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Exploring Opportunities for Technological Innovation
and Reconfiguration in the Local Food Sector
A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the Design Management Department
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the
Degree of Master of Fine Arts
By
Dustin Larimer
Savannah, GA
July, 2011
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Prologue
My journey has taken me through many life-changing adventures and challenges, over many
miles and with enough uncertainty to tank the NYSE (again). Through it all I have quietly
carried a belief that in return for the incredible opportunities I have enjoyed, I must find a way to
apply what Ive learned to make a positive contribution to the world around me. Moving the ball
forward is what inspires me to act; it is why I am here.
Through my studies I have learned how to analyze, deconstruct and reframe complex
design problems to discover original, innovative insights and opportunities. When I first began
the Design Management program, I was asked to explain what I thought design was about, to
which I answered Design is about solving problems. If asked again, today, I would answer that
Design is about creating the conditions for people to solve their own problems and improve their
own particular circumstance. Solving problems forpeople only seems to create new problems.
In my previous career as a web technologist I developed a strong appreciation for the
potential web-based frameworks have created for improving quality of life. The best frameworks
are simply tools that put prohibitive complexity to order the epitome of elegance. A well-
designed tool can enable new types of behavior or displace unfavorable ones. It can bring
people together, make tasks more efficient, or sometimes even create entirely new opportunities
that no one not even the designer previously thought possible. I believe such a
technological innovation has the potential to transform the flow of one of our most critical
resources: healthy food.
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Table of Contents
List of Figures 1
List of Tables 4
Abstract 5
Chapter 1: Introduction 6
Another Record Year 7Designing Flexibility Out of the System 8The Problem with Alternatives 13An Opportunity 20
Chapter 2: Literature Review 22
Socio-economic Foundation 23A Well-Coordinated Revolution 27
Chapter 3: Research Methodology 31
Research Design 31Phase 1: Field Study Preparation 33Phase 2: Field Research 38Phase 3: Data Analysis Process & Procedures 42Phase 4: Define an Opportunity Space & Design Criteria 44Research Limitations 44
Chapter 4: Analysis & Findings 45
Identifying Thought-Leaders within the Local Independent Food Network 46
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Field Research: Trends and Patterns 58Hobbyists Becoming Professionals 59Full-time Professionals Moving Forward 67
Chapter 5: Design Concept Development 78
Design Criteria: Stories about the Future 78Concept Exploration 81The Design Solution: NeighborFarms 97
Chapter 6: Conclusions & Directions for Future Research 103
Value Proposition of the Design Solution 105Directions for Future Research 105
Appendices 106
Appendix A: Interview Protocol (90-120 minutes) 106Appendix B: Informed Consent 108Appendix C: Producer Startword List 109Appendix D: Consumer Questionnaire 110Appendix E: Cultural Model of a hobbyist, a part-time pro, and a full-time pro 113Appendix F: Growth trajectory from hobbyists to full-time professional status 114
Glossary 115
Works Cited 118
About the Author 128
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List of Figures
Figure 1.1Customer-facing portion of the Business Model Canvas 15
Figure 1.2Three-dimensional Producer Matrix 18
Figure 1.3Environmental Threats, part 1 19
Figure 1.3Environmental Threats, part 2 20
Figure 3.1Illustrated research design 32
Figure 3.2Project scope 35
Figure 3.3Sortable business attribute cards 39
Figure 3.4Annual timeline template 40
Figure 3.5Affinity Process Illustration 42
Figure 3.6Business Model Canvas 43
Figure 4.1Communication View for local organic near:31401 and localorganic near:30458
47
Figure 4.2Communication View of farmer market near:31401 and farmermarket near:30458
48
Figure 4.3Communication View of local organic near:31401, local organicnear:30458, farmer market near:31401 and farmer market near:30458.
50
Figure 4.4Communication View for forsyth farmers market and statesborofarmers market
51
Figure 4.5Resulting producer list, sorted and numbered by overall frequency ofuse within filtered content.
52
Figure 4.6Chart of responses for How were you first introduced to thisproducer?
56
Figure 4.7Chart of responses for How many of your friends also shop fromthis producer? and How many of your friends shop at the same market(s)?
56
Figure 4.8Word cloud generated with responses to Which other producers doyou buy from frequently, and what do you value most about them?
