A black background features an abstract outline resembling the Earth at its center, with bold, vibrant flowers blooming within. Beneath it, overlapping circles in various colors create a dynamic, layered foundation. By Yeti Iglesias via Unsplash+
“Food for us comes from our relatives, whether they have wings or fins or roots. That is how we consider food. Food has a culture. It has a history. It has a story. It has relationships.”
Winona LaDuke
This past week, I had the opportunity to co-create and curate with my colleague Karen Spiller the first ever “food justice track” for the national conference hosted by The Privilege Institute (TPI) in Hartford, Connecticut. TPI has long been committed to helping people understand the systems of supremacy and oppression that continue to harm and marginalize growing numbers of people and our more-than-human kin, and to supporting “solutionizing” our way forward through diverse collaborations. As participants in and presenters at past TPI conferences, and as co-stewards of the Food Solutions New England’s Network’s equity leadership efforts, Karen and I were grateful to be invited by TPI founder Dr. Eddie Moore, Jr. to host this track on food systems and what they have to do with just, sustainable and thriving communities. And we are very thankful for the generous financial support provided by the RWJF Special Contributions Fund of the Princeton Area Community Foundation for this work.
Our track featured five sessions intended to ground people in historical and current impacts of efforts to control food, land and water in establishing caste systems and hierarchies of human value, as well as to highlight more humane, dignified and eco-logical alternatives for our collective food future. Our flow of offerings included workshops focused on:
“The Love Ethic” and Work for Food Justice, facilitated by Karen Spiller and yours truly under the auspices of both Food Solutions New England and the Interaction Institute for Social Change.
Right Relationship Across Race, Ethnicity, Gender, Class, Age, Geography and Sectors, hosted by Noel Didla and Liz Broussard Red of the Center for Mississippi Food Systems.
For a larger version of this food systems map, go to this link.
“If you really want to make a friend, go to someone’s house and eat with them. The people who give you their food give you their heart.”
Cesar Chavez
There was a lot of engaged discussion in and across the sessions, and a common commitment to creating spaces that could hold complexity and honor the multiplicity of our individual and collective selves (one definition we offer for “love”). Along the way, what surfaced was the power of focusing on food to help people understand more about where we are as communities, a country and world, and how we might move forward together. A few related reflections:
Appreciation was expressed in several sessions for helping participants understand food as a system. For even considerably educated people, the complex networks that bring food to our plates can remain largely invisible. Whether we are talking about farm/fisheries inputs, production, aggregation, processing, distribution, eating, or resource recapture, there is an amazing and diverse array of players and interactions providing us with our daily meals. This awareness can be empowering and help us understand that the daily choices we make as eaters really matter, and that some of us have fewer choices than others.
In most of our sessions, we invited people to consider and share stories related to food. Our experience is that this is always connective in a number of different ways. As a species we have long had shared stories around meals, such that there is much about eating that can bring to mind memories of various kinds. Through our work with Food Solutions New England, we have been encouraging people to share stories of joy related to food, which anyone can do through this “joy mapping” link. Even when memories around food are painful, feeling seen, validated and perhaps understood when we share them with others who have had similar experiences can be very helpful.
For some people, the notion of “food as medicine” was very eye-opening and inspiring. Nutritious food that is not simply caloric can be a balm for our bodies and spirits. The way we grow food can help heal the Earth, especially when we adopt regenerative approaches, including agroecological techniques. When we share a meal, it can bring us closer to one another and even heal divides or advance respect for and understanding of one another. And because food is intimately linked to culture, when we reconnect with and reclaim our food traditions and share them with others, it can be tremendously restorative.
It was also very eye-opening for people to understand that the dominant food system we have in this country is grounded in a legacy of colonialism, the plantation economy and extractive approaches that have repressed people’s foodways and controlled their diets. This continues today in many rural and urban communities where grocery chains and “dollar stores” owned by those from outside those communities import overly processed foods (bypassing local producers and more nutritious options), offer low-paying jobs often with challenging working conditions and extract profits from those communities. Furthermore, continued consolidation of food-related enterprises means that the rich keep getting richer while everyone else fights for scraps.
