The next food systems agenda : A western grassroots perspective

The national United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)’s National Institute for Food and Agriculture (NIFA) Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program celebrates its twenty-fifth year of operation in 2013. At this critical juncture, the Western SARE Center is now addressing what it considers to be key food systems development priorities in the years ahead. They include: • Gaps in and lack of infrastructure development; • Consumer education on the benefits and preparation of sustainable, locally grown foods; • Changes in policy, regulations, institutional purchasing, and financing that are more supportive of and a catalyst for local food system development; and • Training for beginning farmers and ranchers. In this research commentary, we share how Western SARE arrived at these priorities, based on extensive grassroots input. Further, we outline to what extent these priorities may be a part of a larger, longer-term research agenda in food systems. a * Corresponding author: V. Philip Rasmussen, Director, Western SARE Center, Utah State University; 4865 Old Main Hill; Logan, Utah 84322-4865 USA; +1-435-7972257; philip.rasmussen@usu.edu b Stacie Clary, Communications Specialist, Western SARE Center; 706 Gilroy Drive; Capitola, California 95010 USA; +1-831-419-5432; stacie.wsare@charter.net c Al Kurki, PDP Program Associate Training Coordinator, Western SARE Center; 432 North Last Chance Gulch; Helena, Montana 59601 USA; 406-494-8655; akurki@ncat.org d Ron Daines, former Communications Specialist, Western SARE Center; 40 Heritage Cove; Logan, Utah 84321 USA; +1-435-770-3063; rjdaines@msn.com Note: Support for this project was provided by the national United State Department of Agriculture National Institute for Food and Agriculture’s (USDA-NIFA) Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program office. The authors were or are fullor part-time employees of the Western Region Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) Center. Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development ISSN: 2152-0801 online www.AgDevJournal.com 236 Volume 3, Issue 4 / Summer 2013

1. Identify and prioritize emerging and unmet research and education needs in sustainable food, fiber, and energy systems; and 2. Increase stakeholder and policy-holder awareness of the accomplishments of the Western SARE Center and its projects.
The administrative council and staff harnessed a distinctive combination of needs assessments and educational tools to meet these two goals.
From October 2007 to March 2010, nearly 700 people from the Western SARE region, each with a stake in production agriculture and food systems, voiced more than 7,000 recorded comments about the state of western agriculture and how it can be strengthened and sustained.These comments arose at seven separate subregional conferences within seven distinct geographic zones (Oceania [Agatna, Guam], Southwest [Albuquerque, New Mexico], High Plains [Cheyenne, Wyoming], Pacific Northwest [Spokane, Washington], North Pacific [Hilo, Hawaii], Pacific Coast [Visalia, California], and Subarctic [Fairbanks, Alaska]).The conferences were planned, carefully facilitated, and implemented by the Western SARE Center (a designated regional research center of the USDA-NIFA).The Western SARE Center is headquartered at Utah State University, and its SARE Professional Development Program is headquartered at the University of Wyoming.A broad cross-section of food and farming leaders were invited in order to identify and prioritize research and education needs in sustainable food, fiber, and energy systems.
The extent of the data collected in seven subregional conferences, spanning the globe from Guam to Montana, cannot be adequately portrayed in this commentary.However, a more complete and extensive presentation of all significant data collected at all seven Western SARE Subregional Conferences is available online. 1 work as described by Glass (1979).The specific method of gathering information in each region used Western SARE's design, which drew on the main elements of the Nominal Group Method (NGM) as defined by Delbecq and Van de Ven (1971), and refined by Delbecq, Van de Ven, and Gustafson (1975), Sample (1984), andPlace (2007).
Although this technique required countless hours of staff effort, it was critical to the success of the conferences.It allowed for the distillation of information into priorities for each subregion.Specific details of our methodology are outlined in appendix A.

