THE INNOVATION RETREAT - Reos Partners

Sustainable Food Lab Chapter two 1 November 2004

Sustainable Food Laboratory

Learning History Chapter Two

By Susan Sweitzer

THE LEARNING JOURNEYS IN BRAZIL August and September 2004

THE INNOVATION RETREAT Rex Ranch, Amado, Arizona

November 1419, 2004


TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................... 3 Origins .......................................................................................................................3 Purpose ......................................................................................................................5 Who............................................................................................................................7 How ............................................................................................................................8 Emergent Questions ..................................................................................................9

THE COURSE OF EVENTS ...................................................................11 The Learning Journeys ...........................................................................................12 Innovation Retreat...................................................................................................15 PHASE ONE: COSENSING, GATHERING EXPERIENCES........................15

PHASE TWO: COPRESENCING, WILDERNESS SOLO .............................19

PHASE THREE: COCREATING, CHOOSING INITATIVES ......................23

Germination of Innovation Initiatives: Two Case Studies .............................26 Case Study One: Food Service ........................................................................26 Case Study Two: Commodity and Investment Initiative ..............................29

TRUST –RELATIONSHIPS – COMMITMENT...................................33

CLOSING REFLECTIONS.....................................................................37

APPENDICES...........................................................................................39 Appendix A ..............................................................................................................39 Lab Team Members, Executive Champions, Advisors and Secretariat ............39

Appendix B ..............................................................................................................42 Food Lab Prototype Initiatives............................................................................42

Appendix C ..............................................................................................................50 Sustainable Food Lab Meetings ..........................................................................50


INTRODUCTION

This second installment of the Learning History of the Sustainable Food Laboratory was written at the end of the Innovation Workshop in Tucson, Arizona, U.S. It reflects the thinking and learning which occurred during the period from the end of the first workshop in Bergen, Netherlands in June 2004 through the second workshop in Arizona in November 2004. Events during that time included three Learning Journeys in Brazil and the Innovation Workshop in Arizona, the second of five such gatherings over the course of a twoyear project. The intention of this history is to use the words of the participants themselves to describe the thinking and learning of the group at this stage in the process in order to support further reflection and learning as the work of the Food Lab goes forward.

This chapter builds on the Learning History of the Foundation Workshop, held in Bergen, Netherlands in June 2004, which is available to Food Lab team members upon request.

The introductory section of this chapter of the Learning History is a slightly edited version of the introduction to the Foundation Workshop chapter. Reflections and learning from the Learning Journeys and the Innovation Retreat begin on page 11 of this document.

This Learning History is intended for use primarily by participants in the Sustainable Food Lab: members of the Lab Team and Secretariat, Executive Champions, Advisors, and funders. Permission is required for any more public use.

Origins

The Sustainable Food Laboratory arose from a growing awareness of the critical nature of the economic, environmental, social, and political impacts of global food systems. There is an emerging recognition in all


sectors of the food chain that humanity has yet to develop an optimal global system of food production and distribution. The Food Lab is a forum for leaders across the system to address the most pressing and significant problems of food and agriculture.

The Food Lab had its origins in the summer of 2002 at the launch of the Global Leadership Initiative, an initiative dedicated to addressing the critical global challenges of our time. Over breakfast at that gathering Hal Hamilton, Don Seville, Adam Kahane, and Peter Senge started exploring the possibility that the polarized debates over agricultural sustainability might benefit from the application of the Global Leadership Initiative’s UProcess, which offers a process to foster breakthrough thinking and action on complex, crosssector problems. The conversation then expanded to include Andre van Heemstra, JanKees Vis and Jeroen Bordewijk of Unilever and Oran Hesterman of the Kellogg Foundation. Oran, JanKees and Jeroen described their ongoing investments in sustainable agriculture projects and their desire to influence the mainstream, but all three expressed a sense that neither the Kellogg Foundation nor Unilever are powerful enough to do this alone.

Over the succeeding year and a half, Hal, Adam, and their colleagues at Sustainability Institute and Generon Consulting interviewed dozens of system leaders in the United States, Europe and Brazil. From these interviews, individuals were invited to join the Food Lab. The intention was to bring together entrepreneurial leaders seeking more rapid and farreaching change in the direction of sustainability than their current efforts had achieved. The hope was that bringing together representatives from each sector of the food chain could provide a unique picture of the complexity and critical nature of the problems intrinsic in the system as a whole.

Adam Kahane comments in pre workshop interview:

“We envision that this team will be able not only to imagine breakthrough solutions but to implement them. In doing so, they will demonstrate that it is possible for humans to address serious global, vital, complex problem situations, and to do so peacefully, not by force.”

Hal Hamilton comments in pre workshop interview:

“This project for me is full of hope. I have no sense of just what this group will do, but I am eager for us all to take on the most difficult things we can.”

Preworkshop Lab Team comments:

“You need the synergy of thinkers. I think it is impossible that only one small team can find answers.”

In conversations and interviews conducted over the course of assembling the Lab Team and Executive Champions, interviewees identified a variety of systemic challenges that the project needs to address:

• Increasing productivity while stewarding biodiversity and reducing energy use

Comments in preworkshop interviews:

“We should ask, ‘What do we want as farmer, trader, processor, consumer


• Enabling mass markets to incorporate environmental and social impacts of particular food production

• Enlarging market access for developing countries while preserving the future for farmers in the United States and Europe

• Protecting the health of farmers and farm workers

• Increasing opportunities for the rural poor

• Enabling smaller farmers to aggregate supply and achieve efficiencies of scale

• Attracting talent and entrepreneurship to food production

• Enabling a richer flow of information among all the nodes in value chains, including farmers, food businesses and consumers

Team members set the stage for the Foundation Workshop by identifying these systemic challenges and by calling for new ways to think about solutions. They frequently mentioned the need to move beyond polarization and debate in regard to these challenges, as well as the need to develop solutions across perceived boundaries.

and human being? How can we achieve together what we want from the system we create together?’”

“There might be some possibility of creating almost an alchemical reaction with this group so that we can figure the value chain differently and interact differently.”

“Can mass markets in reality incorporate quality, including landscape and culture, in a way that is even close to what is achieved in Europe with a [regional quality] approach?”

“We’re trying to do something that’s beyond what anyone can do by simply reacting within their own institution, and that’s the basis for this project: that people from three continents and all this effort can really find a solution or solutions and ideas for a more sustainable food supply.”

Purpose

Incorporating the advice and experience from many interviews and meetings, the Sustainable Food Lab was launched with the purpose of making mainstream food systems more sustainable. The Lab brings together leaders from businesses, governments, farm groups and nongovernmental organizations with this explicit focus. Although a more sustainable food system is at the heart of this work, the group realizes that perspectives on what it means to be sustainable differ substantially among the

Team member comments:

“I am interested in the outcomes that people have stated repeatedly in terms of getting some kind of shared understanding of definition, getting some projects that are really about scaleable mainstreaming, and also having new ideas generated that come from the interaction of different points


institutions, businesses, and organizations represented in the Lab. One of the challenges for the Lab Team is to use these differing perspectives and priorities as a catalyst for shared learning and significant innovations in the system.

of view and working at the margins – these things are really critical for all of us.”

“I think it’s a big chance for me to learn a lot, also for us to build concrete projects and make concrete aims for what shall happen – not only to talk, [but] to build something.”

The focus of the Food Lab is expressed by many team members and Executive Champions as making change “on the ground” through practical action, pilot projects and viable fullscale food system interventions. The objective of the Lab is to create prototypes of innovations that, once piloted and scaled up, will either support the development of or directly produce sustainable food supply systems that are large, mainstream, and valueproducing for all actors in the chain—not only small, niche, or philanthropic.

The Foundation Workshop, held in Bergen in June 2004, focused on developing a collective understanding of the current reality of food systems. The plenary sessions provided a framework for this work by exploring a broad range of ideas and perspectives on the Challenges in the food system, the Indicators of sustainability in a food chain, and Current Initiatives that are successful or of interest to sustainable food systems.

The Lab Team also developed two lists outlining their agendas for the time between the Foundation workshop and the Innovation Retreat. These took the form of a Learning Agenda and a Research Agenda. The Learning Agenda focused on the people and places team members wanted to learn more about during their Learning Journeys. The Research Agenda outlined research that team members thought would support their learning as well as resources team members had to offer each other.

You will find a more indepth consideration of the content of that workshop in the Learning History Chapter One.

Lab Team member comments in opening plenary:

“We’ve been in the last 20 years through a lot of pilot projects, a lot of meetings, and I was really attracted to this because of the verb ‘to do.’ Apparently our group using this process will do something.”


“We are here because we would like to have this food of higher quality with competitive price [while] defending the environment and the social culture.”

“What stands out is that we lack a framework and common definition of what a sustainable, active food system is. There’s not a common understanding among the stakeholders of sustainable food production. I think we still need to look for that baseline, that common definition of understanding and agreement. What is our view on mainstream, sustainable, agrifood systems?”


Who

The original Lab Team is composed of individuals from three continents and multiple sectors in the food system. The founding Lab Team consists of people with a demonstrated ability to make change on the ground who have expressed a high level of frustration about the current state of the system. They embody a wide range of experience and expertise, including global and regional policy development and implementation, product development and certification, regional branding of products, developing farmer cooperatives, integrating and advocating for environmental and social policies, and developing financial incentive programs addressing many dimensions of food systems.

Team Member comments:

“The problem, historically, with alternatives in the food industry is we [business] will create a strategy and it’s separate – it’s very insular from the policy people and from the people who are working on hunger/poverty, the NGO community. This project provides an opportunity for us to integrate our efforts so that we have a more powerful and focused strategy.”

Three principal groups support the work of the Lab Team: Executive Champions, Advisors, and the Secretariat. The Executive Champions are chief executives or senior officers of the companies and organizations with which team members are affiliated. These Champions provide feedback, credibility, and support for mobilizing further resources as Food Lab projects take shape.

The Advisors are resource persons. They are experts who provide advice, research support, or intellectual input to the Lab Team.

The Secretariat is the professional support for the Lab and was provided initially by Sustainability Institute and Generon Consulting. Sustainability Institute (SI) is a nonprofit research and consulting group that uses systems analysis and organizational learning to help a broad array of organizations become more strategic. Generon is an international processconsulting firm with extensive experience in trisector dialogue and action.

Following the Innovation Retreat, Synergos Institute joined the Secretariat in providing professional support for the work of the Food Lab. Synergos is an international NGO that supports local development and philanthropy with projects in North America, Asia, Latin America and Southern Africa.

Executive Champions addressing the Sustainable Food Lab:

“A healthy company can only remain healthy if it operates in healthy communities within a healthy environment. Why is sustainability of agriculture so important to us and why have we picked this particular topic? Well, over twothirds of our base of our profits is agricultural.”