“Eating is so intimate. … When you invite someone to sit at your table and you want to cook for them, you’re inviting a person into your life.”
Maya Angelou
The good news is that there is much we can do as eaters, community members, voters and caring people to support food systems that promote equitable wellbeing and connect us to what matters most in life. This is what we pointed to in each of our workshop sessions, and that we will once again do through the annual Food Solutions New England 21-Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge, which starts on April 7th and for which IISC has been a core partner since its launch in 2015. The Challenge is free and open to all, and requires registration to receive daily emails and links to many resources focused on how we can build a “bigger we” for the more beautiful world we know is possible. There are also opportunities to be in virtual community with others participating in the Challenge. You can find more information here.
P.S. We have been invited to replicate and expand the food justice track at next year’s TPI Conference in Seattle, Washington. Stay tuned for more updates.
“Food is strength, food is peace, and food is freedom.“
John F. Kennedy
Want to learn more about the power of networks? Join us for Feeding Ourselves: Networks, Data and Policy for Just and Sustainable Food Systems, a live webinar on October 30, 2025, from 12 – 2 pm ET. Register here.
A couple of months ago we had a meeting of the Food Solutions New England Network’s Process Team, and we spent part of our time checking in around our perceptions of where the network is heading in its next stage of development. For the past 8 years, FSNE has moved through a series of stages that have roughly correspond with the following:
Building a foundation of trust and connectivity across the six states in the region as well as across sectors, communities and identities.
Facilitating systemic analysis of the regional food system, which resulted in the identification of four leverage areas where the network sees itself as poised to contribute most: (1) engaging and mobilizing people for action, (2) connecting and cultivating leaders who work across sectors to advance the Vision and values, (3) linking diverse knowledge and evolving a new food narrative, and (4) making the business case for an emerging food system that encompasses racial equity and food justice, healthy food for all, sustainable farming and fishing, and thriving communities.
Developing and beginning to implement a set of systemic strategies to encourage the continued emergence of this values-aligned regional food system, including a narrative and messaging guide; food, farm, and fisheries policy platform; set of holistic metrics to gauge the state of the regional food system; and people’s guide to the New England food system.
With greater intricacy and diversity in this network of networks, the Process Team talked about the work of the next several years as being the following:
Continuing to support foundational connectivity and alignment
Moving from rooting to branching by creating more visible actions and assets beyond the underlying connectivity and alignment
Cultivating a “brushfire approach” where, through greater density and diversity of connection, information and calls to action are spread in more timely ways
Making the periphery more of the norm, by moving from just bringing people into the network to making sure we support their aligned efforts “out there”
Moving from “seeding thoughts and cultivating commitments and leaders” to “managing the whole garden,” including supporting a growing team of people who are committed to creating conditions in the region for the Vision and core values to be realized
Creating “bake boxes” that can readily be used and adapted by people and organizations in the region (examples include the regional Vision, the core values, the recently endorsed HEAL policy platform, a soon to be launched narrative/messaging guide, racial equity design toolkit and discussion guide, etc.)
Calling B.S. on those who are “Vision and values washing” (saying they are aligned but acting in contrary ways) or are off point – see for example these recent letters in response to a Boston Globe editorial.
Catalyzing critical conversations, including partnering with others in the region hosting important events (such as the upcoming Cows, Land and Labor Conference at Dartmouth College)
“We are the living conduit to all life. When we contemplate the vastness of the interwoven network that we are tied to, our individual threads of life seem far less fragile.”
From the start, we and our partners at FSNE (including the backbone team at the University of New Hampshire Sustainability Institute, the FSNE Ambassadors, and members of the FSNE Process Team) knew that the main value of any kind of leadership development program would be in the people that came together and the relationships they built with one another. From there, we were interested in creating opportunities for those involved in the program to cultivate connections with other values-aligned change agents in the region. In addition, we looked at giving people an experience of different and diverse places in our region (rural, urban, coastal) and to see their work in a regional context. Lastly, we wanted to offer an opportunity for participants to hone their skills as collaborative/network leaders and equity champions.