Results and Discussion
Seven hundred people from the Western SARE Region who have a stake in production agriculture and food systems (farmers, ranchers, educators, agency personnel, nongovernmental organization leaders, and others) attended the seven Western SARE Subregional Conferences.Attendees generated more than 7,000 individual recorded comments pertaining to the issues and constraints of western agriculture.The number of comments from roundtable discussions ranged between 400 and 800 for each conference, with additional comments recorded in table reports, open-microphone sessions, and surveys during and after the conference.
Sorting and ranking this mountain of data presented a challenge.Western SARE employed a unique process at the conferences to streamline the information in real time on site for use during the conference and in subsequent strategy deliberations.As facilitated table groups worked through the "burning issue" focus questions, responses were recorded on oversized Post-it notepads.Western SARE staff then recorded those responses into Excel spreadsheets where they were categorized, collated, and prioritized, providing real-time turnaround of ranked results from the first day.The first-day results were printed and delivered to participants early the next morning for additional discussion and further prioritization.
There are many other ways to sort and present the "poster pad" issues that received large numbers of votes at any, some, or all conferences.Appendix B presents the issues that received the highest "votes" (via the nominal group methodology) across all of the conferences.
The following figures provide the overall results for the Western SARE Region for each burning issue focus question across all of the subregional conferences.

BURNING ISSUE 1. What Will Be Needed to Create a Stronger Local and Regional Food System?
Conference attendees reported that education and improved infrastructure that serves agriculture (processing, transportation, utilities, etc.) are the leading means for creating strong local and regional food systems that are less reliant on imports.

BURNING ISSUE 2. What Are the Local and Regional Trends?
The most significant trends in the subregional area identified by conference attendees include simultaneous increase in direct markets and a decline in producers.Note that agricultural infrastructure surfaces as both a need (question 1) and a trend.

BURNING ISSUE 3. How Can the Process of Disseminating Research Results Be Improved?
Representing about 75% of the votes, conference attendees felt that Western SARE could improve dissemination the most through three methods: (1) sponsoring or encouraging more conferences workshops, classes, and field days in an on-farm setting; (2) including farmers and ranchers in all SARE projects (emphasized repeatedly and quantified in this graphic); and (3) improving outreach to farm and ranch organizations and publications (also repeatedly emphasized).

BURNING ISSUE 4. What Research and Education Are Needed in the Next 10 Years?
Conference attendees reported a wide range of projects needed, with developing longer-term sustainable farm systems garnering the most votes.

BURNING ISSUE 5. What New Projects Should Be Targeted?
Again, a wide range of project types was identified by the conference attendees.Education of the public and youth on sustainable agriculture research results received the most votes, followed by SARE-funded research and education on onfarm "systems" and on alternative and sustainable energy systems.

BURNING ISSUE 6. How Can Western SARE Overcome Barriers?
Conference attendees overwhelming voted for Western SARE to increase outreach (including electronic, printed, specialist-to-farmer, and farmer-to-farmer) to underserved groups, and to target calls for proposals toward underserved groups and provide simple illustrations of successful proposals.
What became apparent as we viewed the plethora of data collected from each conference were these top food systems concerns:

Gaps in and Lack of Infrastructure Development
Infrastructure includes storage, livestock processing and other food processing and distribution facilities.Attendees in all or most subregions identified the need to have USDA-inspected facilities within driving distance to process livestock and poultry year-round.Without such facilities, livestock producers typically sell at auction, leaving them with few options for branding their products to participate in higher-value markets.Yet the regulatory environment makes creating locally based facilities quite challenging, as does the development of an effective business structure.To meet increasing consumer demand, farmers, ranchers, and small branded meat companies need appropriate-scale processing facilities along with the skills, inspection status, and other qualities to handle their products safely and to customer specifications.Other infrastructure development needs acknowledged were increasing the availability and use of community-based certified kitchens, cold storage, food development centers, and other shared equipment that would serve regional needs -especially for small-scale producers.Transportation and distribution challenges were noted as affecting producers at both the small and midscale of production.

Consumer Education on the Benefits of Sustainable, Locally Grown Foods and How To Prepare Them
More education should result in an increasing number of consumers who are dedicated to purchasing locally produced and marketed foods.This larger market will, in turn, increase the economic viability of producers and help develop alternative distribution and transportation systems.The consumers will also be eating healthier, fresher foods, making it a win-win for all.

Policy, Regulatory, Institutional Purchasing, and Financing Changes That Are More Supportive of and a Catalyst for Local Food System Development
The input provided by the stakeholders is that the agriculture system as it is currently constructed has placed barriers in front of innovative and alternative methods for processing, distributing, and marketing food regionally.