“Credibility is a key word in this type of project, specifically credibility of the process and credibility of the outcome. We have enormous confidence in the people who are behind this project in terms of credibility of the process, and you are the guarantee of the credibility of the outcome. If all of you are happy with what comes out of it, it must be a major success.”


How

The design of this Lab is based on the UProcess, a method for deep innovation that has been developed and applied over the last 20 years by a group of action researchers now associated with the Global Leadership Initiative. In his welcoming statement at the Foundation Workshop, Adam Kahane characterized the UProcess as having three phases: cosensing, copresencing and co creating. The first workshop focused primarily on the cosensing phase—that of exploring the varied perspectives and priorities within the team in order to understand the complexity of current reality in the food system. The copresencing phase—that of seeing what sense can be made of the complexity of the system, was introduced in the Innovation Retreat. The cocreating phase, in which the group understanding and work coalesce into practical initiatives, began at the conclusion of the Innovation Retreat.

Although they are described here as distinct, in practice the cosensing, copresencing and cocreating phases of the Food Lab overlap with each other and take place in minicycles throughout and between each workshop.

The problems in the food system, as in any complex system, exhibit high dynamic, social, and generative complexity.

Dynamic complexity occurs when cause and effect are separated in space and time. For example, consumer taste in Belgium impacts coffee production in Guatemala, and determinations about land tenure and agricultural practices made 20 yeas ago affect current opportunities.

Generative complexity occurs when the situation itself is fundamentally unfamiliar. Old solutions may no longer be useful in our age of globalization, with its new technology, new communications, and new networks. In an unfamiliar situation, using the best practices from the past won’t necessarily solve current problems.

Finally, high social complexity is evident when influential people in the system have fundamentally

Adam Kahane:

“If we already knew the solution, then we wouldn’t need any of this. We would simply move from where we are to where we want to be. Many of you have tried to do that and you’re here because there’s something you’re trying to do that’s beyond what you can do by simply reacting within your own institutions. That’s the simple basis for this project: to bring together people from different parts of the system to try to understand the current reality and bring forward a new one.”

Adam Kahane:

“We talk about deeper levels of response, changing the structure of the system, redesigning the system, changing how we think about the system…and ultimately that is the purpose of what we’re doing.”


different views of what is going on, and about what matters. When addressing such situations, the participation of diverse stakeholders makes possible a comprehensive understanding of current reality and allows the group to identify significant leverage points for change.

Emergent Questions

Three questions emerged out of the Foundation Workshop as important to the overall work of the Food Lab:

• How much agreement is necessary and desirable for successful innovation?

• Is it possible for successful innovations to shift the system on a global scale?

• How do we ensure that the voices at the edges remain in the dialogue?

By the end of the Innovation Retreat, discussions among team members had expanded and broadened these initial questions to include considerations of how to maximize the potential of the group to effect a shift in the system.

• What is possible personally and systemically?

• What potential does this group, at this time in history, actually possess?

• How much impact is possible: across sectors, between continents, locally and globally?

• Where is the most leverage to shift the system toward more sustainability?


“Many people have asked me, ‘What do you really think about the Lab?’” And I’ve said, ‘I firmly believe that the lab is what we want to make of it.’”

“I think this is a point [a Team member] made at Bergen: when we talk about projects it may mean products; it may be processes; it may be policies. The question about what can we do to shift the system is a question that’s not so far been answered; and we talked about at least those three categories: project innovations, process innovations; policy innovations.”

“What is our potential here as the Food Lab? Who are we here? We have actors who can influence how production is done, what with the environmental management, the social management. We can assess the economic viability of different production regimes. We also have groups that can shape consumer choice, and we have groups from the middle who are the ones that link the production to the consumption. And whatever subjects we look at, we really want to draw on the strength of who we are.”


The first question—how much agreement is needed for successful innovation—was partially addressed by the Team’s agreement at the close of the Innovation Retreat to focus on five specific Innovation Initiatives:

1. Access to Markets by Small Farmers in Latin America

2. Regional Food Supply to Schools and Hospitals 3. Business Coalition for Sustainable Food 4. Commodities and Investment 5. Framing

The team also identified two Exploratory Initiatives that were of great interest to Lab Members but required further work to be sufficiently defined to gain the full support of the Food Lab:

6. More Sustainable Fisheries 7. Democracy and Citizens

The selection of the Innovation Initiatives and the Exploratory Initiatives suggested there was sufficient agreement to undertake innovation. In addition, comments made during the Learning Journeys and at the Innovation Retreat indicated a developing confidence in the ability of team members with differing perspectives to work together effectively.

The second question—is it possible for successful innovations to shift the system on a global scale—is central to judging the ultimate success of the Initiatives. The work of the Food Lab in thinking about this question is reflected in the discussion of phase two of the Innovation Retreat (page 20).

“The diversity is important, but having completely diametrically opposed concepts about, say, consumer marketing, isn’t going to be helpful in a project team. So it’s an effort also to work internally within this Food Laboratory to improve our process of working together.”

“I’m actually very pleased that we got where we are. I didn’t know that we would get here. We exceeded my expectations, actually. I still think many of us in the room have a little different view about things but I have a higher level of respect about the different opinions in the room than I did previously.”

How the initiatives will ensure that the “voices on the edge” inform the ongoing development of the initiatives remains an open question. During the selection process for the initiatives, several threads of intention stood out. One was the idea that the voices of those who are most affected by system change should be part of the development of each Food Lab initiative. How this would be enacted was not finalized, but many voiced the

“It still seems to be disturbing me a bit is that there is a disconnect between operationalizing changes and some of the most disenfranchised actors in that. There is an intent in the group to be inclusive, and to look at all aspects of how [food is] produced, transformed, and


intention.

In the closing comments of the Innovation Retreat, one team member articulated a question about exactly how the voices of those most disenfranchised in the Food System would be part of the work of the Food Lab, but felt that there was strength in the Initiatives and reiterated a feeling of remaining connected to the work of the Lab.

Lab members’ engagement with the final four questions is embedded in the story of the Learning Journeys and the Innovation Retreat. As the work of the Innovation Initiative teams and the Food Lab as a whole continue, these questions and others that were raised over the course of the first six months of the project will continue to frame the thinking of team members and the evaluation of the achievements of the Food Lab.

consumed. But I am struggling with the complexity of how to operationalize [this] on a regional and national level. I do think there is a danger that the global approach without sufficient critical mass of action on a local level will make what we do vulnerable to collapse.”

“How are we going to take this work down to the level of my people and the workers and be able to execute it to show results, at the same time that we’re doing such work from the top down? That, I think, is going to be the strength of the Food Lab. So, I remain engaged and challenged at this point.”

THE COURSE OF EVENTS

At the time of this chapter of the Learning History, the Food Lab has consisted of three events: the Foundation Workshop in Bergen, Netherlands (June 2004), the Learning Journeys in Brazil (August and September 2004), and the Innovation Retreat in the U.S. (November 2004).

The Foundation Workshop and the Learning Journeys were cosensing activities designed to develop a shared understanding of the highly complex food system. During the Foundation Workshop, team members began exploring the wide range of perspectives and experience within the team regarding the complexity of sustainability in food systems (see Learning History, Chapter One).


“There is a feeling that we should have the same idea of the problem – but my experience is that it often destroys a group to try to have the same definition, whereas it increases richness to share our understanding of sustainability.”

During the Learning Journeys, talking, listening and learning to observe in a distinctive way laid the groundwork for the essential experience of cosensing— experiencing with new lenses the dilemmas, potentials, and dynamics at work in the food system.

“I have been very positively impressed by what I learned in the Learning Journeys. The challenge we have ahead is to link what we learned in the Learning Journeys with the thoughts and hierarchy of leverage


The copresencing aspect of the UProcess—intended to help team members uncover their deeper knowing about both what is going on in the system and what they, individually and collectively, need to do about it—was at the center point of the Innovation Retreat in the U.S. It was structured around a 48hour wilderness solo experience. After the wilderness solo, the plenary work of the Lab Team culminated in team agreement to pursue five Innovation Initiative projects and two Exploratory Initiatives, thus launching the third phase of the U Process: the cocreating phase.

points that Donella Meadows explains. Now the question is how will we make that link and how is it going to help us identify the kind of prototype that we’re going to do and identify where the Lab is really able to touch in that hierarchy.”

“The quality of the innovation depends on the quality of the sensing.”

“The final phase of cocreating requires a different spirit that involves, among other things, a kind of teamwork.”

The remainder of this history is organized around:

a) the lessons and experiences of the Learning Journeys,

b) reflections on the wilderness experience and the development of the five Initiatives at the Innovation Retreat, and

c) questions and reflections on the creative process and the impact of the personal and institutional relationships in the section entitled Trust – Relationships Commitment.

“…there has been among the team a very high level of willingness to learn and listen to other people, which is something I find impressive with such a wide range of backgrounds that we have.”

“We have experienced a profound level of trust and openness [which shows] that we can be very comfortable talking about our disagreements and our differences because we’ve built a relationship around common values. I have no question in my mind that we share more common values than we have differences.”

The Learning Journeys

After the Foundation Workshop, team members were asked to sign up for one of three Learning Journeys. Initially Learning Journeys were envisioned in Europe, the U.S., and Brazil. However, nearly every team member indicated a preference for Brazil. As a consequence, each fiveday Journey was organized in Brazil and was constructed to provide opportunities to:

• learn more about food systems,

Lab Team comments on Learning Journeys:

“I need to plow the soil. That is what we are doing here, preparing the soil together. This is a very important part of planting the seeds which will bear good fruit.”

“I think both personal and group


•discover how to learn through disciplined observation, and

• sense the system as a whole, rather than simply gathering data on the parts.

Each Journey focused on a different geographic region of Brazil, and each group experienced a wide range of actors in food systems—from farmer cooperatives to multinational commodity producers, government and private sector representatives, and environmental NGOs. Team members were encouraged to seek out people who had different—even opposing—perspectives, in order to stretch beyond their comfort zone and become more aware of their own assumptions and beliefs. The Learning Journeys fostered a deeper understanding within the Lab Team both of the food system as a whole and of specific successes and challenges in Brazil.

transformation is essential for the deeper abilities of ‘seeing’ and sensing.”

“I saw a more complex, larger and more delicate food chain than I had understood before.”

“The [Brazilian] government structure for agriculture, with agrarian reform independent of the Ministry of Agriculture, is interesting. This raised lots of questions about how fully segmented the sectors were [agribusiness and family farms], how the ministries reinforce market segmentation, as well as some mixed feelings of pride and cynicism. Did this structure support or serve to structurally isolate the family farm sector?”

Team members reported both questioning and seeing more clearly their own mental models as a result of their experiences on the Learning Journeys. Many remarked on the fact that frequently after a visit to a business, cooperative, or government agency, Lab Members would report remarkably different observations. An example is the list of team observations after a visit to a small farmers cooperative:

Hard working Very political Not sustainable Very sustainable Needs to modernize Needs time to mature Is an excellent model

“I am still amazed that this number of people can look at the same thing and see something so different, and every perspective is valid. It doesn’t help me. I find it still confusing. There is so much I don’t understand about other perspectives.”