Here is our working and ever-evolving definition of network leadership:
Network leadership operates from the understanding that connection and flow is fundamental to life and liveliness and that the nature and pattern of connection in a system underlie its state of health (including justice, shared prosperity and resilience). Network leadership strives to understand, shift and strengthen connectivity; facilitate alignment and resource flows; and create conditions for coordinated and emergent action in the direction of greater health and belonging at different systemic levels.
“We never know how our small activities will affect others through the invisible fabric of our connectedness. In this exquisitely connected world, it’s never a question of ‘critical mass.’ It’s always about critical connections.”
Grace Lee Boggs
As referenced in a previous post, the Food Solutions New England 21 Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge wrapped up about a month ago. This was the fourth offering of the Challenge, which was a remixed and enhanced virtual network form of an exercise created by Dr. Eddie Moore (founder of the Privilege Institute) and Debbie Irving (author of Waking Up White). A small design team of which I am a part originally saw the potential of using the Challenge to invite more widespread conversation about the connection between race, racism and sustainable food systems and ultimately greater action for racial justice. No one presumed that the Challenge in and of itself would be sufficient, but rather saw it as a way of creating “network effects” around the work that many are already doing in our region.
“Life moves toward other life… If we trusted more in these cohering motions, we could move into an essential role … supporting the system to explore new connections, new information, new ways of being. It means focusing on opening the system in all ways.”
Margaret Wheatley and Myron Kellner-Rogers, a simpler way
“Bridging” in the work of network development speaks to the act of creating connections between socially heterogeneous groups (or putting it a bit more crassly, building bridges between “us” and “them”). The benefits of bridging include making it possible for diverse groups to share and exchange information, creating new forms of access, as well as leveraging new ideas and spurring innovation between groups representing different interests and/or backgrounds. Bridging widens social capital by increasing the “radius of trust.” Unlike “bonding,” or more in-group relationship building (think “birds of a feather flocking together”), bridging can help create more inclusive structures that can have implications for long-term resilience and more equitable development. The following is a story of a network engaging in intentional bridging work for more robust connectivity, flows and opportunity …
Food Solutions New England (FSNE) is a regional, collaborative network organized to “support the emergence of a New England food system that is a resilient driver of racial equity and food justice, sustainable farming and fishing, and thriving communities.” FSNE is convened byFor the past 5+ years, IISC has worked with the convening “backbone organization,” UNH Sustainability Institute, to launch and structure itself as a formal network, as well as to concretize and evolve its core commitment to racial equity as it has become more diverse and inclusive and worked for systemic change.
Eighteen months ago, FSNE was faced with making a decision about where to hold its annual Food Summit. The Summit was originally conceived to bring together delegates from across New England to strengthen collaboration for regional food system sustainability. The commitment was made early on by the convenor to move the Summit around the region, holding it in each of the six New England states once before going to any of them for a second time.
Delegates to the 2015 New England Food Summit gathered in Boston, MA.
In 2016, Connecticut was the last state to host the New England Food Summit. The network’s backbone organization was faced with a decision about the specific location within the state. Previous Summits had been held in prominent hubs in the other states – Portsmouth (NH), Burlington (VT), Portland (ME), Pawtucket/Providence (RI) and Boston. While places like Hartford and New Haven might have been natural considerations given their respective amenities and relative centrality in the state, the choice was made to bring the Summit to Bridgeport. This decision was spurred in no small part by the leadership of State Senator Marilyn Moore, who hails from that city and is a member of the FSNE Network Team. Senator Moore pointed out that not only would it be significant for Bridgeport to play host, given it is often overlooked in favor of its more well-known and regarded neighbors, it would also be enlightening for Summit delegates to see reality on the ground. Furthermore, this choice was viewed as an expression of FSNE’s commitment to racial equity and food justice.
“Clearly, we made some people uncomfortable. Good. For too long, our comfort has come on the backs of many who have been uncomfortable for a long, long time.”
Food Solutions New England (FSNE) is a regional, collaborative network organized to “support the emergence of a New England food system that is a resilient driver of racial equity and food justice, sustainable farming and fishing, and thriving communities.”
