CISA is pleased to present the conference report for "Sustainable food and farming in the Connecticut River Valley: A vision." As you read this report, it will become readily apparent that momentum for supporting sustainable food and farming systems is growing. All those who hold a stake in this enterprise are committed and have described the action steps that they are going to take. Our hope is that this report of their commitment and their plans will encourage other influential decision and policy makers to join the efforts, thereby ensuring the vision's success.
Acknowledgments
The W.K. Kellogg Foundation has provided funding for the CISA project--a four-year community initiative for sustainable agriculture--which has sponsored the Future Search Conference.
I want especially to thank our Search Conference facilitators, James Cumming and Evangelina Holvino of Chaos Consultants Ltd. And they would like to acknowledge their debt to SearchNet for training in the conference approach and for materials that we have adapted for this conference. SearchNet is a non-profit organization that works to stimulate innovative community planning using future search conferences. For further information, contact:
SearchNet 4101 Kelly Drive Philadelphia, PA 19129 (215) 951-0300
A slide show on agriculture in the Valley was created and provided by CISA steering committee member Alex MacPhail at Earth Arts Institute.
Conference manager: Vicki Van Zee
Assistants: Anne Marie DeMartino, Kathy Ruhf, Shirley Mietlicki, Julia Freedgood
Mont Marie facility director: Agnes Fleming
Data recorders: John Gerber and Dwayne Dale
Videotaping: Robin Sherman, Jim Murphy and Michael Alterman, interns from the Urban and Environmental Policy Agricultural Field Project at Tufts University
Sincerely,
Vicki Van Zee Project Director, CISA
The Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture (CISA) is a collaboration of farmers, educators, grass-roots organizations, and other members of the Connecticut River Valley community. It is part of a national Integrated Farming System Initiative funded by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation. CISA's goal is to secure a viable future, both economically and environmentally for agriculture in the Connecticut River Valley in Massachusetts. The four-year project works to bring together those people most involved in the food and farming system to design and implement their vision for agriculture.
The CISA project is managed by a steering committee of farmers and representatives from various institutions and organizations within the community. In 1994 they decided to hold a Future Search Conference to bring together all the key food and farming stakeholders. The mandate was for the community-shaped identification of issues, or barriers, and a community-shaped agenda for CISA direction and use of resources. A Search Conference Planning Committee was formed to organize the event. That three-day event, attended by over 70 people, was held March 16-18, 1995. During the conference, the elements of a shared vision for the future of the Valley's food and agriculture system were formulated and a set of action plans to accomplish the vision was proposed. This is the story of that conference.
A "Future Search Conference" is a task-focused planning effort that
relies on the knowledge, expertise and experience of the very people
who work in and ultimately have the power to change systems. The
twin tasks were:
To develop a vision of the future of a sustainable
Connecticut River Valley farming and food system; and
To devise a set of action plans to achieve that vision.
In order to accomplish these goals, everyone at the conference
participated in a series of activities that would develop a common
pool of information about the Connecticut River Valley farming and
food system. Some exercises focused on the past; others looked at
the present; still others projected the future.
The guidelines were simple: We would generate information and ideas, not complain about problems, and we would manage our own information. Groups were formed, and each monitored the time, produced plans, recorded results, and then reported those results to the other groups. Two facilitators, experienced in future search techniques, managed the conference. Their role was to keep the groups focused, the tasks on schedule, and to highlight major themes. Always, the goal was to create a vision.
Conference participants represented key stakeholders in the
Connecticut River Valley food and farming system. The conference
planning committee identified the major stakeholder groups and the
decision makers within the groups who could commit to action steps
and plans. These were the individuals recruited to the conference.
The stakeholder groups were:
| Farmers (two groups) | Land-base |
| Environmental | Distribution |
| Infrastructure | Policy |
| Community | Education |
| CISA Steering Committee |
(For list of the members of the steering and search planning committees and the conference participants, see Appendices A and B.)
The CISA Future Search Conference succeeded in creating a common platform from which we could together state our vision of the future--what we all want to happen and what we are willing to work for. We identified key issues for a sustainable food and farming system for the Connecticut River Valley, and each stakeholder group made a commitment to make these elements a reality. This report providcs three kinds of information.
First, it gives those not in attendance a glimpse of the high quality of the thought and the data generated during those three days.
Second, it identifies the key priorities and concerns that are shaping food and farming systems.
Finally, this report summarizes the key components - as determined by this group - of a sustainable food and farming system for the Connecticut River Valley.
We hope this report will serve as a guide to help coordinate future plans and actions. In addition, we hope it will serve as a reminder to those who put their energy and intelligence to work at the conference of all that can be accomplished when a community focuses on a common goal.