The final exercise of each Learning Journey involved constructing a synthesis of the whole food system out of the observations from the Journey. The specific question team members addressed was: “What are the key aspects of the ‘DNA’ of the whole food system that you saw this week?”

Team member responses to the DNA question:

“One of the central things is policy…we should shift from an ag policy to a food policy.”


“I think we need to identify the boundaries of the system – where does it end and where does it begin?”

One group reported two major insights from the synthesis session: (1) a policy shift is needed in the Food Lab from ‘agricultural policy’ to ‘food policy,’ and (2) there are multiple agricultural logics at play within the global food system. There was broad agreement within this group that diversity is a desirable characteristic of the food system and that the multiple logics that exist within the global food system should be preserved.

Another group noted its observation of a twospeed food system—one serving local markets and one serving international markets, with many differences necessitated by that distinction. For example, the group discussed the possible opportunity for local markets to address distribution and poverty issues. In addressing international markets, one member suggested the Lab focus on creating a change process that is complex enough to reflect the intricacies of the food system itself.

In the ‘DNA’ reflections, many team members pondered the role and importance of scale in thinking about sustainability in food systems. For example, the concept of mainstreaming, one of the articulated goals of the Food Lab, caused some team members to reflect on the possibilities and implications of scale in relation to what is sustainable. What will ‘mainstreaming’ look like at each level of the food system, and how will that occur?

Many on the Lab Team remarked on the profound nature of the shared experience of the Learning Journeys. Several appreciated how the Journey challenged their previous understanding of the food system. Others welcomed the opportunity to connect to an “experience” of the food system rather than an “understanding” of it. Most Lab Members were moved by the opportunity to know others in the Lab more personally. In each Learning Journey group, members reported deepening trust and respect for one another even as there were many opportunities to explore very different interpretations of experiences.

“The very notion of ‘family farming,’ merits reflection. What definition corresponds best to our concerns? Is it size that is important, the way the holding is organized, or the way it fits into the food chain and the market (local, international)?”

“Agriculture of two speeds is a reality everywhere. The two speeds may best be thought of as serving local markets and international markets.”

“We are not addressing distribution and poverty issues – we ought to.”

“Solutions? A possible outcome could be a process. My focus is on creating a process that is complex enough to generate solutions that are as complex as the reality we are trying to change.”

“How can we make the biggest difference possible? Is ‘biggest difference’ and ‘mainstreaming’ the same thing?”

“What do we mean by mainstreaming sustainable systems? Does that mean scaling up initiatives like APAEB, or is it clustering small successes, or finding replicable solutions that can be scaled up?”

“When I went through the learning journey reports, the main thing I saw emerging was more confusion, which I think is good. I think that for now it makes me feel comfortable.”

“I had the wonderful experience of connecting in a very different way with people on the Learning Journeys.”

“I don’t know if you have noticed it –


we have formed some sort of boundary around us. Going into breakfast [our first gathering after the Learning Journeys] it was like seeing a family gathering.”

Innovation Retreat

The Innovation Retreat formed the nexus of the U Process in the Food Lab: it opened with the final stages of the cosensing phase, contained the copresencing experience, and ended with the initiation of the co realizing phase. Movement through these experiences can be intense, chaotic, and unsettling, as well as inspiring, grounding and energizing. Team members reported all those reactions to the experience of the Innovation Retreat.


“I am thinking about the book ‘Presence’ and aspects of this U Process and I’m feeling a real upheaval going on. It’s an interesting and uncertain and kind of wobbly feeling.”

The fiveday retreat was organized in three distinct, yet interdependent, segments. The first two days focused on synthesizing the Learning Journey experiences, brainstorming possible initiatives, and developing criteria for selecting initiatives. This segment was followed by the 48hour wilderness solo, introduced and facilitated by Brian Arthur. The final two days of the retreat involved refining and choosing five Innovation Initiatives which would be the focus of the Food Lab for the remainder of the threeyear project

“I’m living in two worlds – from the world of business and commerce, I approached this with a fair amount of skepticism because this sort of process just isn’t done, nor does it work, nor is this possible. Then you land here and all of a sudden you realize, ‘Well, maybe it is possible.’ So the place itself changed my sense of what can be done.”

PHASE ONE: COSENSING, GATHERING EXPERIENCES

In the Foundation workshop, team members had frequently expressed the desire to get to the “doing” phase of the Food Lab as soon as possible. In this second workshop, the team wrestled with deciding what to do and how to do it.

On the afternoon of the first day of the Innovation Retreat, team members brainstormed preliminary ideas for potential Innovation Initiatives. Although some ideas immediately garnered much interest and support, the list


“I am curious how the process is going to deliver concrete projects to work on out of such complexity and confusion. I feel extremely calm about it and I feel extremely committed that we are going to do something.”


of ideas in its entirety gives a feel for the challenge of narrowing the field to four or five commonly championed initiatives.

1. Find a means of exchange, other than the current monetary subsidies, that could support farmers in the U.S. without creating a ripple effect on farmers in developing countries.

2. Look at both production practices and trade policy across different countries focusing on entry points (where “entry point” is the low price received by the majority of the farmers of the world).

3. Focus on institutional food buying, particularly through public procurements. Put pressure on the food supply chain by improving the way in which public food procurement is done. Use that as a vehicle to educate consumers.

4. Focus on keeping the origin of production present in the labeling of all products.

5. Focus on fishing practices, working on better Code of Conduct agreements and linking those Code of Conduct agreements to consumer choices.

6. Define and solicit membership in some sort of system or process of continual improvement toward more sustainability or more sustainable practices.

7. Create a Hatchery for Leaders in Sustainability. 8. Create a Business Coalition for Sustainability. 9. Develop a Sustainability forum like the World

Economic. 10. Create better information about price and activity

along the supply chain. There is a market distortion issue that could be addressed with policy and information.

11. Develop systems to allow local producers to tap into large national distribution systems.

12. Focus on the market: develop credit and price discovery.

13. Focus on the technological linking of the information that allows a small production unit to go big.

14. Focus on a brand equity. 15. Develop food policy councils made up of the

“We want to see whether it is possible to think of models and to think of changing of systems that can work out for the benefit of all because in the end sustainable production and sustainable consumption it’s all about development for people.”

“I think number seven [the hatchery for leaders idea] is kind of mission critical; and I understand it doesn’t have a lot of very practical appeal, but it’s only because we’re not thinking longterm. Number seven could be the epicenter for trying to really think through who the next generation of sustainability leaders is going to be; and how we can leverage existing infrastructure; help in leverage existing projects to do that. So, I say number seven is at the heart of the food lab; it cuts across all the projects. There isn’t a project here that shouldn’t be thinking about leadership.”

“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.”


people or citizens living in a number of targeted regions.

16. Define under what conditions the global community will accept the necessity of sustainability.

17. Develop and implement a global certifications scheme for sustainable food—a global food policy.

18. Coordinate strategies to shift consumer mindset about food.

19. Reproduce something like European cheeses and wines, with a regional protected identity for smaller, disadvantaged producers in an area that had some market appeal.

20. Pick a globally traded commodity and negotiate the standards.

21. Develop financial incentives for nonfood products from farms.

22. Create an International Youth Corps on sustainability, like the Girl Scouts.

23. Develop ethical standards for business like the British “Race to the Top,” and develop those standards within the corporate world of business.

24. Create conscious consumers, focusing beyond preaching to the converted to deal with the gap between people’s intentions and actual behavior.

25. Research making branding sustainability successful. Enlist top advertising and marketing experts and explore current opportunities to brand products.

“We are not choosing, just getting a sense of the possibilities. We will filter out the fluff.”

As the team grappled with the sheer quantity and breadth of initiative ideas, creating criteria for evaluating the proposals became crucial. The discussion of how to choose initiatives built on the shared aspirations from the Foundation Workshop regarding indicators of progress: the “triple bottom line” of social responsibility, environmental stewardship, and financial returns. The question the group now faced was what additional criteria, beyond alignment with these indicators, would help them select Innovation Initiatives that might have the potential to shift the food system.

One suggestion was that the team look for those initiatives that were of interest not only to those in the


“You don’t have to have the answers for everything that needs to be done to solve this problem. In fact, if you did, it might not be an interesting enough idea.”

“One point of leverage [is that] this cuts across any commodity. It’s not commodity specific.”


room, but to other partners as well. Another was that the initiatives be projects that needed the unique contribution of the Food Lab Team and that the work be “within reach” of the Lab. While some team members were energized and enthusiastic about the potential of the latter idea, given the range of influence of the actors represented in the Lab, others expressed a sense of needing to widen the reach of the Lab in the following months as the work of the initiatives takes shape.

More than once, team members said that finding the leverage in the system was essential in one way or another for an initiative to succeed. At various times team members contributed a number of definitions for leverage.

“I’m just thinking of the possibility of changing the buying habits of a corporation like that could be big leverage in the U.S.”

“If there’s something latent and you need to do little to unleash it, that’s leverage.”

Team member comments on criteria for choosing innovations:

These and other suggestions generated much dialogue and interest within the Lab Team, resulting in the formation of a crosssectoral subgroup to further develop the criteria for selection. The subgroup discussed a number of ideas, including the importance of measurable impacts and the need for replicable rules or outputs, so that each project could enhance the overall potential for learning. The idea of crossboundary projects attracted much enthusiasm and was further refined to mean that the most interesting projects for the Food Lab would be ones which included at least one company, civil society, and one government agency, as well as both stakeholders in the system and “stick holders,” by which the team meant those who end up with the short end of the stick. There was general agreement that crosscontinent projects would also be of most interest to the Lab.

At the end of its deliberations, the subgroup recommended to the full Lab Team that in choosing the final initiatives the following characteristics of initiatives be considered particularly valuable:

• Impact • High leverage • Create learning • Synergies • Attractive to partners we think we need • Cross boundaries

“All these initiatives should be about trying stuff out in the real world, but the arguments should be: if it worked, what would the impact be? How many people, acres, dollars, minds will be effected?”

“We want to see not just all three sectors but the stakeholders [involved], including not only the powerful players in that particular system, but the stickholders: people who have the short end of the stick – there’s the stakeholders and the stick holders.”

“What about attractiveness? The point has been raised several times that unless most of the existing participants are really behind this, and unless this is of interest to other players, we won’t succeed in having the impact we say we want.”

“Ideally the things that end up having the highest impact or the highest leverage for this group have to reflect all three [sectors and continents]. So, I support that we have to have partners from all three sectors and from all three continents.”


The comments of many team members indicate that they saw a synergistic effect between these criteria. Many articulated the idea that the projects would have significant leverage if their impact was considerable, and that they would have higher impact if they created learning opportunities across projects. Some suggested that the unique potential of the Food Lab lay in the crosssectoral relationships, and the projects should capitalize on that.