For the past 5 years, IISC has supported FSNE to launch and structure itself as a formal network, as well as to concretize and evolve its core commitment to racial equity as it has become more diverse and inclusive and focused on systemic transformation. Over the winter, editorial staff from the Othering and Belonging Journal at the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society solicited an article submission from FSNE to tell the story of why and how the network has operationalized its commitment to racial equity and food justice.
“While Othering processes marginalize people on the basis of perceived group differences, Belonging confers the privileges of membership in a community, including the care and concern of other members. As [john a.] powell has previously written, ‘Belonging means more than just being seen. Belonging entails having a meaningful voice and the opportunity to participate in the design of social and cultural structures. Belonging means having the right to contribute to, and make demands on, society and political institutions.'”
“We never know how our small activities will affect others through the invisible fabric of our connectedness. In this exquisitely connected world, it’s never a question of ‘critical mass.’ It’s always about critical connections.”
The past twelve months I had the pleasure of working with a team from Food Solutions New England to design and facilitate its first Network Leadership Institute. This initiative grew out of FSNE’s ongoing commitment to cultivating thought leadership and network leadership“to support the emergence and viability of a New England food system that is a driver of healthy food for all, racial equity, sustainable farming and fishing, and thriving communities.” Another impetus for the Institute was a year spent doing system mapping and analysis that revealed four leverage areas for advancing a just, sustainable and democratically-owned and operated regional food system, including cultivating and connecting leadership. Read More
In 2015, the Food Solutions New England (FSNE) Network Team began a year-long process to better understand how we could support the region in achieving the New England Food Vision. The Vision describes a future in which at least 50% of our food is grown, raised, and harvested in New England and no one goes hungry. It looks ahead to the year 2060 and sees farming and fishing as important regional economic forces; soils, forests, and waterways cared for sustainably; healthy diets as a norm; and racial equity and food justice promoting dignity and well being for all who live in New England.
I recently re-read portions of Limits to Growth: The 30 Year Update by Donella Meadows, Jorgen Randers and Dennis Meadows. This second update to the original 1972 report from the Club of Rome affirms that current business-as-usual resource usage globally has our socioeconomic systems headed toward collapse shortly after the year 2050. The update reiterates the necessity of taking the impending crisis seriously and mobilizing quickly to adopt strategies such as:
While all of this serves as a strong wake-up (or stay awake) call, what most caught my attention was the concluding chapter, where the authors move from discussion of the technical fixes required to get us on the right track to a serious appeal to more adaptive approaches.Read More
In an article in Fast Company, entitled “The Secrets of Generation Flux,” Robert Safian writes that in these uncertain times, there is no single recipe for success. Safian profiles a number of leaders who have been relatively successful at riding the waves in different ways, and notes that they are all relatively comfortable with chaos, trying a variety of approaches, and to a certain degree letting go of control. This resonates with our experiences at IISC helping people to design multi-stakeholder networks for social change. For example, even in a common field (food systems) and geography (New England) we witness different forms emerge that suit themselves to different contexts, and at the same time there are certain commonalities underlying all of them.
The three networks with which we’ve worked that I want to profile here exhibit varying degrees of formality, coordination, and structure. All are driven by a core set of individuals who are passionate about strengthening local food systems to create greater access and sustainable development in the face of growing inequality and climate destabilization. They vary from being more production/economic growth oriented to being more access/justice oriented, though all see the issues of local production and equitable access as being fundamentally linked and necessary considerations in the work.
Vermont Farm to Plate Network
The Farm to Plate (F2P) Initiative, was approved at the end of the 2009 Vermont legislative session and directed by the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund, in consultation with the Sustainable Agriculture Council and other stakeholders. Its initial charge was to develop a 10-year strategic plan to strengthen Vermont’s food system. This was done over a 2-year period with input from hundreds of stakeholders from around the state. The Farm to Plate Network officially launched in 2011, borrowing heavily from the structure of the RE-AMP Network in the Midwest, an effort to address climate change.
