profits. Regeneration For stakeholders, sustainable systems do more than preserve themselves, they generate the resources to enhance themselves over time, using techniques ranging from waste-reduction to renewable energy and recycling. Many stakeholders expressed the belief that regenerative management of resources and investment in human potential can lead to great abundance, and took great joy in that world-view. They want things to get better. The status quo is not enough. Safety Health and safety have taken on radically new components in the 21st century, as the fears of the generation have shifted. In stakeholders’ view, the new food system is less vulnerable to accidental contamination and terrorist attacks, and also inspires trust that the food system is free from contamination by pesticides and toxins. Social Equity Stakeholders view a sustainable food system as one that meets the needs of all. Stakeholders believe that fair social and labor practices provide the economic foundation that enables all people to have access to fresh, healthy foods, regardless of class, race, or other social differences. Sustainability In general sustainability means any actions we take today do not impede our ability to continue acting in the same way into the future. Specifically, it means that activity within the food system does not degrade over time our ability to continue producing food from that same system in perpetuity. The mineral, biological, financial, and human resources required to produce food are not lost due to present impacts emerging from activity of actors within the food system. Transparency Transparency implies openness, communication, and accountability. In a food system, this means that all parts of the system are honest and open about their activities and allow these activities to be reviewed and known by anyone. When the system is transparent, there is less opportunity for abuse of the parts of the system, thereby contributing to the movement of the whole system toward sustainability. GUIDING PRINCIPLES The Leadership Network recognizes that: 1. All parts of the system are better understood through their relationship to the whole, and a change in one part may influence other parts, thereby affecting the whole system. Furthermore, there is a reciprocal obligation between the whole and the parts. 2. Striving for balance and encouraging human, economic and ecological diversity are critical for the health of the system over the long term. 3. The current financial paradigm favors rapid return on investment at the highest rate possible, generally at the expense of the social and ecological returns. This creates significant challenges for businesses seeking to utilize ”triple bottom line” (economic, environmental and social returns). New business models and investment systems are needed for triple bottom line businesses seeking to access capital. 4. Time is of the essence and we must do all we can to accelerate the move to sustainable systems. 5. Environmental stewardship and social responsibility are integral to long-term economic viability. The current financial paradigm favors rapid return on investment at the highest rate possible, generally at the expense of the social and ecological returns. This creates significant challenges for businesses seeking to utilize ”triple bottom line” (economic, environmental and social returns). New business models and investment systems are needed for triple bottom line businesses seeking to access capital. 6. Community-based food enterprises are engines for build healthy local economies. 7. California’s food system impacts communities and ecosystems throughout the world, and therefore food and farming practices must minimize global-resource use and negative economic impacts. 8. Transformation of the system will be achieved through visionary leadership, collaboration, and consensus-building that includes the diversity found within the system. 9. Sharing food around a table creates community and at every meal reminds us of the connection to earth’s bounty and the long evolutionary struggle of all species that contribute to that bounty. The Leadership Network collaborates to implement programs, policies, practices that 10. Ensure that the earth’s resources, including soil, air, and water are regenerated and not further degraded. 11. Ensure that all Californians, regardless of income level, have access to healthy nutritious food. 12. Provide meaningful livelihood and abundant opportunities for advancement to all workers engaged in food and farming enterprises. 13. Spawn new business and financial models that allow a more broadly based distribution of equity and economic benefits. 14. Ensure that the most vulnerable populations in rural, urban, and communities of color are not victims of externalized negative impacts of the food and farming system. 15. Ensure that all people in the food system maintain a commitment to sustainability in order to meet the needs of future generations. 