57
Figure 4.9Stacks of notecards resulting from interview transcripts 58
Figure 4.10Clustering notecards into emergent themes and topics to identifypatterns
59
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Figure 4.11Cultural Model of Hunter Cattle Company, Reads Bees andGratitude Gardens
60
Figure 4.12Growth trajectory from hobbyist to full-time professional 61
Figure 4.13Three sample timeline worksheets completed during interviews
Hope Grows Farm, Hunter Cattle Company, and Reads Bees
65
Figure 4.14Illustrated mashup of timeline worksheets completed duringinterviews Hope Grows Farm, Hunter Cattle Company, and Reads Bees
66
Figure 4.15Clustering notecards into emergent themes and topics to identifypatterns
68
Figure 4.16Cultural Model mapped to the 4 Ps of Marketing: Product,Promotion, Place, Price
69
Figure 4.17Business Model Canvas for individual growers participating in
farmersmarkets
71
Figure 4.18Business Model Canvas for individual growers supplying wholesaledistributors
74
Figure 4.19Business Model Canvas for a collaborative growers networkproviding food boxes
75
Figure 5.1Early concept sketches articulating relationships of exchange 82
Figure 5.2The many relationships and exchange models behind HeritageOrganic Farms
82
Figure 5.3Early concept sketches exploring potential service models 83
Figure 5.4Co-sketch session with Arianne from Hope Grows Farm 84
Figure 5.5Illustration of the collaborative food box model, regularly distributedto customers at pre-arranged locations
85
Figure 5.6Illustrated flow chart of the web service 86
Figure 5.7Exploring an expanding conceptual space 87
Figure 5.8NeighborFarms logo 88
Figure 5.9Evolving interface of NeighborFarms: wireframes, style and layoutiterations
88
Figure 5.10Evolving design of NeighborFarms homepage and dashboard 89
Figure 5.11NeighborFarms homepage featuring a large map for geo-browsing 89
Figure 5.12Producer dashboard view displaying an individual producers bulkinventory and associated project allocations
90
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Figure 5.13NeighborFarms dashboard where teams of producers cancollaborate on projects
90
Figure 5.14Producer dashboard view displaying active and past invoices 92
Figure 5.15Producer dashboard view displaying a map of available projects to
join
93
Figure 5.16Concept illustration, printed and shared at a farmers market in SanAntonio
94
Figure 5.17Website demonstration, printed and shared at a farmers market inSan Antonio
94
Figure 5.18Paper prototype of mobile app demonstrated at a farmers marketin San Antonio
95
Figure 5.19Scenes from the Pearl Brewery Farmers Market in San Antonio 96
Figure 5.20NeighborFarms homepage 97
Figure 5.21NeighborFarms invoice dashboard page 98
Figure 5.22NeighborFarms inventory dashboard page 99
Figure 5.23NeighborFarms projects dashboard page 100
Figure 5.24NeighborFarms projects dashboard page where producers can findprojects to join
101
Figure 5.25NeighborFarms account settings dashboard page 102
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List of Tables
Table 3.1Four-phase Project Timeline 33
Table 4.1Actors listed by betweenness centrality for local organic near:31401
and local organic near:30458
47
Table 4.2Actors listed by betweenness centrality for farmer market near:31401 and farmer market near:30458
49
Table 4.3Actors listed by betweenness centrality for local organic near:31401, local organic near:30458, farmer market near:31401 and farmermarket near:30458
5051
Table 4.4Interviewee types, times and locations 58
Table 4.5Data collected from Attributes of Success exercise 63
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Abstract
Exploring Opportunities for Technological Innovation
and Reconfiguration in the Local Food Sector
Dustin Larimer
July, 2011
This study deconstructs the market mechanics and social dynamics of independent food
networks and explores new opportunities for technological innovation and reconfiguration. The
findings suggest that the independent food movement, as a system of commerce, largely defies
conventional market logic supporting modern industrial food production. What to outsiders may
look like a values-conscious commodities business is actually a rich cascade of dense social
networks, woven together around a mutual determination to thrive in defiance of the ills of an
unsustainable, global calorie-making apparatus. However, small-scale producers cannot be
sustainable if they are not also profitable.
The emergence of an effectively decentralized, resilient food system can be accelerated
by introducing new economic, logistic, and regulatory tools that enhance producer viability while
reinforcing the values that lie at the very heart of the independent food movement itself. Such
tools must be designed by and for dynamic, loosely-coupled communities which are defined by
shared values and independence; they must be effective because ofthese communities' very
nature, rather than in spite of it.
