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“If I learned anything in the last six months, it is the notion that we need to be working on all different parts of the system in order to be successful to move the whole system. I mean, you can look at individual leverage points for individual projects, but if we can apply leverage to the total system from as many different angles as we can imagine, then we are more likely to succeed” “I think that only a few people actually make change; and I think if we get a few people working on different things from different angles, it will be far more productive than trying to get everybody to try to agree on anything.” -- Comments in Arizona A PowerPoint slide show introducing the Food Lab is now available at: http://studio.glifood.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=Presentations The slide show, as well as reports of the workshops and Learning Histories, can be downloaded from the web to your computer from: http://studio.glifood.org/tiki/tiki-list_file_gallery.php?galleryId=8 Each team is preparing the essential ingredients for rapid cycle prototyping of ideas—trying out concepts in quick iterations in order to increase chances for success. This process of testing ideas will be the primary activity of the Design Studio in Salzburg. The steps of prototyping are described at: http://studio.glifood.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page_ref_id=1. In addition to old and new members of the Lab Team, Executive Champions will also meet with us in Salzburg, including the following: Andre van Heemstra, Unilever; Rick Schnieders, SYSCO; Rick Foster, W.K. Kellogg Foundation; Thierry Legault, Carrefour; Mark Ritchie, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy; Bruce Shearer, Synergos Institute; Bart Jan Krouwel, Rabobank; Gerrit Rauws, King Baudouin Foundation; and Pierre Calame, Charles Leopold Mayer Foundation. Fred Keller, Trustee of the Kellogg Foundation, and Jeroen Bordewijk of Unilever will be special guests. Franz Fischler has also been invited as a special guest.
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Given the dominance of commodities among agricultural products, incremental improvements in the sustainability of commodity production can have massive impact -- in natural resource management, pollution and socio-economic factors. Based on current efforts in palm oil, cotton, coffee, cocoa and soy, this initiative looks for opportunities that cut across commodities to harmonize principles, share learnings and create a process of standard setting with buyer and investor screens. Exploratory conversations are going on with Goldman Sachs, Coke, and the World Bank. In March:
More complete draft project
descriptions are posted on the web site at: Leaders: Jan-Kees Vis, the Sustainable Agriculture Manager for Unilever; Jason Clay, Vice President, Center for Conservation Innovation, World Wildlife Fund; and Bruce Tozer, Managing Director, Structured Trade and Commodity Finance, Rabobank International. Participants: Henk van Oosten, Innovation Network, Ministry of Agriculture, NL; João S. Campari, Director, The Nature Conservancy, Brazil; Marcelo Vieira, farmer and board member, Brazil Specialty Coffee Association. New Partners: Mark Eckstein, International Finance Corporation; and Tensie Whelan of Rainforest Alliance. The group is also in conversation with people at Coke and Goldman Sachs. Secretariat support: Don Seville, Hal Hamilton, Cecilia Chua, Daniella Malin
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As Larry Pulliam says, doing the right thing can also be good business practice. For SYSCO this requires a base of mid-sized farmers producing differentiated products. Good business also requires commodities produced with better management practices. For Laura’s Lean Beef, economies of scale in relation to the regulatory environment are crucial. Bruce Tozer asks for clarity about “which value drivers are rewarded in the market” and can thereby ensure an adequate return for all, including farmers. All of these motivations, and more, are informing the development of the purpose and program of the Business Coalition. The founding group of Lab Team members envisions a coalition of at least 20 large and small food companies. Dozens of interviews with business leaders and others are in process. A core leadership meeting is planned for March. Draft description of this initiative on the web site at: http://studio.glifood.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=Draft+Description+of+the+Business+Coalition The leadership group includes Larry Pulliam and Craig Watson, both Senior Vice-Presidents of SYSCO Corporation; Meire de Fátima Ferreira, Sadia; Eugene Kahn, Vice-President for Sustainability General Mills; Theresa Marquez, Marketing Director, Organic Valley Cooperative; Laura Freeman, President and CEO, Laura’s Lean Beef; Jan Kees Vis, Sustainable Agriculture Manager for Unilever; and Bruce Tozer, Rabobank. Lots of new names are circulating, both for Salzburg invitations and Business Coalition members. Conversations are underway with Cargill, Kellogg, Unilever North America, Costco, Aramark, Target, Starbucks, and many others. Secretariat support: Hal Hamilton, Alison Sander, Arnold Wasserman, Nancy Gabriel
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The Fisheries team recently met in Paris and chose the following potential foci for their initiative, each of which would involve public information campaigns: 1. Chile: Linking the small-scale fish harvester directly to the market. Chile has a stable political situation and a national fish harvester association (CONAPACH), which cooperates with local processors. Chile has pelagic fish species that are unfortunately often used for fish meal for industrial aquaculture or animal feed, since selling coastal fish harvester products directly on the market is not always easy. A Fishing Center could be established with the local Chilean partners. 2. The north Atlantic (Greenland, Iceland and maybe Canada?): Northern shrimp from Greenland and Canada need better market access to increase return to small remote communities often populated by Innu. This is to insure socio-economic sustainability as well as to insure the sustainability of shrimp stock 3. China and its emergence: This project would focus on the possibility to orient proper development of aquaculture of vegetarian fish.