Training for Beginning Farmers and Ranchers
With increased training for those who are starting a farm or ranching operation -especially those who do not come from such a background -there will be more assurance that our region will have enough farmers as current ones retire.Attendees discussed their belief that increasing the ability of beginning producers to succeed and increase their profit will strengthen the food system since oftentimes new producers are located closer to urban and suburban areas.Urban and peri-urban areas could also provide entry-level market opportunities for beginning farmers with limited access to capital.
The information gathered at the seven subregional conferences is unique to the Western SARE Region in regard to how food systems are typically looked at because many areas are remote from urban areas.Food systems work often assumes access to large urban markets, yet regions such as northeast Montana, the Four Corners region (where the states of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah meet), tribal lands, most of Alaska, the Pacific Islands, and parts of Wyoming are very far from large urban markets.We heard from stakeholders in these regions, in addition to those who live in or near urban areas, and cataloged their priorities for building stronger regional food systems.The Western SARE Region is unique in its vastness and diversity, yet even with this diversity we were able to determine common needs and concerns.

Conclusions
One may ask how a competitive grants program such as Western SARE could address problems that are clearly beyond its congressionally mandated scope ("to enhance agricultural sustainability through competitive research/education grants").For example, it is clear that agricultural infrastructure issues surfaced as key, quantifiable issues for more than one focus question at every subregional conference.Therefore the Western SARE Administrative Council prioritized infrastructure problems as something SARE research and education could address.In addition, a set of special Infrastructure Conferences were planned to further define the problems, suggest solutions, and encourage research proposals to address those problems.Western SARE, under USDA-NIFA policies, can neither directly work to change government policy nor issue grants for capital investments or operating costs for infrastructure facilities and equipment.However, Western SARE leaders felt that bringing leading farmers, ranchers, agency personnel, and key decision-makers together for a dialogue was surely within the SARE mandate.In retrospect, this has been very successful -and has certainly stimulated appropriate research and education proposals for Western SARE to evaluate for funding.The conferences also assisted in identifying other specific food systems issues that could be addressed by proposals to the Western SARE Center.
Significantly, Western SARE's administrative council has implemented major changes in its calls for proposals, the key elements by which proposals are rated for funding, and the very nature of the type of proposals that are solicited.Note that each of these address a need or suggestion that was illustrated in the previous figures.These changes include: 1.The development of a new multidisciplinary farm to fork "systems" emphasis in each major research and education grants program.
2. The clear acknowledgement, based upon subregional conference results, of the fact that most measured outcomes from "systems" research projects will require projects that span far beyond Western SARE's current three-year funding cycle.
3. The development of a new and clearly defined mechanism within the calls for proposals and the proposal review system to engender and foster longer-term research studies that can be renewed (multiple times if justified), based upon clearly measured outcomes, significant accomplishments, and positive external evaluations.
4. The reemphasis of the requirement for farmers and ranchers to be involved, from the start, in every type of SARE-funded project.
5. The number of required farmers and ranchers who were involved in a project was also increased.
6.The empowerment of the Western SARE Center's new communications specialist to increase efforts to reach out to disadvantaged communities.
7. The development of a long-term plan for ongoing research and education conferences (such as two Infrastructure Conferences and one Water Conference) to increase communication in and between all levels of SARE clientele (scientists, educators, farmers, ranchers, agricultural specialists, agribusiness, and farm lending organizations).This has already been shown to aid in the improvement of proposal specificity and quality.
8. The provision for a special US$50,000 competitive call for research and education proposals targeted to the subregional conference area.These targeted calls for proposals immediately followed each subregional conference and were directed at the most significant research and education needs identified at each conference.
9. The increased support and funding for Farmer/Rancher grants and Professional/Producer grants as well as all other Western SARE Center competitive grants programs.
10.The substantial increase in oversight, evaluation and expert support for all on-farm research and education projects.
11.The requirement for both an extension and outreach component and a built-in outside evaluation component in any new Western SARE competitive proposal that is funded.
12. The changing of the research and education grant funding schedule and associated deadlines so that each grant can be funded during the current crop year -even if Congress delays annual appropriations for as much as a year.
Western SARE leaders focused on several techniques for eliciting responses from participants.They facilitated and recorded roundtable discussions, applied the Nominal Group Technique for ranking issues raised, presented table-top reports from a representative chosen by the group at each table, held an openmicrophone session at the conference conclusion, and conducted surveys during and after the conference.
Extension educators -many of whom are state and protectorate professional development coordinators in the Western SARE Region -along with staff and administrative council members served as facilitators and recorders for tabletop discussions.They were trained on site and instructed to: • ensure that every comment was recorded; • give every participant an opportunity to speak; and • draw out comments from all participants.