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Chapter 1: Introduction
This project deconstructs the market mechanics and social network dynamics of independent
food systems and explores new opportunities for technological innovation and reconfiguration.
The independent food movement, as a system of commerce, largely defies conventional market
logic supporting modern industrial food production. What to outsiders may look like a values-
conscious commodities business is actually a rich cascade of dense social networks, woven
together around a mutual determination to thrive in defiance of the ills of an ecologically and
socially abusive, global calorie-making apparatus. For some independent producers, food
production is as much a means of protest as it is a means of making a living. For others it is not
just about food, it is about the people that food weaves together; it is about community.
As our civilization ventures forward into an increasingly uncertain future, many influential
institutions the United Nations, among them are calling for decentralized, ecologically
restorative agriculture, or agroecology, that has so far proven to significantly increase production
yields, repair environmental damage and capture massive quantities of carbon from the
atmosphere. Such a model is already being employed by a growing number of independent
food producers across the United States and around the world. Small independent producers
also benefit from these ecologically-intensive production methods. Increased diversity means
not only greater variety for customers but also greater resiliency in the face of single-product
market saturation from large-volume competitors.
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As well-intentioned and environmentally revitalizing as the independent food movement
may be it exists in conflict with many of the expectations and assumptions of the existing
conventional production and consumption paradigms. The emergence of an effectively
decentralized, resilient food system can be accelerated by introducing new economic, logistic,
and regulatory tools that enhance producer viability while reinforcing the values that lie at the
very heart of the movement itself. Such tools must be designed by and for dynamic, loosely-
coupled communities which are defined by shared values and independence; they must be
effective because ofthese communities very nature, rather than in spite of it.
Another Record Year
During the summer of 2010 the jet stream over Eurasia made a sharp kink. Hot, dry air was
drawn up from the Sahara desert northward into the western plains of Russia, diverting heavy
rain systems southward directly into Pakistan's annual summer monsoon (Masters, 2010).
Sporadic weather anomalies are not unheard of, but what is especially unusual about this event
is what the jet stream did next: nothing. It simply froze in place for well over a month
unleashing a catastrophic deluge that submerged nearly 1/5 of Pakistan's land area (CNN Wire
Staff, 2010), affecting nearly 20 million people and inflicting massive damages on the country's
wheat harvest.
A few weeks later record high temperatures and a devastating drought ignited hundreds
of wildfires across Russia's western plains. The fires lasted for nearly two months, eventually
leading the country to ban exports of wheat for the year (Gronholt-pedersen, 2010). Wheat
prices at the Chicago Board of Trade soared, sparking food riots in Mozambique and
heightening anxiety of rising food prices around the globe (Javier, 2010). By late October the
north-central United States was also experiencing the effects of a supercharged jet stream. A
massive storm churning across the Midwest produced the lowest atmospheric pressure
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readings ever recorded for a land-based storm (Spotts, 2010). Winds as strong as 90 mph,
heavy rains, and dozens of tornadoes knocked out power for nearly a quarter of a million people
(MSNBC, 2010). Waves exceeding twenty-six feet in height were recorded on Lake Superior
just past noon on October 27 (Environment Canada, 2010).
These are only a few incidents from what has become an all-around record-breaking
year of weather events. In March of 2010, southwestern China experienced an 80 percent drop
in rainfall, slashing projected summer grain yields and creating water shortages for over 50
million people (AsiaNews, 2010). While it is tempting to correlate the recent outbreak of
destructive weather with anthropogenic climate change, such a connection is not necessary to
understand how the unpredictability of the weather has always been the nemesis of mankind's
agricultural ambition. Rain falls too soon, too late, too much, too little, or sometimes not at all,
crops fail and people starve. It is also not difficult to imagine what kind of scenarios may
emerge if global warming is in fact deteriorating conditions for agriculture: greater intensity at
the extremes; heavier rains and longer droughts, hotter summers and colder winters. A greater
frequency of "record-breaking everything," means smaller yields, higher production costs, higher
consumer prices, and less certainty that food will be available for anyone at any given time.
Designing Flexibility Out of the System
The fact that so much uncertainty continues to haunt modern agriculture is not for a lack of effort
or innovation. Abundant fossil fuels, foreign market liberalization, and the technological
revolutions of the last century have together rapidly transformed food production into a marvel of
hyper-efficiency. What was once a localized political economy of stability is now a globally
rationalized, centrally-coordinated war against uncertainty, marching to a logic of publicly-
subsidized overproduction.
