System Thinking the Driftless Area
July 1, 2009
We are part of a rather large consortium coming together to think through economic and social development in the Driftless Area, about 24K square miles missed by the last glaciers crossing four state lines. For the past two days we have had meeting with different stakeholders. To help us stay on the right path, we brought in two “world-class” system thinkers, Richard Karash and David Stroh from Boston.
In the course of the conversations they brought in sound bites that were new to me. Glocal is understanding the global food system to make better decisions about local. Fail, Forward, Faster- means not everything is going to work but keep going- faster.
What a beautiful, diverse region the Driftless area is and so adapted to perennial crops-apple trees, hazelnuts, aronia, etc. With the demand for “local” soaring, it seems that agriculture needs to “gear-up” to the opportunity. But as we stripped away, we realized that when these products go out of the area “wholesale”, none of the value-added stays in the communities and there is only minor economic benefit. But when locals and tourist come to the farms and buy direct, the full economic benefit stays in the community. One farmer suggested instead of a “Farm to School’ programs, we should have “School to Farm” programs and maybe we would get new farmers.
The trout fisherman bring in more that a billion dollars a year purchasing rooms, meals , gifts and supplies. The Driftless Area Initiative has done a wonderful job of creating maps and materials to brand this region as a destination. http://www.driftlessareainitiative.org/ Organic Valley sits nearly centered in the Driftless. I think both opportunities- retail and wholesale- will increase together as the Driftless is “discovered” and there is a lot of organizational capacity working in unison to help make that happen.
