Category Archives: food

Learning to be, vs. learning what

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One of the concepts that is capturing my attention more lately is the relationship between identity and learning. Everyone looks to intrinsic motivation to drive new learning — but rarely do people focus on identity as the key. It’s the difference between learning to cook, and learning to be “a cook.”

The reason I am noodling this at the moment is I am working through the best way to help The Talking Farm find a scalable model to do more urban, organic farming in the local area (Evanston and Skokie, IL). I really think there is something in providing people with a motivational identity to achieve — urban organic farmer, apprentice farmer, urban foodie — that has local meaning and cache. More to come…

Policy and Practice: A reading of Michael Pollan

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If you are like me and educating yourself on the systems underlying our un-sustainable behavior, reading Michael Pollan is an exercise in making the complex more approachable. In particular I am thinking about Pollan’s most recent piece in the New York Times Magazine, An Open Letter to the Next Farmer in Chief.

First of all I admire Pollan’s ability as a writer. But his most important skill, I think, is in expertly crafting a narrative that helps us get at two important things:

1) A model — a way of thinking about a complex issue that is profoundly simple, and powerful in the way it helps guide us in a productive direction. “We need to wean the American food system off itsheavy 20th-century diet of fossil fuel and put it back on a diet of contemporary sunshine.” Think about the power of the idea behind that model of thinking. What if we evaluated all of our food policy decisions on the basis of “does it increase or greatly accelerate our use of sunshine as a primary energy source?”

2) The link between policy and practice (and by “practice” I mean things that people actually do to get something done). A lot of what Pollan writes about in the “Open Letter” piece is a compelling story linking the establishment of policy and the resulting behaviors and practices.

On the latter point — the link between policy and practice — what I like most about the way he writes about it is that he appears to have a healthy respect for the ability to understand the power behind crafting policy. As with anything that is a powerful tool, it can be good, bad or confusing. Good policy moves us forward (ok…there is judgment behind what “move us forward” means…it requires a point of view…) — but in the end, good policy takes current context into consideration and good policy crafters have an understanding that context changes and therefore policies may run their course.

Read Pollan’s piece to understand the importance of look at our entire food production chain as a key issue in sustainability. But also read it as an example of deeply understanding the power of good models and good policy.

A target market of "people who eat"

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I am assisting in the start-up of an organization in my home city — Evanston, Illinois (a neighboring suburb of Chicago) — to establish an urban, organic farm within the city borders. “Sustainable food supply” is one of the work streams of innovation that I’ve identified as resulting from socially-responsible business thinking, and the work I am doing with the start-up provides insight into some of the mechanics of innovation.

I will continue to write case study snippets as the organization evolves, but here is a bit of background and some current insights:

  • In the U.S., “local organic” is the improvement on the growing marketplace for organically grown food. Illinois is a prime example. It is a state with a very large agricultural economy — but only 3% of the food consumed by people in the state is actually produced in the state. Which means there is unnecessary environmental cost associated with transporting and storing food as it moves from faraway producing areas to local stores and markets. It also forces an economic preference for large, mass-production farms at the expense of smaller, family owned farms. (For an insightful analysis of this issue in Illinois, see Feeding Ourselves: Strategies for a New Illinois Food System)
  • There are a wide number of groups and small organizations working to address this issue. The city of Chicago has organic farms within its borders. Not-for-profit organizations are supporting in-city markets for more locally grown food products. And retailers like Whole Foods and Wild Oats are helping consumers identify which food products are “local.”
  • Evanston’s effort to establish an urban organic farm is being led by a set of volunteers (with some notable experience and expertise). It is a self-organizing effort involving interest in food policy, organic production, sustainable practices and healthy living.

What we have is an incredibly dynamic system of players, trying to figure out a model for success. It is being organized primarily through networks of relationships, rather than a central organizing system. And in the process, people must shift their mental models — a first step in innovating.

An example from my own experience: In a discussion with Evanston volunteers about how we might successfully build a start-up business that has a chance of being sustainable as a business, we began talking about target markets. One of the volunteers — a food policy activist who is in large part the conscience of the organization — had a look on her face that suggested she was processing the question because it simply did not fit her policy/activist mental model. “Our target is people who eat,” she said.

She of course is right. And it is statements like these that challenge the business-minded participants to shift to a more effective model for social change.