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For decades, the key strategy to fighting this war has been to overpower the odds with
the brute force of energy-intensive biochemical and mechanical intervention. More energy in
means more energy out. Producing far more calories than the market demands forces prices so
low that food is affordable and readily available to (almost) everyone. In the United States,
when prices fall low enough, farmers are compensated for the losses through various subsidy
programs. Minor production shortages are then (hopefully) absorbed by the sheer scale of the
system, and price fluctuations are often absorbed by retailers to avoid losing customers to
competitors.
Producers in this global production strategy must perpetually increase efficiency to stay
competitive, either by innovating away from costs or consolidating with other operations to shed
redundancy, increase volume and amplify savings. This model has resulted in a handful of
massive, tightly coupled market participants at every link in the value chain. For example, an
oligopoly of half a dozen transnational corporations oversees the global seed industry (Howard,
1274). Today producers have fewer upstream input options, fewer downstream market access
options, and virtually no leverage over the terms of exchange after harvest. Their only option is
to keep chasing higher yields and to try to avoid going out of business like so many of their
neighbors.
The rationalization of modern agriculture has dealt a critical blow to the biodiversity of
4.9 billion acres of the Earths surface (FAOSTAT, 2008). Three quarters of the worlds food
supply is derived from just 7 of 200,000 plant species on Earth, with just three of those species
corn, wheat, and rice supplying half of all calories and proteins (Hawken/Lovins, 194). In the
United States, nearly 70% of farmland is dedicated to just three crop species: corn, soybeans
and wheat (USDA NASS, June 2010). Such large populations of a single species are extremely
vulnerable to attack by opportunistic pests, parasites, weeds and disease, and are incapable of
surviving without the support of excessive petroleum-based pesticides and herbicides. Not
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surprisingly, these chemicals must be updated regularly and replaced with more potent
successors, to which insects will inevitably adapt to resist (Hawken/Lovins, 196). The corn and
wheat fields that supposedly feed the world have essentially become battlefields in a chemical
arms race between the Ag sciences six decades of trial and error and insects millions of years
spent perfecting rapid adaption. According to Professor David Pimentel from the Cornell
University, approximately 2/5 of the world's crops are lost in the field to disease, insects and
weeds (Hawken/Lovins, 195).
Conventional agriculture consumes 70% of all freshwater allocation on the planet (FAO
"Depletion of Fresh Water Resources). It takes 1,000 tons of water to produce a single ton of
grain, and since water used for crops in Russia is notwater used in Egypt, for example, around
980 billion tons of water are redistributed around the world every year (Roberts, 227-231).
Through this lens, top grain exporters like the United States, the European Union, India, and
Russia are also top water exporters as well.
The energy consumption of this system is also enormous. On average, every single
calorie of conventionally-produced food is backed by an average 10 calories of fossil fuel,
accounting for an estimated 20% of total energy consumption in the United States (Hawken/
Lovins, 192). Cheap oil lets food production and processing move to where they are most
efficiently operated, and food consumption to where it is most financially rewarded. Geographic
proximity to the consumers whose very survival depends upon its daily availability is no longer a
concern. Affordable overnight cargo flights and low labor wages in developing nations have
made it incredibly cost-effective for vegetables to be grown in a different hemisphere than which
they are consumed. What was once a great step forward for efficiency now looks like a
potentially crippling dependency.
The connection between food, oil and just about everything else is best illustrated by a
series of events during the first half of 2008, when global oil production actually increased and
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demand decreased relative to prior quarters. Investors eager to get away from an imploding
real estate market flooded oil futures, food commodities and other raw materials (Frankel,
2008). A dual increase in the prices of oil and corn slammed the corn-based biofuel industry,
which consumes nearly 1/3 of the United States' annual corn harvest (Roberts, 325). The result
was an autocatalytic price hike for both commodities. A leaked report conducted by the World
Bank claimed biofuel production was inflating food prices by as much as 75% (Chakrabortty,
2008). Higher oil prices means higher prices for petroleum-based agricultural inputs, like
fertilizer and pesticides, as well as near-prohibitive fuel costs for transportation and machine
operation. Since about 1/3 of the global grain harvest is fed to livestock, meat prices also
increased dramatically (Roberts, 325). Commodity speculation seized the industry. Oil hit $100
per barrel on the first trading day of 2008 (Elliott, 2008), and by April skyrocketing food prices
spurred food riots in dozens of countries around the world. Shocked and unprepared,
governments scrambled to maintain order, sometimes by military intervention and severe anti-
hoarding laws (The Economist, 2008). By mid-summer oil hit $144 per barrel (Saefong, 2008).