This idea generated momentum and enthusiasm as members spoke of the possibilities presented by the diversity of food system actors in the Food Lab with sufficient influence in business, environmental and social sectors to create projects which would cause simultaneous intervention at multiple points in food systems. They noted that the synergistic potential of this strategy is geometrically larger than is obvious when examining the individual points of leverage.

“What else would need to happen for this to work? None of these activities by themselves in any of those single areas might be enough. What is the combination of activities that together could add up to real leverage?”

“I hope to be able to ‘connect the dots’ between the good emerging solutions that are around and try to reinforce these emerging solutions into a mainstream agricultural food chain which I think is probably the biggest challenge of this century.”

“What struck me about the process in this room is that it seemed to me the perfect balance between excitement and frustration; and out of that balance usually something is born.”

PHASE TWO: COPRESENCING, WILDERNESS SOLO

What is Possible?

From the beginning, there have been differing views regarding the potential of the Food Lab to impact the food system. In the Foundation Workshop, some team members voiced the belief that there was potential for compelling and previously unimagined breakthroughs. Others, though less convinced of such a possibility, nonetheless voiced confidence that the Food Lab could achieve significant systemic change by the less dramatic, but from their point of view equally effective process of connecting existing initiatives.

The second phase of the Innovation Retreat specifically addressed this question of “What is possible?” through an exploration of creativity, innovation, and discovery as they relate to the potential to address seemingly

Team members in Foundation Workshop:

“This project has the potential for a breakthrough like we’ve never seen before in our work, and that is the creation of such compelling and successful prototypes that they attract more attention, more resources and more energy than any of us in this room can imagine.”

“I expect us to share an experience that will change the rest of our lives, and through that experience find the breakthrough that we all would like to see, that we’ve all committed to just by our presence here.”


intractable problems.

Brian Arthur, one of the pioneers of the new science of complexity and the first director of the economics program at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico, joined the Food Lab for this second phase of the Innovation Retreat. He shared his own work in creativity, economics, science, and business, with an emphasis on what he had learned in integrating that experience with wilderness solo retreats. Brian is familiar with the U Process, having been involved in the early conceptualization of it. He described the creative process as consisting of three stages consistent with those in the UProcess:

1) Observe, observe, observe 2) Retreat to a place from which inner knowing can

emerge 3) Act swiftly with a natural flow

He positioned the wilderness solo as corresponding to the second of the three stages. He explained that the “Presencing” part of the UProcess provides an opportunity to retreat and reflect, creating a deeper space out of which new thinking and action can emerge.

The wilderness solo experience began at noon on the third day of the Innovation Retreat. Guides led team members, carrying backpacks of clothing and food, into the rocky foothills of Mount Hopkins to individual campsites. Each campsite contained a tent, sleeping bag, and supply of water. The team members were advised to maintain silence and remain within 50 feet of the tent. The weather was clear and warm, with night temperatures dipping to freezing. The campsites in the desert environment were visually isolated from each other, though many team members reported seeing native coatimundi, musk hogs and openrange cattle.

Around 9 AM on the fifth morning of the retreat, after Lab Team members had spent two days and nights alone in the mountains, the guides retraced their steps, collecting participants and leading them back to the base camp where they gathered on an open hilltop in silence. Brian Arthur broke the silence, reminding the group that

Adam Kahane:

“I was very keen for Brian Arthur to be with us this week because he can help us with our work through two areas of his experience: (1) world class work in creativity and innovation in science, economics, and business; and (2) wilderness solos. He’s thought probably more than anybody in the world about how these two might be related.”

Brian Arthur comments:

“Creativity seems to come from somewhere that’s a lot deeper than logic.”

“If you want creative things to happen, cram your mind with stuff and then rest your mind, let it cook, let it simmer.”

“So, maybe let’s go deeper because what this team is trying to do is change a system and do that in a breakthrough way – in an innovative way [that] requires creativity.”

“What a lot of this takes is courage; and I commend all of you from my heart for joining a group like this because the courage is symbolically like going out into something that’s still unknown and in the wild. It’s wild…and I’m not talking about safety here, I’m talking about the unknown. By taking a step into the unknown, you’re taking this step that allows that sort of creativity.”

“What happens on the solo is that just being out there brings you into a deeper part of yourself and no one seems to know why. And that continues. I’m struck by the fact that


the effects of being out in nature alone often emerge slowly over days and weeks and even months. He invited people to share any part of their experience which seemed meaningful at that moment. The feeling in the group on the hilltop as participants spoke was one of quiet, gentle directness and openness.

The following are samples of the reflections of team members at the end of the solo wilderness experience:

whenever I’ve done this, maybe two weeks later, three weeks later, something falls in place – two or three months later I’m still feeling effects from that. It’s almost as if some things have gotten unlocked that need to be dealt with over time.”

“I truly listened to birds for the first time. I saw rabbits. I did the best yoga ever. And I was afraid of the night. I realized connection is most important to me. Alone does not work for me.”

“If you bend down, I found, you can see new things and things live there, out of your normal path of experience. You can’t always manage to look at things in life that way. I could bend down and see a whole different, vibrant life existing beyond my experience.”

“You often don’t see things that are there. Are we looking for the wrong things?”

“I was calmed by doing nothing.”

“Time had no meaning for me. I was surprised not to miss my cell phone, but I didn’t. I saw something new each time I focused on something in nature.”

“I had two experiences that stand out. I got into a space of thinking that the world right now is like a wolf herding sheep. I was overcome with all the danger caused by humans. The other feeling was deep thanks. I became aware of all kinds of things happening we don’t see. I watched the very last star disappear this morning into the light of dawn. I was very aware that it is still there, but I don’t see it. There are hidden things in each of us that blaze out, like that star.”

“Our place in history affected me deeply and unexpectedly. I was camped in what was once a village with foundations of various sizes and shapes all around my tent. I thought about the thriving community which was once here and I was very sad.”

“I didn’t think of the Food Lab at all. I looked in. It takes courage to visit your self from within. Who am I? What is needed of me? I saw two shooting stars, in parallel paths and I was completely amazed and excited until I realized it was actually the flight path of some airplane. You see what you


want, and I decided not to stay with the truth (flight path) but to remain thinking it was two shooting stars.”

“I thought about 3000 years ago—people trying to save the hunters and gatherers. Are we on a similar path?”

“I found that the ordinary becomes extraordinary. And then it goes back to being ordinary.”

*******************************************************

Two people shared dreams of births, which seemed significant to some who connected the dreams with the concept of the Food Lab birthing the Innovation Initiatives. In both dreams, the dreamer was surprised to find him or herself delivering a baby in a tent. In both dreams, the baby and mother were healthy, and the dreamer was unsure what to do in the aweinspiring moment of birth.

One unexpected event during the wilderness experience bears recounting because of its effect on the group. On the afternoon of the second day, the silence was broken by two black helicopters which rose from behind Mount Hopkins and flew back and forth over the campsite area, low enough for team members to observe uniformed men studying the tents on the ground. The helicopters disappeared as suddenly as they had materialized and the ridges and valley returned to the quiet of natural sounds. Team members reported markedly different reactions to this event when they gathered the next morning at the end of the solo experience.

The European team members generally assumed the helicopters were on a rescue or assistance mission of some kind and reported feeling reassured by the experience, jarring though the interruption seemed. The North Americans generally assumed the helicopters were searching for illegal drug runners, or Latin Americans illegally crossing the boarder. They reported mixed feelings of both unease and of being protected. The Latin Americans assumed the helicopters were from the Immigration and Naturalization Service and were tracking illegal immigrants. They reported feeling fear, intimidation, deep sadness, and compassion for the people who were the objects of the search.

“An image that was really strong for me was the reactions to the helicopter. It was so easy for me to just assume they were there for our safety. I felt the effects of things I know intellectually, but that brought it home very, very poignantly: how our different experiences shape our reactions to events so, so strongly. So, that’s an image I’ll carry for quite a while.”


The earlier experience on the Learning Journeys— learning to listen to different perspectives and being open to exploring differences—may have contributed to the attitude of curiosity and interest with which team members approached the very different reactions to the helicopter saga. No one tried to establish one perspective as reality. Rather, there was general acceptance that what may have been protective action for one was a threat to another. This reflects a reality in the food system which has become starkly evident to this group: that something which benefits one sector or part of the food chain can be a threat or challenge to another.

“The certification standards, they are necessary, completely needed for sustainability, but they generate unsustainability. I don’t know how to resolve the problem that we do need the standards; we do need certification, but when we create certifications and we create standards, we work against the small producer.”

PHASE THREE: COCREATING, CHOOSING INITATIVES

The final twoday segment of the workshop began as the team reassembled after the wilderness experience. Many team members commented on the sense of calm determination in the group after the wilderness camping experience and expressed confidence that this group was uniquely capable of the work that was needed in the food system.

One member of the team characterized the feeling in the group as stillness. Others remarked on a feeling of good heartedness and convergence. Many became aware of a new level of commitment and energy. Others commented on the focused high energy of the group as it dove into the challenging work of selecting initiatives that could shift food systems toward greater sustainability.


“I think, because of the trust that has been building, it’s been much easier for me over the last several days to truly understand the intricacies of this project, as well as the body of good will that’s forming. And my belief is that that good will and that trust not only is strong, but is up for the challenge.”

“Energy in the group has shifted to stillness and good heartedness. It is a much stiller group that came back.”

The tangible work of the last two days of the Innovation Retreat involved refining and choosing Innovation Initiatives that would be the focus of the Food Lab for the remainder of the threeyear project. By the end of the fifth day, the team had reduced the list of twentyfive ideas from the first day to nine. Each of the nine was broadly defined and incompletely developed, and each was distilled out of numerous proposals.

“I came into this meeting with a lot of doubt about the process—about outcome, certainly, and about relationships, honestly. I leave with all those doubts converted into energy and direction and purpose and passion.”


The plenary session of the final day of the Retreat opened with marked dynamism. One team member described a vivid dream of taming wild horses. Another reported a sleepless night filled with images of team members “selling” their innovation ideas. Another described chaotic trains of thought revolving around how to move through the transition phase into implementing these projects. Others reported not getting much sleep as a result of thinking about a crucial point or an insight about the power of change, or worrying about how to accomplish the exciting, significant innovations that were emerging. There was a sense of momentum in the room, accentuated by excitement, anticipation, disquiet and determination.

In the end, having brought forward initiative proposals— each with the potential for significant leverage, impact, synthesis, learning and crosssector outcomes—team members voted with their feet by indicating which initiatives they were personally willing to colead or otherwise commit to.

The initiatives that were chosen had germinated from seeds planted in the earliest plenary sessions. Each was enriched and changed through much iteration. Generally, ideas and innovations were influenced by the earlier group work on indicators of success, information about the work already being done in each area of innovation, the amount of time and resources individual Food Lab members were able to commit to the work involved, and the degree to which the initiative had potential for leverage in the food system.

