Skip to content
Farm to Institution Connection Event
On July 25, 2007 at the Bon Appetit Cafe of Holy Names University in Oakland, Community Alliance with Family Farmers (CAFF), UC Sustainable Agriculture Research & Education Program (SAREP), and The Center for Agroecology & Sustainable Food Systems (CASFS) co-hosted a special event entitled Farm to Institution Connection. The goal was to share information about successful initiatives related to providing local and sustainable food to institutional buyers such as hospitals, corporate and school cafeterias. Anya Fernald the CAFF Program Director asked Michael Dimock to provide opening comments for the day's activity. Here are his extended comments, which when delivered were foreshortened to meet the morning's time requirements. Michael's comments focus on the role of values in the development of a new mainstream in the food and farming system.

July 27, 2007

Thank you Anya. You and your colleagues in this project from CAFF, UC Davis and UC Santa Cruz are doing a wonderful job. I thank you for your efforts and for inviting me today to kick off this important gathering.

It is great to be with a group of people who actually care about our food: where it comes from, how its grown or raised, who brought it forth, and how are they themselves are fairing in their efforts to wholesomely feed us?

Where, how, who and why are the questions that lead us to know whether or not our system is sustainable or on the path to sustainability. And today on this planet, I can think of no more important question, which we humans must ask ourselves, than are we living in a manner that is sustainable?

So I am glad to be here with you this morning to explore this topic of farm to institution. This is a healthy response to an acute challenge: how do we feed lots of people in those places they gather to work, learn, heal, or rest?

Let me begin my remarks with a bit about Roots of Change, which is an interesting NGO (and since I have little time I will be brief, but please see our website and I have left materials on the table for you). Part think-tank, part coalition builder, part foundation, Roots of Change has a very specific and temporary mission. We will work with a vast network of leaders, their institutions or businesses, their employees, members and supporters to build a sustainable food system in California by the year 2030. After that, if successful, Roots of Change will disappear. That will be a great day of celebration for all those who have been involved because success would mark a huge and fundamental shift in human civilization and culture.

The food system, particularly agriculture, has been the primary cause of environmental and cultural destruction. For example in the environment, farming done poorly hugely increases erosion and that means air and water pollution and of course, loss of soil means infertility of the land. There are myriad other problems including chemical pollution and global warming.  It is a cultural agreement that we all partake in through our choices. In a cheap food society, some one and some things get short changed.

But why has this happened? We humans are as a whole not bad or evil. I believe we are good and the vast majority of people wish to do what is right for the whole. For me the issue is that in the context of planetary evolution, humans are young and yet very powerful beings. As a species we are a bit like adolescents. We can be loving and creative or nasty and destructive. We have much to learn and that is why we are here. So let me share what we are learning.

We at Roots of Change begin with an assumption that the core of human action, the underlying motive that drives or guides a human behavior is what we value. Values guide us. Values drive action. Thus, it is vital for us to be clear on values.

Roots of Change believes that there are certain values, a narrow set of values that currently guide the system and that this narrow set must be reworked or expanded. If we make this expansion, the system will change.

As we see it, there are three core values that drive the system currently and these three can be tied to the problems I mentioned earlier. They are: Profit, Independence, and control, which could also be called efficiency.

These three core values are not intrinsically bad. In fact they are very useful for keeping companies alive. The problem is that they are too narrow given the complexity of biological systems, including humans. They are not well adapted to the current realities. When left un-modulated they lead to other mental models that are contributing to our problems in the food system.

The values I have described lead to certain modes of production that are the primary cause of our woes within the food system. The prevailing production modalities in today's food system are centralized, industrialized, and they externalize costs. The cost of a fast food meal does not include the health care impacts, the downstream costs to our whole society. The cost of a pesticide does not include the costs to treat those people or species affected.

So these three core values (profit, independence and efficiency or control) coupled with reductionist science, coupled with centralized, industrialized and externalizing production systems have harmed us by causing a literal dis-integration of the food system. Humans are divorced from their food supply, growers are divorced from the processors and end users: people who eat what they grow or raise. As a result there is mass ignorance. The system is compartmentalized. It lacks the feedback loops we find in natural systems that allow a continuous adjustment and modulation of activity. Today, the system often witholds information - unless its release is compelled by law. Businesses in the supply chain actually compete with each other as they bring you food. The farmer is mostly a price taker. The folks between the farmer and the eater haggle over pennies per unit and hide information to ensure their survival in a very tough marketplace. Few people think about the real end goal of the food system, which is to maintain the health and wellbeing of people and the earth upon which we depend. Such a system is bound to cause harm.

But we are here today because there is good news to be heard. There are people in this room who have expanded the value set that guides them. Their core values are broader; their science is more contemporary; their production modalities are more responsive to the needs of biological systems: they are more in tune with the reality we have come to discover over the last 100 years.

Roots of Change are working with these people and others in the state and nation to deliver an antidote to the current illness in the food system. The antidote includes holistic and systems science, scaling models of production that are decentralized, inclusive, promote food quality and internalize true costs.
And, we seek to inject more values into the system.

So I leave you with a list of values for a new mainstream in the food and farming system. If we get the values right, what we seek to build will be more life enhancing, life enriching for us all. The core values in alphabetical order are diversity, health, interconnectedness, regeneration, and social equity. The bridge values, also in alphabetical order are competition, efficiency, innovation, ownership, profitability, and safety.

Please note the bridge values. They indicate we are not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. We need to remain realistic and business minded and these six additional bridge values, which emerge from the current mainstream system, must be maintained to ensure system health, but they must be modulated by five core values that will lead to a new mainstream in the food system. We believe the food system is so important and fundamental to life and to civilization it merits a matrix of eleven values. More values mean more complexity in thinking to solve the puzzle of creating successful business and production models.

Yes, it is harder to create a sustainable food system. AND I think this is appropriate. When as individuals we move from adolescence to adulthood, we often painfully come to grips with life's complexity. We shed misconceptions and illusions about reality. But in doing it, we are able to fulfill our potential as people. We are in the same situation with our food system. We, if we choose, can remake the food system, and in so doing remake our civilization, and in so doing lighten our impacts on personal and planetary health.

I think today's gathering indicates we are choosing the right path. People and businesses are beginning to move in a healthier direction. We can do it. We will do it and I look forward to joining you in the effort, which is among the most important tasks on the planet today. Thank you!

Trackback(0)
feed0 Comments

Write comment
 
  smaller | bigger
 

busy
 
< Prev
[ Back ]

Donate to the Roots of Change!

Click here to donate and help support a sustainable food system for California!

Translate this site

Changemakers Day

A  Roots of Change and Slow Food Nation Collaboration
Civic Center | Friday, August 29 | by invitation, for practitioners and professionals
icon-sfn_ball.png

Log onto the California Food Systems Network

Connect, collaborate, and create. The Food California Food Systems Network is a hub where all parts of the California food system can share, learn, and demonstrate the links between organizations, individuals, and businesses.

Just click here to check it out!