Oil isn't the only fossil fuel that modern agriculture depends on. The other is natural gas,
which at the moment is a heavily-invested source of energy in a process that yields an even
more important element: nitrogen. Nitrogen plays a vital role in the molecular composition of all
living organisms. Without it, there simply cannot be life. There is a finite amount of nitrogen
available in a readily usable form, effectively capping the ecological carrying capacity of any
given ecosystem. This also limits the production potential for any given plot of land under
cultivation. Then in the early 20th century, a method for chemically deriving a synthetic
concentration of nitrogen was invented: the Haber-Bosch process (Encyclopdia Britannica
"Haber-Bosch process").
The Haber-Bosch process enabled affordable mass-production of ammonia (NH3) a
nitrogen-rich chemical compound that could literally be poured on the ground to increase fertility.
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While artificial fertilizers can greatly improve crop yields, they also devastate the innumerable
microscopic organisms that generate and support the soil that crops need to survive. As these
tiny ecosystems collapse farmers must apply more and more nitrogen to maintain yields. Dead
soil is easily washed or blown away, as has an estimated 1/3 of the topsoil in the United States
since the beginning of the industrial agriculture era (Hawken/Lovins, 192). On a larger scale,
the UN FAO reported in July of 2008 that nearly 1.5 billion people worldwide people rely on
degraded land (FAO, 2008). According to conventional logic, the solution is to apply still more
chemical fertilizer currently more than 210 million tons every year ("Current World Fertilizer
Trends and Outlook to 2011/12" 16).
From the 1960s through the 1990s synthetic nitrogen fertilizer use skyrocketed by 645%,
along with powerful advances in irrigation and farm mechanization (Hawken/Lovins, 191).
During roughly this same period, global grain production increased by 300%, while the human
population grewby 240%. Mathematically, that should mean a 112.5% increase in available
calories for every man, woman and child on this planet (Roberts, 24). In reality, nearly a billion
people worldwide one in seven experience some degree of malnutrition, if not full-fledged
starvation (FAO, 2009), including over 50 million U.S. citizens who in 2009 were classified as
"food insecure" (Nord et al., 6). Equally alarming is that now an enormous percentage of the
global population is entirely dependent on continued artificial nitrogen synthesis, which in turn is
heavily dependent on natural gas (Roberts citing Vaclav Smil from the University of Manitoba,
21). It's also worth mentioning that new natural gas discoveries peaked in the 1970s.
As an exploding global population puts a greater strain on a limited resource base, the
sheer volume of 2010's crop failures has once again sent food prices soaring around the world.
Despite the best laid schemes of conventional wisdom, and decades and fortunes spent
innovating against nature, the modern food system is just as vulnerable as any before it. Only
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now, however, the survival of hundreds of millions of people all around the globe is contingent
on fair weather and endless fossil fuel reserves.
The Problem with Alternatives
Progress in the war against uncertainty has not come without significant economic, social and
environmental costs. Greater transparency of those consequences has fueled a resurgence of
support for alternative production methods most notably the organic and local food
movements, with the latter gaining greater momentum in recent years.
Organic production and handling criteria became federally standardized in 1990, when
the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) established the Organic Foods Production
Act (OFPA) (Gold, 2007). As defined by the USDAs National Organic Standards Board, organic
agriculture is:
... an ecological production management system that promotes and enhancesbiodiversity, biological cycles and soil biological activity. It is based on minimal use of off-farm inputs and on management practices that restore, maintain and enhance ecologicalharmony.
While the organic food industry was estimated at a mere $1 billion the year the OFPA was
implemented, it weighed in at just over $20 billion in 2008 (Dimitri, iii, 1), and grew an additional
8 percent the following year during one of the worst financial disasters of our countrys history.
This incredible growth appears to have been driven almost exclusively by a previously
unclassified segment of consumers, cutting across consumers of many conventional attributes
of distinction income, ethnic background, family-size, etc. who base buying decisions on
values more important than price alone (Greene, 3-5).