16. Awaken Californians to the fundamental links between food and culture, and personal and community health. GOALS The goals of a sustainable food system are listed below. All of these goals must be met in order for the food system to be considered sustainable. The goals are listed here with their descriptions and underlying values. Sustainability is an inherent value within each of these goals. A sustainable California food system will… • Encourage collaboration between individuals, organizations, businesses, and government agencies to create a sustainable food system. Profitability and sustainability will be reached when collaboration between individuals, organizations, businesses and government agencies exist. When collaboration is encouraged in a system, change is accelerated and catalyzed by many parts of the system working together. (Underlying values: transparency, accountability, interconnectedness, profitability) • Promote food choices that lead to healthy eating. In a healthy food system, freshness, nutrition and taste are primary goals and people eat a balanced diet with fresh and fresh processed whole foods that are produced and processed in ways that maintain high nutritional content. (Underlying values: public health, safety, transparency) • Provide easy access to healthy food from retail outlets for all eaters in California. In a sustainable food system, available transportation, household income, the existence of food outlets, social assistance and other factors make it easy for all Californians to obtain healthy food. (Underlying value: social equity, participatory democracy, accountability) • Provide affordable food for all eaters in California. In a sustainable food system, Californians are able to purchase healthy products at reasonable prices. (Underlying value: social equity) • Provide for meaningful livelihoods and opportunities for all food and farming workers. In the future sustainable food system, people employed in California’s food and agriculture sector have access to fairly compensated, dignified and meaningful work that provides a respectful and safe working environment as well as significant opportunities for personal development and advancement. (Underlying value: social equity, accountability) • Facilitate continuous entry for beginning farmers, fishers, foresters, processors, retailers, restaurateurs and ranchers. The sustainable food system facilitates the transfer of businesses and reduces barriers to entry for newly establishing entrepreneurs, supporting new entrants and entrepreneurs in a variety of ways in starting up food initiatives and businesses. (Underlying values: regeneration, profitability, participatory democracy) • Provide eaters with foods produced and processed as close to home as possible. A sustainable food system encourages the availability of diverse foods produced in each region, promoting both successful regional food economies at home and focusing exports on complementary items that cannot be produced in the importing region. (Underlying values: diversity, interconnectedness, environmental health, accountability) • Encourage eaters to know where, how and by whom their food is produced. In a sustainable food system, people know where their food comes from, how and by whom it was grown, raised or caught, and how and where it was processed and packaged. (Underlying values: diversity, interconnectedness, transparency, accountability) • Support deepening regional identities through food. In a sustainable food system, food and food production play a role in defining and deepening a sense of place and identity in a given region. They build market opportunities and generate demand for both unique and staple products. (Underlying values: diversity, interconnectedness, accountability) • Honor and draw on the diversity and richness of different food cultures. A sustainable food system supports and encourages the rich variety of foods and food traditions in the state, providing regional foods to all cultures and encouraging immigrant producers to maintain their livelihoods. (Underlying values: diversity, interconnectedness, participatory democracy) • Support and increase biodiversity in plant and animal products (including marine species). A sustainable food system provides people with real choice in the foods they eat. Not only are the products diverse, but within a product category, a range of crop and breed varieties are offered as well. (Underlying values: interconnectedness, diversity, regeneration, innovation, efficiency, environmental health) • Conduct farming, ranching, and fishing activities so that water, air, forests, soil and natural resources are enhanced and biodiversity, wildlife habitat, and ecosystem health increased. In a sustainable food system, farming practices preserve and enhance natural resources, including wild and riparian areas, ecosystem health, freshwater and marine food sources which will have direct, positive impact on public health. (Underlying values: interconnectedness, diversity, regeneration, innovation, efficiency, environmental health, public health) • Preserve the health, quality, and quantity of farmland, forests, and waterways. In 2030, food production, processing and distribution do not undermine the health or quality of farmland or forest and ocean ecosystems. (Underlying values: interconnectedness, diversity, regeneration, environmental health, public health) • Recycle its wastes, limit CO2 emissions, and reduce the use of petroleum and other non-renewable inputs. The sustainable food system consumes as few input materials as possible (in particular non-renewable inputs such as fossil fuels) and minimizes its production of unwanted outputs (such as solid waste, CO2 emissions, effluent and air pollution). (Underlying values: interconnectedness, regeneration, innovation, efficiency, environmental health, public health) • Employ humane practices in animal care. Animal production in a sustainable food system adheres to the highest standards of animal welfare, where animals are in a state of complete mental and physical. (Underlying values: interconnectedness, innovation, efficiency, accountability, public health and safety) • Provide opportunities for revenue from on-farm energy production, tourism, education, and other value-added services (in addition to food production). Producers are able to supplement their income with value-added activities on their land, through services such as mentoring young farmers, contributing to smart development, and offering rural recreational activities. (Underlying values: social equity, regeneration) • Reward farmers, fishers, and ranchers for conservation services. A sustainable food system compensates farmers, ranchers, and fishermen for providing stewardship services other than day-to-day food production, such as wildlife habitat management, ecosystem service provision, energy production, compost generation, and recycling of urban wastes. (Underlying values: regeneration, profitability, environmental health, accountability) • Provide opportunities for food, fishing, and farming operations to be profitable. In a sustainable food system, cooperation and transparency are encouraged among all actors in the value chain so that risks and rewards are shared, supply is managed, quality is maximized and all entities throughout the value chain have viable profit margins. (Underlying values: regeneration, profitability, interconnectedness, participatory democracy, transparency) • Be characterized by many locally owned and operated food and farming businesses. A sustainable food system will require a critical mass of businesses throughout the value chain that are owned and operated by local people who are vested in the community, having enough of the regional market share to provide economic resilience to the region and nurture community, innovation, accountability, and quality. (Underlying values: interconnectedness, regeneration, diversity, ownership, profitability) • Encourage business structures and forms of capitalization that provide investment and ownership opportunities to workers and community members. The sustainable California food system will promote community-based, community-owned and managed business models that foster a sense of investment within local communities. (Underlying values: interconnectedness, regeneration, ownership, profitability) • Allow fishers, farmers, foresters, ranchers, processors, retailers and restaurateurs to retire from their business while maintaining their business as a family or locally owned asset. In a sustainable food system, producers are provided alternative exit strategies that facilitate the transfer of their operations to family members or other new entrants from the community. (Underlying values: interconnectedness, regeneration, ownership, profitability) • Promote efficient markets that share information and proceeds equitably among all players in the food chain. The future sustainable food system sees power and market share more equally distributed among links in the food chain as well as among actors at each level, and cooperation, partnership and information-sharing will be the norm rather than the exception. (Underlying values: interconnectedness, efficiency, innovation, transparency and accountability) • Allow businesses of all sizes to participate in the system as long as they are abiding by sustainable practices and principles. In 2030, the food system is structured in such a way that enterprises of all sizes are able to thrive; economic success is determined increasingly by fair and sustainable business practice. (Underlying values: interconnectedness, efficiency, innovation, transparency and accountability) KEY DEFINITIONS - here are a few key definitions for concepts that are central to the New Mainstream Campaign Strategy. Goal A large or comprehensive result or achievement within a strategy toward which objectives are directed. Leadership Network Food system actors, delineated by intensity of involvement, who are in the food systems field implementing actions in pursuit of the objectives contained in the New Mainstream Strategy. The delineation has three levels: • Active Core • Connected Actors • Sympathetic Citizens Lever of Change A phrase used to describe a perceived means of efficiently changing a dynamic in the food system through a focused set of actions. Network At its simplest, a network is a system of intersection points (nodes), and flow routes (links). For ROC it is metaphor or concept for describing linkages between individuals and organizations that share a common purpose and who use the linkages to increase effectiveness and to accelerate the pace of intended change. Network Effect The concept of the network effect emerged from the work of Robert Metcalfe. A network effect is a characteristic that causes a good/service to have a value to a potential customer/user which depends on the number of other customers/users who own the good or are users of the service. In other words, the number of prior adopters is a term in the value available to the next adopter. Metcalfe illustrates the network effect by using fax machines as an example. A single fax machine is useless, but