Several team members remarked on the ease and swiftness that characterized the final deliberations of the Lab Team. Each initiative was only loosely defined at the time of this writing, with the expectation that further definition and prototyping was essential for determining the parameters and focus of the work. Below is a brief description of each of the five Innovation Initiatives and the two Exploratory Initiatives. A more complete list, as well as an explanation of the initial proposed scope of each initiative, can be found in Appendix B.

“I thought a lot last night and was actually a little bit worried because now I think we’ve identified some great projects and some things that we can really do. I was thinking, (1) how do I convince my company to support these, and (2) how do I find the time – I mean, I’m already working 60 hours a week – how do I find the time to get or to help anybody get anything done? And now the work begins, and that scares the hell out of me.”

“Robert Browning said, ‘A man’s reach should exceed his grasp.’ I think we really are grasping beyond ourselves and there’s quite a lot of fear about whether we can deliver. I think the biggest insight I got was about innovation building on other things that already exist. I think there’s a big desire to create something really, really new and it’s a bit of a disappointment that all the projects are building on things that already exist. My big insight is: delivering incremental projects with a whole is something which hasn’t been done and it is a big innovation.”

“I was very concerned, up until a couple of days ago, that we wouldn’t make it; and then when it happened, it happened, in my mind, rather quickly. I mean, things just started popping and we got to this point pretty quickly and that was just amazing.”


Initial Innovation Initiatives:

• Access to Markets by Small Farmers in Latin America. Goal: To improve the livelihoods of family producers through innovative market structures and infrastructure investments.

• Regional Food Supply to Schools and Hospitals. Goal: Create demand for food with better taste, nutrition, and cultural identity by building regional relationships between institutional buyers and local sources.

• Business Coalition for Sustainable Food. Goal: Build a coalition to drive more sustainable practices in a manner that brings economic sustainability.

• Commodities and Investment. Goal: Institutionalize buyer and investor screens for major commodities to drive international adoption of better social and environmental practices.

• Framing. Goal: Develop new framings through which mainstream citizens can connect their values to sustainable

Exploratory Initiatives:

• More Sustainable Fisheries. Goal: To improve market access for responsible small fishermen and develop a sustainable model for aquaculture.

• Democracy and Citizens. Goal: To strengthen democratic citizenaction for sustainable food

“If we could invest and bring all our energies onto these five things we think we can shift the future of the food system.”

Two innovation areas that had been discussed at length by the full Lab Team were eventually integrated into

“What about a certifications scheme for sustainable food relating to


other initiatives rather than being defined as individual, independent projects. The first was termed Community Brands, creating sustainable food brands owned by the communities where food is sold. This was seen by many as creating the possibility to leverage advertising and promotion, generate critical mass and economy of scale, focus on hunger and poverty by creating links to community, and leverage excess manufacturing capacity.

The second was described in the plenary sessions as A Greenhouse for Leaders. The idea of developing the capacity for and commitment to responsible leadership throughout the food system was seen as having the potential to be catalytic, and generative, but hard to quantify. The Food Lab was cited as one form of a “greenhouse,” but the team noted that this idea needed to be developed through work with specific businesses, foundations and civil society representatives involved in the Innovation Initiatives. Team members recognized that any work directed toward this effort would connect and substantially increase the impact of any other initiative.

branding and labeling? We as a group could develop something. It could include economic and social analysis of value and compensation in the food system. Looking at all of the different values that there actually are in the food system that are right now not being recognized: What are those? What are the differences? Who’s getting profit and credit? Who isn’t, and how do we rebalance that?”

“What are the real points of significance? It is all about people because people have taken the challenge of leadership to move things forward. If we could find a way of unleashing more embryonic leaders to be real leverage points within their own areas and leverage points between leadership groups up and down the chain, across countries, then you have something extremely powerful, extremely powerful.”

Germination of Innovation Initiatives: Two Case Studies

Tracking the development of Innovation Initiatives is interesting both for the strategies that were discarded or incorporated elsewhere and for the synergies that contributed to the final chosen initiatives. The two case studies presented below offer a glimpse into the creativity and range of thinking that contributed to the development of the final list of chosen initiatives.

“I think the projects are not perfect, but the whole idea of prototyping is you get it out there and you work on it. These will not be the final projects. We have more work to do on them and then more beyond that.”

Case Study One: Food Service

The ideas that coalesced into the Food Service Initiative were first brought to the group at the Foundation Workshop. In the opening introductions, one member explained his interest in the Sustainable Food Lab as

Team member comments regarding the idea of a Food Serviced Initiative:

“On a business level we are very


being grounded in a corporate concern regarding the longterm prospects for largescale procurement of products from small and midsized farmers for distribution to institutional and restaurant suppliers.

Later, during the Sustainability Indicators exercise at the Foundation Workshop, institutional purchasing behavior was listed as one indicator of a more sustainable food system. At this point in time, the interest was in tracking the number of institutions committed to buying sustainable food, with the assumption that an increase would indicate a shift in the food system toward more sustainability.

concerned that we will not have access to the products that we need to service our customers in the future. We see the small and middlesize farmer’s numbers decreasing day by day and, frankly, they are the ones that are offering the variety and specialty products that we need to offer to our customers for their consumers. So, I think this is very important for our industry and for our future in that respect.”

The Learning Journey experiences touched directly on the relationship between large food distributors and small local producers, although the idea of leveraging institutional buying as a strategy to move the system did not specifically emerge in the reports of any of the three Journeys.

“In Learning Journey two we saw a lot of what I call the ‘big’ players: a large food distributor along with commodity cooperatives dependent upon the export market. Juxtaposed with that, we visited small farmers, not doing so well, not really players in the global food system. Can our Food Lab impact both levels of operation?”

On the opening day of the Innovation Retreat, Lab Team members contributed the idea of institutional food buying to the very first brainstorm of Innovation Initiatives. At that time the idea was presented as having great potential to improve the way public food procurement is done and as a vehicle to educate consumers about more sustainable choices.

“Focusing on institutional food buying, particularly through public procurement, could put pressure on the food supply chain by improving the way in which public food procurement is done. We can think of using that as a vehicle to educate consumers. This is an area where there seems to a lot of potential.”

As an interested group of Lab Team members discussed the leverage of focusing on institutional buyers, the scope narrowed to developing standards for food procurement for government, military, and health care institutions. The team considered several strategies, including making clear the costs of unsustainable choices, creating traceability indicators, and developing a reward system.

“…First when the idea was posted, ‘institutional’ wasn’t even there. It was food buyers, and then that was such a broad range we reduced it, and then we decided to exclude retailers and really talked more about institutions as defined as distributors, government, military and institutions…This is about creating traceability with indicators, and addressing risks – and perhaps it may include a reward system for


experimental opportunity.”

After the wilderness solo, at least one team member offered additional ideas about the potential for the Food Lab to focus on food buyers. This person reiterated the importance of local food production, and suggested that a significant shift in the food system might come from adapting already existing prototypes.

“… the message that came very clear to me on the solo was about the importance for food to be consumed as close to the site of production as is possible. Rather than recreating something new or reinventing a wheel, we might be able to adopt [what is already being done] as a prototype. Particularly facilitating connections of all the food buyers within a region, so it pulls in the institutional buyers…I think it’s very doable. This group could do it.”

“Your point was that the innovation was about addressing institutional food service, right? It’s not about the regional identity of the food as such at this point.”

During the last two days of the workshop, as the list of potential initiatives was being narrowed from twentyfive to nine, there was talk once again of the importance of focusing on the flow from production to consumption, specifically looking at key institutional buyers who are perceived as having the greatest leverage. Interested Lab Members refined the focus further, considering the following issues:

•Target audiences

•Developing and implementing sustainable screens for institutional procurement

• The pros and cons of a strategy of regulation vs. a strategy of incentives

•Rewarding improvement

•Minimizing the risks to producers in such a system

•Using a unified brand

•Applicability of Green Purchasing Programs already

“We identified target audiences; one was the end institutional buyer. Another target would be parents, as it relates to working with schools. We were talking about the flow from production to consumption and looking at key institutional buyers who have the greatest leverage. We talked about needing sustainability screening— looking at social, economic, environmental and nutritional elements. Another target [was] the alternative health food supply chain. We had discussion around regulations versus incentives as creating motivation…building this business case. We identified factors like efficiency, bottomline, transaction costs, etc. Some of the limitations that we identified:

•would there be enough supply of sustainablyproduced food?

• low prices—a risk to producers in the system.

We talked about a need to try to spread the risk over the whole system—that’s not where most of the


in existence in many governments in the E.U.

•Determining whether there could be sufficient supply

In the last hours of the Arizona retreat, the team members most interested in investing further time and energy on the Food Service Initiative defined the work as:

“Creating more sustainable food services. Building regional relations in food service and local sources through taste, nutrition, environment, cultural identity, and economy.”

risk is today, and that would be a limitation and a challenge…and the overall complexity would be a limitation that would have to be addressed.”

Case Study Two: Commodity and Investment Initiative

The idea behind the Commodity and Investment Initiative was first mentioned in Bergen, although initially Commodities was one focus and Investments was another. Both were seen as examples of high leverage intervention in the food system.

During the opening remarks of the Foundation Workshop, at least one Lab member mentioned commodityspecific round tables as one method or approach the Food Lab should consider. In the Indicators of Success session, the idea of incorporating social and environmental benefits of production into the field of commodity markets was proposed by more than one team member as an example of a possible project that could shift mainstream food production toward more sustainable practices.

Team member during Foundation Workshop introductions:

“We need to make the business case for sustainable commodity agri production.”

Lab Team comments:

“Commoditiesspecific roundtables. There are at least halfa dozen different ones on specific commodities. We’ve got a business case analysis of how you work in field commodity markets, and for me success would be to identify two or three major commodities where we could actually mainstream these ideas and incorporate the values of production, the values of the environment, and of society. That’s to me what success would look like because those would be the cases that we’d use to multiply across different systems.”


At various times throughout the Food Lab events, team members wondered whether there were ways to link trade policy work, countryspecific production conditions, fisheries, and international certification programs with an initiative focused on commodities.

“Another area where there was real potential was to look at some kind of international agreement, such as sugar where there are real tensions between Brazil, the E.U., the U.S. Is there a way to begin to look at Brazil’s desire to export more, the internal production conditions of sugar, the issues of production of sugar inside the E.U. and the U.S.? Could that be one of the areas which we could look at— both production practices and trade policy across those different countries?”

Eventually, a group of Lab members organized around developing an initiative based on the commodity roundtable concept. This idea has a fiveyear history, stemming from the work of a group from the World Bank National AquaCulture Centers that focused on making shrimp aquaculture more sustainable. The process of the World Bank group created a prototype that is beginning to be adopted by other commodities. The proposal for a Food Lab Initiative was to adopt this prototyped roundtable process for other commodities, using the crosssectoral connections in the Lab to support this strategy.