The structure was fairly well defined in advance, given F2P’s mandate from state government to double production and the clear need for coordination around the Network’s robust strategic plan and 25 goals. It currently features standing Working Groups (WG) organized around associated pieces of the strategic plan with flexibility to add and adjust. Working Groups may form any number of Task Forces (TF) in order to implement various strategies and high impact action projects, at the ground level. Pre-existing multi-stakeholder groups may serve as logical TFs within a given Working Group. TFs meet as needed and are created and disbanded as needed. In addition there are Cross-Cutting Teams (CCT) focused on topics such as Food Access, Policy, and Research and Funding.
It is at the WG and CCT level where most of the “action” happens, taken from a 15,000 foot view to help coordinate and fill gaps on the ground. A Steering Committee comprised of members of the Working Groups and others “holds the whole” from more of a 30,000 perspective, trying to maintain as broad a view of the food system as possible. There are a few paid staff who support the Network through weaving, communications, coordination and the like. The Network has also launched a “Food System Atlas” showcasing stories, videos, job listings, news, events, resources, the Strategic Plan and organizations that are strengthening Vermont’s food system.
Rhode Island Food Policy Council
The story of the Rhode Island Food Policy Council revolves largely around the Southside Community Land Trust, an urban land trust that has been an agent for community food security, providing land, education, tools, and support for people to grow food for themselves in greater Providence. SCLT applied for and received funding from a few local foundations to facilitate the collaborative efforts of a multi-stakeholder Design Committee to develop a vision and mission for the future RI Food Policy Council (RIFPC) and determine the Council’s structure, membership and by-laws.
Unlike the process in Vermont, the Design Committee refrained from engaging in a full-fledged strategic plan and instead enlisted the services of Karp Resources to conduct a comprehensive Community Food Assessment of Rhode Island to provide a baseline description of the state’s food system and identify priorities for the RIFPC and other stakeholders working to increase community food security. The decision was also made to formally remain separate from any state entity, while building connections to the Agricultural Partnership and recently formed Interagency Food and Nutrition Policy Advisory Council.
With an eye towards inclusiveness and nimbleness, the Design Committee created a structure that now features, five Work Groups focused on the core visionary goals of the RIFPC: Access, Economy, Environment, Health, and Production. These Work Groups were launched in a very open public meeting, with people essentially voting with their passions, and they have continued to welcome newcomers. No formally established goals or strategies were handed over to the Work Groups, so as to let them find their own footing and interests under the overarching visionary goals. The core elected group of Council members has as part of its role to provide support and high level guidance to these Work Groups. Part-time paid staff support exists for a network coordinator and communications expert, both of whom help to maintain an evolving website.
The Council is trying to balance the need for more of a centralized function around advocating in a timely way for policies impacting the food system, with an ongoing openness and fluidity to its public meetings and Work Group activity. A key feature of its public engagement is a series of ongoing community meals and discussions about the food system.
Connecticut Food System Alliance
The Connecticut Food System Alliance was created by food system advocates from around the state coming together from time to time to discuss and share information. Gradually, desire grew to have more than just an annual gathering. With limited funding, a core “design team” came together to think about how to create more grassroots momentum that would complement the Governor’s Council for Agricultural Development, which is spear-headed by the Commissioner of Agriculture and is broader in scope than food systems and security. Over the past couple of years, this design team has pulled together a number of large and diverse convenings of people from around the state to get to know one another, to “close triangles”, share insights and talk about how to create more significant and shared value. This has taken the form of an “alignment network,” uniting under what is now a shared vision and guiding values, and connected by a listserv.
Through the use of Open Space participants in CFSA have identified key areas of inquiry and action they want to pursue. Examples include a pilot project tackling food insecurity in one town to strengthening farm-to-institution efforts to growing and diversifying network membership, to exploring the root causes of what ails the food system. Volunteer facilitators have stepped up to lead “sub-networks” and the volunteer design team has morphed into a larger Steering Committee to provide support to these teams and organize future gatherings. The Steering Committee has initiated a program for giving mini-grants (maximum $1000) for the purpose of network-building among Connecticut’s food system stakeholders.
The entire process of CFSA to date has been very emergent, aptly described by Adrienne Maree Brown’s words in a blog post:
“Emergence is the way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions. Rather than laying out big strategic plans for our work, many of us have been coming together in community, in authentic relationships, and seeing what emerges from our conversations, visions and needs.”