The USDAs 2008 Organic Production Survey revealed that 74 percent of organic sales
distribution occurred within 500 miles of the farm, and 44 percent occurred within 100 miles
(USDA, National Agricultural Statistics Service, 2010), so any attempt at a distinction between
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local food production and organic is problematic. Such comparison implies certified vs.
uncertified within close geographic proximity to consumption, which is simply not accurate,
since many industry organizations have emerged to provide more robust or specialized quality
assurance criteria for specific markets like livestock and poultry. Many local, non-organic
producers also claim to practice the same production methods, but simply refuse to deal with
the time, expense and regulatory obstacles encountered during the certification process (USDA,
National Agricultural Statistics Service, 2010). Some producers invent new descriptors and
qualifiers for their production methods, others make no claim at all.
One particularly promising methodology gaining traction is sustainable agroecology, an
ecologically pro-generative, knowledge-intensive approach to reintegrating natural processes
and biodiversity with modern production practices to foster greater resilience and stability
(Pretty, 2-3). Many prominent institutions the United Nations among them are calling for
increased emphasis on such a model, which have so far proven to significantly increase crop
yields, repair environmental damage and transfer massive quantities of carbon from the
atmosphere back into the soil (Pretty, 3). And for small producers, increased diversity means
not only greater variety for customers but also greater resiliency in the face of such challenges
as single-product market saturation by large-volume competitors.
Sustainable agroecology known by many names is already being employed by a
growing number of growers across the United States and around the world. Its methods do not
fit squarely into any one category, but may be partially exhibited in practice by many producers
across categorical divides. Events like organic-only meetings, however, deny nearby
uncertified producers the opportunity to contribute to and learn from others strategies and
experiences an invaluable step toward fostering more creative and intelligent behavior
among market participants. Today there are literally thousands of groups around the country
that seek to educate the public about sustainable agroecology (Hawken, 174).
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Exclusive categories simply do not hold up in a domain flooded with so many shades of
grey, yet it is this characteristically independent nature that binds these producers together in
purpose. Unfortunately, this identity of independence also has the potential to farmers market
ideological polarity among producers with contrasting methodologies, such as certified vs.
uncertified. Therefore, it is far more productive in the scope of this projectto regard these
producers for what they have in common: they are all independent small business owners who
continuously face threats to their economic viability. Food production at any scale is chock-full
of uncertainty, but small-scale operations that sell directly to consumers assume many of the
same responsibilities that go with any retail business: developing a compelling offering, creating
relationships with prospective customer segments, and exchanging through the right channels
(Figure 1.1).
Figure 1.1. Customer-facing portion of the Business Model Canvas (Osterwalder, 28)
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Over the past two decades the boom of interest in alternative food sources has created
the opportunity for a myriad of hobbyists to consider going pro. Not all have taken the leap,
however. These producers, who are not necessarily concerned with consistent revenues and
cost-based pricing, can occasionally throw a wild-card into the marketplace for producers whose
economic survival depends on those very things. Those who do take the dive into professional
independent agriculture learn very quickly to diversify their offering and add as much value as
possible to the goods they produce (Macher, 127-155). A diverse product mix and value-add
processing can create far greater customer interest and greater profit margins than basic
raw goods alone. Bio-diversity can also foster symbiosis, both in the ground and at the market
(Salatin, 69). Accomplishing these tasks really only comprises the first half of the battle,
however. Producers still need to let consumers in their communities know whats available in
the first place, where to find it, and when.
A 20012002 research project by the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education
Program at the University of California at Davis conducted foodshed assessments for three
California counties that best reflect the condition of the states food system. The counties
surveyed were either already highly urbanized or were experiencing steep population growth
and land development. This makes the project s findings useful for small-scale producers just
about everywhere, since local means in a city for 82% of the United States population (CIA,
2011). A resonant theme among these three reports is that direct marketing was absolutely
critical to the viability of small farms in every county (King, 37). In Stanislaus county, farms
using direct marketing strategies boosted gross receipts 105% (Anderson, 34), however such
marketing activities required a substantial investment of time and capital (Anderson, 42). By the
end of the study, the number of farms engaged in methods of direct marketing had dropped by
16% (Anderson, 34). This emphasis on direct marketing is echoed by acclaimed permaculture
farmer-turned-author Joel Salatin, who warns that focusing on production without a comparable
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marketing strategy is a guaranteed way to go out of business (Salatin, 77), and that product
development, promotion, and competitive retail pricing are all equally vital to the success of a
small farm (Salatin, 67).