“The idea of the commodity work is to bring together people from business, producer groups, civil society organizations, NGO’s and environmental groups, researchers and government to discuss the social, environmental, and economic impacts of specific commodity production systems around the world, with each group focusing on one. Then to look at what areas we have agreement about, disagreement about, and areas where we don’t have information about what those impacts are. We know that no more than six to eight impacts for any commodity cause 80 percent of most people’s concern, so the focus of this work is on six or eight topics, not on a laundry lists of impacts.”

“It’s really very strategic; the groups have gotten agreement very quickly on those six issues. The idea then is to look at what better practices actually reduce those impacts to acceptable levels, and which of those better practices are already being used by 10 or 20 or 25 percent of producers.”

“These groups are not interested in identifying ‘perfect,’ but rather in looking at ‘better’ and improving the system through that. The goal is to come up with principles, criteria and


then measurable standards around each impact to develop thirdparty certification for producers, but also for buyers to use in the absence of formal certification programs and for investors to use as a way to screen their own projects.”

The idea to link commodity roundtables with a financial or investment process was introduced by one Lab member on the final day of the Innovation Retreat. This team member cited the current example of the sustainable palm oil roundtable discussions, which include two financial institutions, as a possible model for the Food Lab work.

“The people who are drawn to the roundtable for sustainable palm oil are growers and processors. Only two banks until now have signed up for that initiative. By putting the finance in the fast food community behind the commodity initiative or the commodity initiative behind the financial community—it doesn’t matter which way your turn it—you create a link that is actually needed. You have to realize, over 90 percent of the tonnage of production, land use, and money is in commodities. We’re talking about incredible amounts of money and incredible amounts of material.”

At the same time that the commodity work was being developed, the highleverage possibilities of working with financial incentives and investment screens became quite compelling to the Lab Team. The finance group took a bottomup and topdown approach to finance strategies, and laid out three project options:

•Supplying/creating microcredit at the bottom of the food chain,

•Developing productionpractice screens (for example: practices which protect the environment and social systems) for financing commodities in the middle of the food chain, and

•Developing financial screens which define sustainability or sociallyresponsible investment at the top of the food chain.

“I’m interested in markets and [the] psychology of the markets…as a bank we don’t want to be financing businesses or projects that are clearly unsustainable. We spend a lot of time recognizing what is unsustainable in terms of environment and development. We recognize that in finance, winning businesses will be sustainable [and] will grow, and financial institutions [will] understand, recognize and make profits in that field.”

Report of the group interested in a Finance Initiative:

“We’ll start with the bottomup, which is getting microcredit to farmers who can’t get credit. Micro credit schemes in places where people need finance is meaningless if it’s not linked to commercial production markets, upstream


Of these three projects, only the development of commodity investment screens was included in the final five Innovation Initiatives. However, essential aspects of the microcredit schemes were integrated into the Latin American Family Farmers Initiative.

In the final day of the Innovation Retreat, the Finance and Investment Screens group and the Commodity team proposed merging for the greatest leverage and impact.

At the end of the Initiative Retreat, the goal for this initiative was defined by the team as:

“Create a common framework for more sustainable commodity production, resulting in buying and investment screens and focusing on:

• Identifying and agreeing on social and environment impacts

• Identifying and analyzing better management practices for smallmediumlarge producers

• Developing thirdparty certification programs • Producing highquality products • Measurably improving practices”

opportunities. So, when you look at microfinance, you have to think about linkages, contracts with companies who can sell either locally or into export markets, and those contracts can also create risk mitigance to lenders. If you look in the middle there’s

traditional bank finance—finance to industry, including lending to farmers. We think there’s potential to get practice screens for financing commodity flows, which could be tied to the commodity initiative. The Equator Principles for Project Finance are the environmental principles that investments must meet if they’re to be financed. There’s some potential scope we ought to look at to make sure that the right sorts of things are being done there.

And then if you look at the top of the food chain, there’s an increasing interest in what we call Socially Responsible Investments. There is good potential to work with some of the asset managers in food and agri business on developing financial screens which define sustainability or sociallyresponsible investment. You’d make it much more tangible and clear for the people doing the investment and investors. The people who really aren’t producing the sort of goods you want in terms of SRI would over time attract less favorable capital treatment.”

“The finance group feels there’s relevance to other subjects, but we agree that it makes sense to group the finance work in one project where there’s greatest leverage. I think what we can do is bring a lot of value to all the initiatives, but where we can deliver the most leverage and create the biggest impact is with commodities.”


TRUST –RELATIONSHIPS – COMMITMENT

While the tangible outcomes of the Innovation Retreat were accomplished through an intense and energetic exchange of ideas, the development of less visible dynamics was also essential to the process. For some, personal and interpersonal changes were as significant as the development of the initiatives. A number of team members reflected in their closing comments on the role of commitment, trust, and respect in enabling the profound changes which they felt were critical to the Food Lab’s longterm potential to shift the food system.

“I’m remembering the first description of the Food Lab where you said you were looking for leaders who were frustrated…I’m now very excited to be able to work on things that I have been working on for many years and now finally I see a possibility for progress.”

In comments and reflections on the Learning Journeys, in the Innovation Retreat, and on the wilderness solos, team members described profound change on several levels:

•personally,

• interpersonally between members of the Food Lab,

• in relation to the institutions and businesses where they work, and

• in their sense of the potential of the Food Lab to affect system change.

The synergy between these various areas of change created remarkable momentum and enthusiasm for the work ahead, which will carry through as the Food Lab Initiatives develop into concrete projects.

“For me the innovation will not necessarily be in the ideas. The innovation will be if together we can change the reality. The innovation has to do with commitment.”

“This has actually been an amazing process in relation to building trust within the group.”

“It amazes me that you can take a group which has been doing individual things to some extent and be able to build such a huge amount of trust. As I remember the people coming to Bergen were quite polarized in their view, which has solely disappeared during this week.”

On a personal level, team members spoke of feeling changed by experiences during the Food Lab. Many could not articulate exactly the meaning of the change, but indicated that something significant had shifted personally for them. Some spoke of a feeling of possibility. Others spoke of getting in touch with things that sustain them.

“On a personal level, I don’t know really what it means yet, but there’s a line at the end of ‘The Journey of a Magi’ by T.S. Eliot which says, basically ‘the kings went back to their own countries but were no longer happy in their old dispositions,’ and I think that’s what I’m feeling now.”

“On the one hand, as a whole systems thinker and doer and as a


father of two children, I believe much more in the possibility of making a real change. I think that this Food Lab can make a real change in the food system. I believe that much more, and as a consequence of that my personal motivation as part of this thing is to see where I can really make contributions has increased.”

“I’m also even more impressed by the approach and the process because, to be honest, I was in the beginning a bit skeptical about it – also about the solo. But it works. I don’t think I yet understand fully why it works, but it works.”

“You have given me the possibility of widening my horizons. I have looked at a compass but I still can’t get my bearings in personal terms.”

“I got back in touch with things that really are nourishing for me both personally and in terms of work.”

The interpersonal dynamics within the team were also palpable. As several team members related in their closing comments, in the early days of the Food Lab there had been skepticism about the potential for the team to work well together. For many, this had entirely disappeared by the end of the second Workshop. Team members cited the Learning Journeys, the shared enthusiasm and commitment to work on the innovation projects, and the wilderness solo as contributing to their sense of connection to other members of the Food Lab.

In the opening comments of the Arizona Retreat, several team members who were known for their ability to articulate the intricacies of the food system remarked on their own newfound sense of comfort with a feeling of chaos and confusion coming out of the experiences of the Learning Journeys. Hearing that openness to learning and to questioning stronglyheld assumptions contributed significantly to the respect and openness in the group.

“The challenge for me [was] in understanding that we are different and this is very good…this is not a bad thing. This is the best thing that we have because we are different; and in our strong support and our strong opposition we respect each other.”

“This has actually been an amazing process in relation to building trust within the group.”

“I like the way the process, including the Learning Journeys, has been put together to allow our humanness to come out, and build trust.”

“I’ve heard it called ‘trust’ and ‘respect,’ but I’ve just got to say, I’ve experienced a deepening love for all of you. I feel like I’m part of a family here that has a very tremendous


Several team members expressed increased confidence in the both the UProcess and in the balanced, evenhanded facilitation by the conveners of what could have been a biased, advocacy approach to the work of the Food Lab. A number of team members expressed appreciation for the transparent nature of the process for developing the innovation initiatives.

thread of love passing through it, and that’s a very special gift. That’s a huge shift for me.”

“I learned some things on my solo. I heard a lot of words as I was meditating on my solo and those were connectedness, and hope, and respect.”

“If you remember, in our first workshop my question was, how you will handle the tension between openness—which is essential for building trust, and trust is totally necessary for us to deliver—and some necessity of steering. I know that among people of the Secretariat there are people with strong views about the subject we are dealing with and I admire the fact that today the process remains totally open and, in fact, the projects were framed by the group.”

Along with deepening sense of connection and trust between individuals, the level of commitment—both personal and institutional—intensified over the course of the Learning Journeys and the Innovation Retreat. The impact of seeing and feeling increased ownership for the work of the Lab created momentum in the team. This was supported by the recognition that the members of the Food Lab bring with them a vast set of networks, influence, and power in the food system. As team members expressed their individual determination and sense of responsibility for the initiatives, excitement built around the potential of the combined influence of the many institutions and actors represented in the Food Lab.

The image of a bridge was important for several team members. One described the Food Lab process as having bridged the divide between NGOs, environmentalists, and businesses. He suggested that system change toward sustainability would be inevitable if a similar bridge were built between those interests within the wider food system.

“Although I’ve always been confident about the possibilities of the project, I have also been anxious about whether it will be realized. I must say that now that I’ve seen the output of this week, I’m happy. What has changed most is that I can see now much more clearly how we as a company can look at this process and all the arms of it and take that into our innovation work.”

“Brian used the image of Indiana Jones stepping out over a chasm and having the bridge shoot out just as he stepped, and it feels like that now – it seems like we’re all in unison stepping out and expecting the bridge to come… and I’m quite sure it will.”

“In terms of .the concept of bridge …my initial aim [in joining] this group was to make you organic [types] understand how important it was to nourish people. Through their brilliant methodology [the conveners]


Brian Arthur described the need for belief or faith in the creative process by evoking the movie of Indiana Jones stepping out into a chasm in order to reach the Holy Grail, believing that a bridge would mysteriously appear under his feet. Several team members referred to this image as representing the trust required within the Lab Team as commitments to the Innovation Initiatives were made.

have not permitted me to do so and that’s why we are building something together. Now I see that we from business or industrial agriculture have the same aims as the NGO’s, but we are so entrenched in our arguments that we [have] kept apart. Imagine if we could create a bridge in the entire system as we have been able to create a bridge here and encourage cooperation. We see the aims are common. The speech is different but if we could bridge them together it could change things.”