Common Ground
None of this is to say that any of these approaches is more “right” than the other. Each has its benefits and challenges, and each fits its particular circumstances. All are open to changing as context demands. From one perspective we might see the VT Farm to Plate Network as the most formal and structured with the CT Food System Alliance as the most fluid and emergent, and the RI Food Policy Council as lying somewhere in-between. The differences are important to note, as are some of the likely underlying contributing factors such as funding, location, partnerships, tangibility or simplicity of outcomes, diversity of stakeholders, and the existing eco-system of actors and initiatives in the system.
At the same time it is also important to note that underlying all of these network forms is an important network ethic, or way of thinking, that I would summarize in the following way:
There is an awareness that to the extent that there is a network “center” it is about being in service of and helping to connect the whole, as well as bring in the “periphery;” there is an emphasis on contribution and creating value over deferring to credentials and the usual suspects; people lead with a spirit of openness; and there is an overall effort towards growing the pie, not just carving it up into smaller pieces.
And there is certainly a developmental trajectory to engaging in net work, as evidenced in these and all network initiatives we’ve supported, such that trust-building, transparency, and generosity are always works in progress. This is what forms the intangible and enriching ground of these and other forms that will hopefully help create real and necessary change.
How focusing on diversity, flow and structure in human networks can be a foundation for great change.
Over the past couple of years, we at IISC have partnered with a few different social change initiatives that have engaged in system mapping to both align diverse stakeholders and surface leverage points for collective intervention. In looking back at these different mapping processes, it is striking the similarities of the areas of focus that have been identified, despite the variety of issues being addressed (food system fragility to educational disparities to public and environmental health). Across these efforts, common areas of leverage have surfaced around:
Changing the dominant narrative.
Each effort has recognized that there is a dominant story that supports the existing system’s legitimacy. This has profound impact on what different players see as being possible. It is noteworthy that the narrative shifts each has called for are in the direction of more expansive and equitable definitions of health and development.
Changing information flows/making information more transparent and accessible.
Communcation is the lifeblood of social systems, and each of these initiatives has recognized that power gets bound up in who has timely access to and also who shapes critical information, as well as what kind of information is valued.
Creating more equitable access to and determination of resources.
From financial to social to living and material capital, each of these initiatives has also recognized that inequitable distribution of resources has contributed to social disparities and overall systemic vulnerability. Another significant factor is who gets to say what is deemed to be valuable in the first place.
This leverage area flows as a matter of course from the two above. Systemic sickness and brittleness is evident in the fact that fewer people and power brokers are shaping systemic opportunities and outcomes, and often for their own benefit. Each of these efforts see more distributed decision-making and implementation as key to justice, sustainability and true prosperity.
Working with government to change incentives and supports in favor of healthier and more equitable opportunities and outcomes.
Each initiative recognizes the important role of government in changing policies and procedures in the direction of more just and sustainable means and ends.
It’s interesting and perhaps not accidental that these leverage areas align with what the late system thinker Donella Meadows identified as some of the deeper leverage points to affect change in any complex human system –
the mindset (story) out of which the system arises;
the power to add, change, evolve, or self-organize system structure;
the rules of the system; and
the structure of information flows.
To get at any of these leverage areas clearly requires considerable clout – a network of diverse actors. And from our perspective at IISC, that network is not simply a means to an end.
Viewed in a certain way, and in consideration of the leverage areas mentioned above, intentionally developing human networks can be an important end in and of itself.
Part of the new story emerging across these various change efforts referenced above is a focus on what Sally J. Goerner calls “dynamic evolution,” which transcends the picture of a world built on competition, supremacy and selfishness. Through their multi-disciplinary study of energy network sciences (ENS), Goerner and her research colleagues point to an understanding of societal health as predicated upon more intricate human and organizational networks. Importantly, to deliver multiple goods in sustainable fashion, these networks must be characterized by:
social diversity
distributed empowerment and intelligence
widely circulating information and effective communication
synergistic exchanges of resources (or “capital”) of many kind
In other words, given unhealthy biases toward “efficiency,” streamlining, monoculture, concentration of resources and systemic brittleness, Goerner and colleagues see more robust network connections, flow and variety as being fundamental to social change and long-term resilience.