the value of every fax machine increases with the total number of fax machines in the network, because the total number of people with whom each user may send and receive documents increases. New Mainstream Campaign The collaborative effort to move California’s current niche sustainable food system to the mainstream by 2030. This Campaign Strategy is a confluence of existing and new initiatives and objectives derived from members of the Active Core of the Leadership Network and their organizations. Objective A measurable outcome, which when fulfilled in combination with other objectives, will amount to achievement of a goal. Patient Capital Investment capital from a source that is willing to receive a lower return on investment over a longer time than traditional capital, particularly venture capital, which seeks 20% Internal Rate of Return. Typically, venture capital’s goal means that one out of twenty investments (the home run) will return 50 times the original investment within five years. Patient capital or “slow money” will acceptably return 7-10% in the same period. (see: Resurgence, jan/feb 2007, Slow Money & the Primal Forces of Nature) Planning Fellows Recipients of funding from ROC to participate in the collaborative annual evaluation and setting/refinement of the New Mainstream Strategy. Principles Principles are deeply held or fundamental beliefs against which all subsequent decisions and actions will be judged. They are the ethics of how one person or a group will behave, the means and conduct by which a purpose will be pursued. They are not prescriptive, but are descriptive. They are divided into two categories: Organization and Practice. Social Networking The practice of expanding the number of one's business and/or social contacts by making connections through individuals. While social networking has gone on almost as long as societies themselves have existed, the unparalleled potential of the Internet to promote such connections is only now being fully recognized and exploited, through Web-based groups established for that purpose. Based on the six degrees of separation concept (the idea that any two people on the planet could make contact through a chain of no more than five intermediaries), social networking establishes interconnected Internet communities (sometimes known as personal networks) that help people make contacts that would be good for them to know, but that they would be unlikely to have met otherwise. (See: www.whatis?.com) Sustainable In general it means any actions we take today do not impede our ability to continue acting in the same way into the future. Specifically, it means that activity within the food system does not degrade over time our ability to continue producing food from that same system in perpetuity. The mineral, biological, financial, and human resources required to produce food are not lost due to present impacts emerging from activity of actors within the food system. Strategy A general description of the means, method, or actions for obtaining a goal or set of goals and outcomes. A strategy clarifies the concept of who, how, and why actions will achieve the intended outcomes. Triple Bottom Line (TBL) accounting (ecologic, economic and social return on investment) In contrast to traditional business accounting, triple bottom line accounting seeks a return on ecological and social capital, not just financial capital. A triple bottom line farming company would monitor soil fertility to ensure that it is not lost due to farming practices and in fact would seek to enhance fertility in the same way any other business would seek to enhance its infrastructure to maximize financial profit. In the social sphere, a TBL company would seek to enhance skills and quality of life of its workforce recognizing the improvements this would bring to productivity and long-term health of the company. Values The ideals, customs, institutions, etc., of a group for which the people of that group have an influential or defining regard and around which they seek to orient their lives and work. Value Chain In contrast to traditional food supply chains, values-based food supply chains, or value chains, differentiate their products by highlighting the quality, functionality, environmental and social attributes that emerge from the production and distribution system. From a business perspective, value chains operate on win-win principles. The links in the chain see themselves as strategic partners, not competitors, seeking to maximize interdependence and inter-organizational trust. Each partner has an interest in the performance and well being of the other partners. Partners seek to distribute the revenue of the value chain in a way that maintains maximum commitment by all partners. Thus, open bookkeeping for the value chain may become an essential component of the business practice. (G. W. Stevenson Ph.D. & R. Pirog, Ph.D., see www.agofthemiddle.org) Workgroup A group or team of self selected Leadership Network members who assemble in pursuit of an Objective contained within the New Mainstream Campaign Strategy. The Workforce Workgroup and the Business Council were ROC’s first workgroups. Read about each of the change levers and objectives: LEVER 1 - LEADERSHIP LEVER 2 - PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION LEVER 3 - PUBLIC PERCEPTION |
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