More information is posted at: http://studio.glifood.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=Fisheries. The following group, including many new members met in Paris February 10-11: Pierre Vuarin, Program Director, Fondation Leopold Mayer; Gilles Gaebel and Bruno Correard, Carrefour; Daniel Bernier, Canadian Member of Parliament advisor; Henk van Oosten, Ministry of Agriculture, NL; Pia Valota, Consumers’ organizations; Pedro Avendano and Francois Poulin, World Forum of Fish Harvesters and Fishworkers; Arthur Bogason, WFF, NASBO Iceland; Danièle Le Sauce, Branche Française; Bertil, Fjord Seafood; Henrik, Royal Greenland. For the Food Lab Secretariat, Alain Wouters facilitated the meeting. Frank van Ooijen, Nutreco, has also been involved in the conversations. Secretariat support: Alain Wouters, Hal Hamilton, Erika Gregory, Daniella Malin
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Mainstream food supply chains and large institutions -- schools, hospitals, governments, have massive buying power. The Food Services initiative will test ways to integrate regional, sustainable foods into existing food supply chains to increase visibility and demand. This initiative continues to uncover many regional food efforts underway in the United States and Europe. Current efforts discussed: London Hospitals who are examining how to get 10% of their food from organic and/or local sourcing, UK and Italian producer co-ops, a sustainable procurement official for one of the major London boroughs, an Italian Fair Trade importer working with major food service companies and a possible three-year project looking at sustainable supply chains to restaurants in London (funding from the government approved, matching funds needed). In the US there is a variety of grassroots farm to school programs and multi-stakeholder food alliances. This initiative aims to look deeply at existing efforts to learn about barriers and opportunities and then develop and prototype a replicable process for integrating regional foods into food service supply chains, More is posted at: http://studio.glifood.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=Food+Service. Questions emerging from the team’s conversation include: 1. How can we harness the consumer/citizen demand to pressure the large institutes to buy local/sustainable food? 2. How can we provide information, cases, process support, and best practices to public purchases to help them gain organization commitment to source regional/sustainable? 3. How do we help the food services companies develop the regional/sustainable supply chains? Particularly for chilled food? 4. How do we work with farmers to aggregate and meet the demands of a food service company or public buyer? 5. What are we learning about the trade, policy, larger system barriers that need to change for large intuitional procurement of regional/sustainable to work? Next conference call: Monday March 7th, 9-10:30am Leaders: Karen Lehman, Adaptive Leadership, US; Pierre Vuarin, Fondation Leopold Mayer; Peggy Sechrist, Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group, US; Clive Peckham Alimenterra; Participating: Pia Valota, Consumer’s Organization; Arie van den Brand, former Member of Parliament, NL. Additional team members currently being explored include the following: an Aramark or Sodexho representative; an Elior representative; Marie Helen Aubert, a European food and agriculture deputy OR one of two possible buyers for the public food system in Europe (schools or hospitals). Secretariat support: Don Seville, Susan Sweitzer, Cecilia Chua, Daniella Malin
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The Latin American Sustainable livelihoods project is focusing on improving the competitiveness and sustainability of small-scale farming systems in Latin America and Caribbean and creating opportunities for their participation in national and international sustainable food supply chains. Unlike most small farm organizing efforts, the LA initiative will work from the beginning with food companies and farmers together to look for market opportunities upon which to build new innovative sustainable supply chains. This initiative has sparked the interest of the USAID/GDA funding agency eager for multi-sector partners for their closely related missions in this region. Our colleagues at The Synergos Institute have facilitated this connection and scheduled a meeting