In terms of team members’ sense of the potential for the Food Lab to enact system change, many spoke about their own shifting perceptions of the ability of the Food Lab to influence the global food system. For the most part, team members admitted that they had joined the Food Lab because they were intrigued by the possibilities it offered, but were initially at least moderately skeptical that this group could agree on a course of action or enact substantial system change.

In the closing remarks of the Innovation Retreat, Lab team members referred to a sense of having the right people in the room. They also expressed confidence that the initiatives could shift the system—in particular, because the initiatives addressed multiple leverage points in the system, and they built on the synergies created by individual, institutional, and crosssector commitments among the Lab Team.

Several expressed confidence regarding the significance of the potential for the initiatives to mobilize regional production capacity, incorporate social justice work, or develop what one termed a “cultural leverage point.” A number of people noted a heightened sense of the magnitude of the work ahead and of their responsibility to that work.

“I believe that this work is beyond any of us individually.”

“We are figuring out how to look a new way at innovations and also whole systems – how do we actually begin to identify and work within whole systems? I think we’re learning right now how complex it is – really more complex than I thought.”

“I’m hopeful. The right people are in the room to make something great happen.”

“Despite getting a big sense of all the work we have to do, I feel much more relaxed about it because when I get back I’ll have this sense that I’m part of this much bigger effort.”

“I had my doubts about this U Process. But I have seen the capacity to change in the lab. I go with a much greater degree of responsibility facing what I have to do, and at the same time looking at opportunities to mobilize regional capacity to change in food systems.”

“I’ve been sitting here just admiring how much sheer knowledge is in the room—you’ve different specialties, different experiences, but the


collective memory here is staggering.”

“We can develop a cultural shift that values what we believe is needed. How? Through a cultural leverage point: developing an inclusive movement that shifts the culture into valuing food. Our group was fairly emphatic that this largescale change was possible and could really click this sustainability thing along much faster.”

Beyond the personal, interpersonal, institutional and systemic changes, an unmistakable sense of excitement emerged over the course of the Innovation Retreat. Several team members remarked on the level of energetic focus among the Lab Team after the wilderness solo. Quite a few spoke of newfound confidence that the Lab Team could enact concrete implementation of the innovations as well as capitalize on the synergistic potential represented by the Lab Team circles of influence.

The question remains, however, how this team will make the most of the unique crosssectoral influences and networks that exist in the Food Lab in enacting the Innovation Initiatives.

“It’s very exciting because you’re about to grasp the thistle of really trying to do something, and that’s really exciting for me to see.”

“Taking the time to create confidence, trust and to create a level of commitment is very important. I very much appreciate the process to take the time— not to try, in the first meeting, to have the commitment of action.”

“The buzz in the open space after the solo of everybody running around caucusing in small groups, and the amount of creativity and excitement and fun we were having was exhilarating. I want to be there in that space together more often.”

“The challenges you take on that you feel you’re not quite sure you can deal with are the ones that really make you grow.”

CLOSING REFLECTIONS

The closing comments of participants in the Innovation Retreat include many references to an initial skepticism that grew into admiration and profound appreciation— both for the overall process of the Food Lab, as well as


for the level of trust, respect, and commitment that developed among members of the team. Many refer to a sense of optimism and enthusiasm for the work ahead.

Closing Team Member reflections:

“I think we can come up with a lot of recommendations, a lot of things to help solve a lot of these problems, but it’s going to be quite a change. It’s going to require change on the part of big business. It’s going to require change on the part of the small family farmer and everybody in between, and that’s going to have to happen, and I think we have to have trust to get to that point.”

“I think that the solo was actually very important…dragging us screaming into it – to focus and to center. One of the things it’s made me realize is I’ve spent years planting seeds and now I see that there are lots of other people that have been planting very similar seeds, and it’s time to figure out which ones to tend and which ones to bring to maturity and which ones to cut down. I think we’ve made a good start here, and the challenges before us are to figure out how to be supportive and mentoring within this group, in addition to outsiders, and how to begin to find connections between the issues. We’ve spent a lot of time focusing on each of them, and I think over the next six months we need to begin to see linkages between them.”


APPENDICES

Appendix A

Lab Team Members, Executive Champions, Advisors and Secretariat

November 2004

Executive Champions Antony Burgmans, Chairman, Unilever, Netherlands Pierre Calame, President, Charles Leopold Mayer Foundation, France Wout Dekker, CEO and Chairman, Nutreco, the Netherlands Walter Fontana Filho, President, Sadia, Brazil Richard Foster, VicePresident, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, United States Bart Jan Krouwel, Managing Director Sustainability and Social Innovation, Rabobank, the

Netherlands Joost Martens, Regional Director, Mexico and Caribbean, Oxfam GB Eugenio Peixoto, Secretary of Agrarian Reform, Ministry of Agriculture, Brazil Gerrit Rauws, Director, King Baudouin Foundation, Belgium Mark Ritchie, President, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, United States Richard Schnieders, CEO, SYSCO, United States Paul Trân Van Thinh, Former Ambassador of the European Union to the World Trade

Organization Roland Vaxelaire, Director of Quality and Sustainable Development, Carrefour, France

Lab Team Members Johan Alleman, King Baudouin Foundation, Belgium Arie van den Brand, former Member of Parliament, the Netherlands Pedro de Camargo Neto, Sociedade Rural Brasileira, Brazil João S. Campari, Director, The Nature Conservancy, Brazil Juan Cheaz, Regional Policy Coordinator for Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean,

Oxfam GB, the Dominican Republic Jason Clay, Vice President, Center for Conservation Innovation, World Wildlife Fund, United

States Osler Desouzart, Consultant, formerly with Sadia, Perdigão and Doux Frangosul, Brazil Meire de Fatima Ferreira, Sadia, Brazil Laura Freeman, President and CEO, Laura’s Lean Beef, United States Gilles Gaebel, Carrefour, France Rosalinda Guillen, former farm worker and leader in the farm worker movement, United States Oran Hesterman, Program Director, W. K. Kellogg Foundation, United States Eugene Kahn, VicePresident for Sustainability, General Mills, United States Panayotis Lebessis, Economic Analysis and Evaluation, DG Agriculture of the European

Commission Karen Lehman, The Minnesota Project/Adaptive Leadership, United States Theresa Marquez, Marketing Director, Organic Valley Cooperative, United States Neyde Nóbrega Nery, Executive Director, Assocene Associação de Orientação das

Cooperativas do Nordeste, Brazil


Frank van Ooijen, Public Affairs Director, Nutreco, the Netherlands Henk van Oosten, Innovation Network, Ministry of Agriculture, the Netherlands Frederick Payton, University of Georgia and farmers’ cooperative, United States and the

Dominican Republic Bjarne Pedersen, Consumers International, United Kingdom Larry Pulliam, Senior Vice President, SYSCO, United States Elena Saraceno, Policy Advisor to the President, European Commission, Belgium Peggy Sechrist, Texas farmer, President, Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group,

United States Maureen Silos, Executive Director, Caribbean Institute, Suriname Bruce Tozer, Managing Director, Structured Trade and Commodity Finance, Rabobank

International, United Kingdom Pia Valota, Alliance of Social and Ecological Consumer Organizations, Italy JanKees Vis, Sustainable Agriculture Manager, Unilever, the Netherlands Bernd Voss, Vice President, Arbeitsgemeinschaft bauerliche Landwirtschaft, Germany Pierre Vuarin, Charles Leopold Mayer Foundation, France Marcelo Vieira, farmer and board member, Brazil Specialty Coffee Association and Sociedade

Rural Brasileira, Brazil

Lab Advisors Sylvia Blanchet, CEO, Forestrade Frank Dixon, Managing Director, Innovest Carolee Deuel, VicePresident, Research, Quality and Technology, Kellogg Corporation Ron Dudley, President, Cargill Specialty Canola Oils Marsha Echols, Professor, Howard University Maryline Guiramand, Manager, Sustainable Agriculture Initiative (SAI) Platform Fred Kirschenmann, Director, Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State

University Tim Lang, Professor of Food Policy, Centre for Food Policy, City University London Hannes Lorenzen, European Parliament Helio Mattar, Founder and President, Akatu Institute for Conscious Consumption, Brazil Eric Olsen, Patton & Boggs, former chief of staff to US Secretary of Agriculture Glickman Nicanor Perlas, President, Center for Alternative Development Initiatives, the Philippines Aromar Revi, Director, TARU, India Peter Senge, Senior Lecturer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Founder, Society for

Organizational Learning Gus Schumacher, Consultant to the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and former Under Secretary of

Agriculture, USA Woody Tasch, Chairman and CEO, Investors’ Circle Kelly Taylor, Manager New Ventures, John Deere Global Ag Services Division Bill Vorley, International Institute for Environment and Development, United Kingdom Roberto Waack, President, Orsa Florestal, Brazil Mark Wenholz, Market Development, Pioneer HiBred International Zhang Xiaoshan, Director, Institute of Research and Economic Development of Rural China,

Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

Lab Secretariat Brian Arthur, Presencing Faculty Hal Hamilton, CoLead Zaid Hassan, Process Documentation Adam Kahane, CoLead

http://www.akatu.net/


Joe McCarron, Solo Guide Grady McGonagill, Process Documentation Tom Rautenberg, Partnership Development Alison Sander, Partnership Development Don Seville, Research Andy Sillen, Development Susan Sweitzer, Learning History Susan Taylor, Meeting Production and Presencing Faculty Alain Wouters, Facilitation


Appendix B Food Lab Prototype Initiatives

November 2004

At the Food Lab Innovation Retreat five major Innovation Initiatives and two additional exploratory projects were defined and selected. Each is presented here in the very embryonic form achieved in the Retreat and each is expected to change substantially through the rapid cycle prototyping work of the teams following the Innovation Retreat. While each of the initiatives is focused on intervening at a specific place in the system, the innovation teams will intentionally look for opportunities to directly link the initiatives and to share learning about changing systems.

1. Link sustainable food production from Latin American family farmers to global markets

2. Deliver highquality nutrition from regional farmers to schools and hospitals 3. Build a business coalition for sustainable food 4. Create sustainability standards for food commodities and related investment screens

for food companies 5. Reframe food sustainability for citizens, consumers, and policy makers 6. Increase the sustainability of fish supply chains 7. Strengthen democratic citizen action for sustainable food

Commodities & Investment Institutionalize buyer and investor screens for major commodities to drive international adoption of better social and environmental

practices

Access to Markets by Small Farmers in Latin America

Improve the livelihoods of family produces through innovative market structures and infrastructure investments

Regional Food Supply to Schools & Hospitals

Create demand for food with better taste, nutrition, and cultural identity by building regional relationships

between institutional buyers and local sources

Framing Develop new framings through which mainstream citizens can connect their values to the sustainable agriculture

Business Coalition for Sustainable Food

A coalition to drive more sustainable practices in a

manner that brings economic sustainability

Democracy and Citizens

Develop a model of Citizen Food Councils

that bring the voice of the poor and disadvantaged into the food system

More Sustainable Fisheries

Improve market access for responsible small

fishermen and develop a sustainable model for

aquaculture,


Link sustainable food production from Latin American family farmers to global markets Small farmers in Latin America and the Caribbean will prototype access to high end markets.