Taking this one step further, the Capital Institute (to whom Sally Goerner is Scientific Advisor) has created a list of 10 indicators for systemic healthwith direct ties to human network development (see their paper “Regenerative Development: The Art and Science of Creating Durably Vibrant Human Networks“). These give more specific guidance as to what systemic change initiatives might pay attention to as signs that they are on the right track.
Measures of Flow
Robust cross-scale circulation: Assesses how rapidly and well a variety of resources reach all parts of the social body.
Regenerative return flows: Assesses how much money and other resources the system recycles into building and maintaining its internal capacities, including human capital.
Reliable inputs: Assesses how much risk and uncertainty there is for critical resources upon which the system depends.
Healthy outflows: Assesses how much damage the system’s outflows do externally.
Measures of Human Factors
Degree of mutualism: Assesses the ratio of win-win vs win-lose relationships within the network.
Constructive vs exploitative: Assesses the level of value adding and capacity building activities vs. draining or “gradient degrading” (extractive) ones.
Adaptability (place in the adaptive cycle – see image above): Assesses the system’s readiness for change and its place in a classical S-curve cycle of development (related to degrees of diversity and formalized organization).
Measures of Structure
Number and diversity of roles: Assesses both the diversity and number of players perspectives in different activities critical to system functioning.
Distribution of resources: Assesses where resources, including money, go.
Balance of efficiency & resilience: Assesses the balance between levels of diversity and flexibility (resilience) and streamlining of throughput (efficiency).
I am curious to hear reactions and experiences with applying this kind of a network lens to system change efforts, and as a new member of the Research Alliance for Regenerative Economics, I look forward to sharing additional insights from energy network sciences.
Last week I had an interesting conversation with an evaluator who was curious about some of the networks for food system development we’ve been supporting through IISC. We got to talking about “metrics,” which led into consideration of the role of story in not simply gauging network effectiveness, but also in stimulating network evolution. Communication and social learning are part of the life-blood of human networks. This is something that we’re coming to understand at a more profound level amidst the complexity of food system transformation work at all levels.
As we try to identify “leverage points” to shift regional food system dynamics in New England in the direction of increased local production, food security, economic development, resiliency and equity across the board, we are realizing that more robust connectivity and sharing across boundaries of many kinds is a significant strategy and form of structural change that can allow for critical self-organization and adaptation. Stories become one of the critical nutrients in this work.
For example, as much as we have begun to share data, and importantly disaggregated data, across the region, we have found that stories often have more stickiness and staying power. The stories that were shared at last year’s Food Solutions New England (FSNE) Food Summit about racial equity and white privilege have been referenced for their impact in creating an environment of genuineness, that have spurred others to speak up and take up the conversation about the reality of structural racism in our food system. This has in turn brought more trust and diversity to the network, which has helped to create a more comprehensive understanding of the food system and possibilities for decentralized and more formally coordinated network action.
Furthermore, we have begun to solicit stories of success and innovation around embracing the FSNE Vision (of 50% self-sufficiency with regards to regional food production by the year 2060) and racial equity commitment. And coming out of this year’s Summit, there is interest in sharing stories of how people are working towards “fair price” across the food chain, in such a way that food workers, producers of varying scales, distributers and consumers have living wages and access to health-promoting and culturally diverse food. The curation of these stories we see as beginning to change the underlying economic narrative.
Stories then become fuel in many ways, providing different points of access, connection, inspiration, education, and meaning-making. Stories are like enriched compost that can be fed back into the network to nurture new growth. Our work as a Network Team, as network gardeners, is to “close the resource loop,” encourage and support more equitable channels for expression, more cross-fertilization, more interest in diverse (and concealed) stories and “processing venues” for these (virtual and in-person).
How are you using story to feed your net work forward?
Registration is Open!Join us April 20 – May 10 for the FSNE 21-Day Racial Equity Habit-Building Challenge: a daily practice to build the skill, will, and courage to advance racial equity in our food system and beyond. $21 for 21 days.
