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Guest Blog - Planning Fellow Chris Sayer
One of the 2007 ROC Planning Fellows, Chris is an avocado and citrus grower from Santa Paula. He also spent some time as a P3 Orion Pilot for the US Navy. He has been active with the Ventura AFA and the UC Hansen Trust on issues facing agriculture and the community in Ventura County.  In his blog entry, Chris offers some reflections on his experience as a ROC Planning Fellow.

July 26, 2007
Having recently had the privilege of participating in the Roots of Change Planning Fellows program, it seems appropriate to reflect on the experience. With the advantage of a word processor, perhaps I can achieve greater clarity than I feel I have when speaking off the cuff with members of my community.
The single most striking thing about the process was to see a broader picture of the problem in all of its complexity. Being fairly well-read on America’s food system’s issues, I thought I had a good grasp on the problems we faced beyond my personal bubble in Ventura County agriculture. But discussing the system with people having so many other perspectives really challenged my viewpoints. I’m happy to report that a few of my treasured opinions survived, but my perspective has clearly been shifted by the experience and I am the better for it.

As the magnitude of our challenge sank in during the first session, I remember a conversation with Michael about the audacity of trying to tackle this beast.  It became clear that there can be no single “magic wand” solution as the sessions progressed. For some of us participating, I think this was a point of frustration. Yet, by the final day, some clarity had begun to emerge. The system won’t be changed with a single bold act over nine days by 27 people in a room. Change will occur incrementally and invisibly, with each of a billion small actions taken by California’s citizens over the course of several decades. There is some relief in knowing that we don’t need to know all the answers right now, and we don’t have to rely on the combined intellectual horsepower of only 27 minds to frame a solution. Just as evolution acts through the cumulative effects of many small mutations, we can change the food system to respond to California’s needs.

Roots of Change provides us with an opportunity to go evolution one better. While natural selection relies on random mutations to surface traits that are adaptive, and counts on time to allow for the spread of successful adaptations, we can have more control over the process. While some of our ideas may still have flaws, and some will ultimately prove unsuccessful, I am confident that the best ideas of the thousands of people tackling this issue across the state are still more likely to succeed than random mutations. Once successful ideas are recognized, the Roots of Change Leadership Network will allow us to replicate them across the state and build on what we can see is successful. The change we seek can be accelerated, so that we will be able to measure it in years, rather than centuries.

Now you might observe that even a timeframe measure in years means that many people will still suffer at the hands of our current food system before we are successful. Sadly that is true, but even on this point I saw some reason for hope. Having brought together so many different actors in food system reform, Roots of Change created the conditions for shared knowledge and resources that will allow some of the existing players to enjoy greater success in the near term. This may be the best illustration of the Roots of Change concept in action. While the Planning Fellows were ostensibly convened to support Roots of Change, it really worked the other way around. I think this represented a glimpse of the Roots of Change role for the future.

So what changed for me once I got back to the farm? Not much in some ways. There are still weeds that need attention and bills to pay. But there is new energy in our exploration of new cultural practices, alternative crops and local distribution opportunities. There is greater confidence that there will be a system that will work for us, and that it will be a system that is at least in part of our own design. Feelings of confidence are hard to come by in today’s farms, and for that I thank Michael and the rest of the Roots of Change network.
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