The purpose of the sustainable livelihoods initiative is to connect family producers with highend markets in the United States and Europe and thereby to leverage investments in infrastructure, credit, and technical assistance.

Likely areas of innovation for this initiative include developing contracts between food companies and family producers that would establish market access, enabling national governments and international agencies like the World Bank to provide focused credit and technical assistance to promote and enable high quality production and more sustainable practices for those participating farmers. Crops with the potential for this kind of innovation include fruits, cocoa, and palmetto.

Leaders: Eugenio Peixoto, Secretary of Agrarian Reform in Brazil’s Ministry of Agrarian Development; Juan Cheaz, Oxfam GB’s Regional Policy Coordinator for Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean; and Frederick Payton, farmer and cooperative leader in the Dominican Republic, as well as a faculty member of the University of Georgia.


Deliver highquality nutrition from regional farmers to schools and hospitals Schools and hospitals will provide much better nutrition and nutritional education through contracts with regional producers.

The purpose of the Sustainable Food Services initiative is to build regional relationships between food services in schools and hospitals in identified regions, and food suppliers to those institutions, with the intention of increasing the commitment to and amount of regionally grown food available in that chain. The goals are to change public behavior with regard to appreciation and preference for food which is has a positive impact on the local environment, decreases obesity in the local population, and increases public awareness of hunger issues in the local community. The regions currently targeted are Minnesota and Texas in the US, and Paris, France and Italy in the European Union. The initiative will be market driven and include the possibility of regional branding. Beyond the business model, the initiative will work with schools on curricula development about cultural identity, environmental and economic impacts in the local community, obesity, hunger and an appreciation of the nutritional and quality enhancements of locally grown foods.

This initiative will involve State Departments of Agriculture in the US, institutional food suppliers in the US starting with SYSCO in MN and TX, the Italian pilot projects already underway, school and hospital food services in the Paris, France area. The current plan is to implement this strategy with initially 5 dialogues of 8 participants along an institutional supply chain in each geographic area with the goals of:

• Identifying and recruiting regional initiative partners • Planning a locally appropriate strategy for the initiative • Collecting and analyzing the European experiences in this arena • Developing a learning journey to Italy to experience prototypes in that region • Mobilizing partners in Europe and the US.

Initial leader of this initiative will be Pierre Vuarin of the Charles Leopold Mayer Foundation, France; Karen Lehman of The Minnesota Project/Adaptive Leadership, United States; and Peggy Sechrist a Texas farmer and President of the Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group, United States.


Build a business coalition for sustainable food Leading businesses will test how to shift the whole agrifood industry toward direction of sustainability.

The overall purpose of the prospective Business Coalition is to drive improvement in the social and environmental performance of food and agriculture in a manner that brings all stakeholders economic sustainability. The founding group of Lab Team members tentatively described a coalition of at least 20 major food companies, including large and small food manufactures/producers, distributors and operator customers. Potential participants include General Mills, Unilever, Sadia, Laura's Lean Beef and the Organic Valley Cooperative. In addition at least one Food Distributor such as SYSCO and operators such as Darden's, Brinker, McDonalds, Wendy's and others. Their purpose would be to spread the objectives of sustainability in the business models of participating companies. Colleagues from government agencies and civil society, like WWF for example, will be invited to advise and support the effort.

The initial leader of this initiative is Larry Pulliam, Senior VicePresident of SYSCO Corporation. Meire de Fátima Ferreira, from the Brazilian food company Sadia, volunteered to colead the initiative. Eugene Kahn, VicePresident for Sustainability, General Mills; Theresa Marquez, Marketing Director, Organic Valley Cooperative; and Laura Freeman, President and CEO, Laura’s Lean Beef, will also be involved.


Conventional Organic

Much better practices

Create sustainability standards for food commodities and related investment screens for food companies Cuttingedge commodity supply agreements and investment screens will prototype a “third way” for the bulk of global food supply.

The purpose of the commodities and investment initiative is to create a common framework for more sustainable commodity production that will be leveraged into buyer and investor screens for responsibly produced commodities. Initiatives exist for several commodities (e.g coffee, palm oil, cotton, cocoa, soy) which have all been shaped by their various histories, markets and stakeholders. The C&I initiative will investigate existing commodity initiatives and try to develop generic learning from those. Elements on which existing initiatives will be screened include whether the initiative does:

1. Identify and agree on social and environment impacts 2. Identify and analyze better management practices for small, medium, and large

producers that are appropriate for each region of production that improve social and environmental performance while maintaining or improving product quality

3. Include barriers to market access for small producers 4. Develop streamlined 3rd party certification programs 5. Build the BMP based certification into buyer and investor screens 6. Leverage the buyer and investor screens to promote voluntary producer adoption

and measurably improve practices

This general commodity initiative is intended to build on existing commodity specific forums by promoting a common approach to buyer and investor screens and by facilitating learning between the specific commodity efforts. In addition, the initiative will structure a “meta commodities dialogue” to address barriers and opportunities that cut across commodities and to create a forum for stakeholders to address better management practices for the many commodities that don’t currently have existing stakeholder dialogues.

The initial leaders of this initiative are JanKees 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. Others who volunteered to be part of this initiative include: Henk van Oosten, Innovation Network, Ministry of Agriculture, the Netherlands; João S. Campari, Director, The Nature Conservancy, Brazil; Marcelo Vieira, farmer and board member, Brazil Specialty Coffee Association; Meire de Fatima Ferreira, Sadia.


Reframe food sustainability for citizens, consumers, and policy makers Carefully designed and tested messages will connect sustainability branding and political information to the core values of typical people.

The purpose of the Framing initiative will be to develop new mental structures through which mainstream citizens and consumers connect their core values and behavior to principles and practices of sustainability. This “framework” to communicate sustainability will be available for brand marketing, political issue campaigns, and civil society organization messaging.

The group will hire one firm, or a U.S., a European, and a Brazilian firm, to identify key themes and common messages. The first tasks, therefore, include scouting different approaches and firms as well as sharing experiences from market research, outreach programs and public campaigns. Food Lab team members have already identified several different such experiences to research and share.

The initial leaders of this initiative are: Oran Hesterman from WKKellogg Foundation, Johan Alleman from the Belgian King Baudouin Foundation, and Meire de Fátima Ferreira from the Brazilian food company Sadia. Others involved in the early stages are Laura Freeman, CEO of Laura’s Lean Beef; Rosalinda Guillen, a Hispanic community organizer; Bjarne Pederson of Consumers International, Gilles Gaebel of Carrefour; Neyde Nóbrega Nery, Director of an association of rural cooperatives in Northeast Brazil.


EXPLORATORY INITIATIVES

Increase the sustainability of fish supply chains Sustainable aquaculture and sustainable indigenous fishing systems will receive market and regulatory support.

The purposes of the fisheries initiative are to gain access to better markets for responsible small fishermen in Africa and Latin America; develop a sustainable model for aquaculture, including in China; and contribute information for consumer education campaigns on challenges to the sustainability of fisheries.

The initiative team intends to involve several different companies in the harvesting and marketing of sea food, the World Fisheries Forum, WWF, ICSF, and ISECO.

The initiative is led by Pierre Vuarin from the Charles Leopold Mayer Foundation in Paris; Gilles Gaebel from Carrefour. Henk van Oosten from the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture is also part of the initiative team.

Strengthen democratic citizen action for sustainable food Citizen Council organizing will test how to involve the poor in food system transformation.

The purpose of this exploratory initiative is to develop a model of Citizen Food Councils which leads to a change in the food culture and reaches out to the poor, the disadvantaged and the working poor. The impact of this initiative will be to develop democratic dialogue and participation on the future of food systems at the regional level that leads to action and change in production, consumption, marketing and distribution with five projects in each of the following regions: Brazil, US, Europe and Mexico.

The implementation of this initiative will be a two stage process with initial exploration around the development of the model for bringing together concerned citizens from a cross section of a local community to identify local initiatives. The councils are currently imagined to include:

• Building links between business, production, and civil society organizations • Monitoring process (benchmarks) • Collective learning processes • Empowerment

The second stage of this initiative in intended to multiply experiences and disseminate information. Specifically the initial Citizen Councils and the initiatives developed by those councils will serve as examples for other regions and provide learning models for implementing changes. The goals for community impact include:

• Improve capacity of stakeholders to dialogue about change in culture • Create better jobs for workers in the food system • Close the loop in the Food Chain (negative feedback)


• Develop a variety of implemented initiatives from Councils

The initial leaders of this exploratory process are: Bjarne Pedersen of Consumers International, United Kingdom, Neyde Nóbrega Nery, Executive Director of the Assocene Associação de Orientação das Cooperativas do Nordeste, Brazil, Rosalinda Guillen, former farm worker and leader in the farm worker movement, United States, Johan Alleman, King Baudouin Foundation, Belgium; and Peggy Sechrist, Texas farmer, President, Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group, United States.


Appendix C

Sustainable Food Lab Meetings

• Foundation Workshop: June 13, 2004. The team begins to construct a shared map of the current reality of the system, based on varied perspectives and experiences and identifies areas for further research and learning. Location: Bergen, the Netherlands.

• Learning Journeys. Trips organized around learning agendas developed in the first workshop, designed to help the participants learn about the system by observing it (and other relevant systems) first hand. Location: Brazil.

• Innovation Retreat: November 1420, 2004. The team will synthesize observations from learning journeys, construct a set of food system innovations, crystallize visions of the future that they want and believe need to come forth, and identify strategic leverage points for shifting the systems towards this vision. Location: near Phoenix, Arizona, USA.

• Design Studio: from 16:00 Monday April 4 through Thursday evening April 7, 2005. The kickoff for the Innovation Initiatives. Executive Champions are invited for the whole session or from 18:00 on Wednesday April 6 through the evening of Thursday April 7, 2005. Location: Salzburg, Austria.

• MidCourse Review: November 811, 2005. This session is to review, support, and develop the projects identified in Salzburg. Location: EARTH University in Costa Rica.

• Venture Launch: May 31June 1, 2006 (Executive Champions June 1 only). The Lab Team, the Executive Champions, and other interested parties will review the results from the nowcompleted Innovation Initiatives, and decide which ones will be continued and taken to scale. The group will determine how this will be accomplished, with what resources and by which institutions. Executive Champions are invited for the whole session or from 16:00 Wednesday May 31 until 17:00 Thursday June 1, 2006. Location: New York City, USA.

Documents

THE INNOVATION RETREAT - Reos Partners