with the Dominican Republic country office in Santo Domingo in March to explore possibilities. Small scale farmers in the DR, like in many areas in Latin America and the Caribbean, currently have limited opportunity to participate in national and international food supply chains. This initiative will test new partnerships between farmers and buyers, and use those partnerships to help access governmental and multilateral assistance. Current news is posted at: http://studio.glifood.org/tiki/tikiindex.php?page=Latin%20America Leaders: Eugenio Peixoto, National Secretary of Agrarian Reform, Brazil; Juan Cheaz, Regional Policy Coordinator for Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean, Oxfam; Frederick Payton, U of Gerogia and Farmers’ cooperative Participants: Osler Desouzart, Advisory Board, World Agriculture Forum; Maureen Silos, Carabbean Institute; Karen Lehman, Adaptive Leadership New Partners: Luis Coirolo, Latin American Rural Development Task Manager from the World Bank, Mark Lundi (CIAT – Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical) an expert on hands-on work pertaining to key productive chains in the region. Other Salzburg invitations are being explored with Arnaldo Eijsink, Carrefour; and OPCION – Aj Ticonel – Guatemala, a successful example of small farmers accessing international markets. In addition the team has had exploratory conversations with an association of small grain producers in Mexico (ANEC), and Julio Berdegue, an expert on rural enterprises and links between farmers and supermarkets and others Secretariat support: Tacito Nobre, Don Seville, Arnold Wasserman, Nancy Gabriel
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New research partners, the Frameworks Institute and Cultural Logic will utilize recent advances in cultural anthropology and cognitive linguistics to study the dominant mental frameworks through which issues of sustainability and food production are perceived. This “framework” to communicate sustainability will be available for brand marketing, political campaigns and civil society organization messaging in order to connect sustainability to the core values of typical people in different markets. Rapid cycle prototyping will field test and improve the branding and messaging applications through product releases and public campaigns. The Frameworks Institute and Cultural Logic will conduct research in the US. Initiative partners are actively looking for European and Brazilian research counterparts as well as market researchers from the business sector. More information is posted on the web page: http://studio.glifood.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=Framing Leaders: Oran Hesterman, W.K.Kellogg Foundation; Johan Alleman,King Baudouin Foundation; Meire Ferreira, Sadia; Participants: Laura Freeman, Adaptive Leadership, US; Notis Lebessis, Advisor, European Commission; Bjarne Pedersen, Consumers International, UK; Frank van Ooijen, Nutreco; Pia Valota, Consumer’s organizations; Carrie Branovan, Creative Director, Organic Valley Cooperative; Roland Vaxelaire, Carrefour; Arie van den Brand, former Member of Parliament, NL; Ali Webb, W. K. Kellogg Foundation Interested but not yet active: Gene Kahn, Vice-President for Sustainability, General Mills; Theresa Marquez, Marketing Director, Organic Valley Cooperative; Karen Lehman, Adaptive Leadership, US; Rosalinda Guillen, former Farm Worker Movement Leader; Gilles Gaebel, Carrefour; Neyde Nery, ASSOCENE; Elena Saraceno, European Commission; New resource: Cultural Logic Secretariat support: Susan Sweitzer, Hal Hamilton, Erika Gregory, Nancy Gabriel http://studio.glifood.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=Framing
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This exploratory initiative will develop a model of Citizen Food Councils, stimulating democratic dialogue on the future of food systems. Five projects will be prototyped in each of the following regions: Brazil, US, Europe and Mexico. The first stage will be an initial exploration of models for bringing together concerned citizens from a cross section of a local community to identify local initiatives. The second stage of this initiative is intended to multiply experiences and disseminate information. Bjarne Pederson has just written a draft initiative description, posted at: http://studio.glifood.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=Democracy |