Traditionally, market communication challenges like advertising and valuation have been
tackled collectively through a number of exchange models that reward participants for the
synergy of their collective participation. A farmers market, as an economic event, is the best
example. Producers benefit from shared advertising, cross-exposure to each others
customers, and relatively low managerial overhead. Consumers enjoy great variety and
exposure to producers who they might not otherwise have access to, in one place at one time.
Buyers clubs and farmers cooperatives, on the other hand, emerged as ways for either party to
achieve greater economic leverage by reaching a critical mass of supply (for farmers coops) or
demand (for buyers clubs) which then satisfies a degree of uncertainty for the opposing party in
the transaction. Another emerging model, the CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) is a co-
creation partnership between producers and consumers, where buyers make requests and pay
subscription fees or preseason deposits to producers in exchange for their services. Once
again, a key strategy in the negotiation is for one party to mitigate the uncertainties of the other.
The uncertainties that small-scale farmers face today are daunting enough, but what
about those that havent yet emerged? In 2005 a Whole Foods market study revealed that 73
percent of consumers thought organic food was just too expensive to make the switch (Whole
Foods, 2005), but as was highlighted previously, conventional production has many critical
uncertainties that could at any time cause volatile price shocks, possibly accompanying long-
term shortages. But even if such a shock doesnt occur, gradual changes like waning oil
reserves, shifting rainfall patterns, and the arrival of a few billion more people will certainly drive
conventional prices higher over a longer time horizon. What might happen if the big-box
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grocery store cant compete with the farmers market? This is just one of many possible
scenarios that concern producers in everycategory.
Figure 1.2. Three-dimensional Producer Matrix demonstrating the relationships among
producers of various degrees of certification, geographic participation, and production scale.
Change is inevitable, but will likely affect producers of different scale in different ways.
Such distinctions are shown in Figure 1.2. High oil prices will make distance prohibitive for large
multinational operations, forcing either an active pursuit of new transportation technologies or a
re-localizing of the value web through a round of aggressive acquisitions or possibly both.
Regional producers may likewise be inspired to find new nearby markets, as illustrated in Figure
1.3. The collective variety of farmers markets can shelter specialized producers from this
invasion by offering greater value (in this case, variety in one convenient location) than a single
low-cost product at large volumes. This advantage is not guaranteed, however, and some
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markets may even embrace the large-volume invader for the value their participation would
pass on to customers. How might small-scale, specialized producers cope when increasing
transportation costs or emerging technology inspire large-volume regional producers of a similar
specialty to sell directly to consumers in their own backyards? All participants will be forced to
innovate to stay viable, however the largest operations may be the only ones financially capable
of investing in the profound changes required by this hinge moment in history.
Figure 1.3. Innovative large-volume producers driven by prohibitive transportation costs
enter smaller local markets, saturating entire product categories and driving specialized small-
scale producers out of business.
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An Opportunity
A consequence and perhaps a benefit of the independent food movements decentralized
nature is heavy fragmentation and redundancy. In nature, such abundance of diversity is a sign
of resilience, and greatly strengthens the ecosystem as a whole, since there is no single failure
point threatening to bring the entire system to a halt. Perhaps a new set of tools could be
created which leverage socially-driven exchange models to further mitigate the uncertainties
that accompany small-scale food production and commerce.
Figure 1.4. Network effect of proposed socially-driven collaborative framework creates
instances of greater economic gravity than large-scale suppliers can offer.
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An intelligent web-based platform that gives small-scale producers an opportunity to
team together and collaborate on market strategies and joint offerings could dramatically
enhance the viability of independent food networks. By providing the necessary communication
channels, feedback loops and responsive inventory management tools, these emergent
business clusters could accomplish instances of greater economic gravity than the market
forces which would otherwise undo them (Figure 1.4). Such a framework essentially
commoditizes shelf space rather than food and gives producers and consumers an immediate
communication channel to collaborate and even improvise when needed, alleviating significant
uncertainty on both ends.
The challenge is first to understand how independent food networks might cope with a
series of possible global food system failures, so that the capabilities of the system best reflect
the needs of its users. Not all local food economies are the same. Some are very large and
robust and some just getting off the ground, with many various stages of development in
between, so this framework must be adaptive and structurally renegotiable by the users who will
populate it. Next, what kind of market models would best support and positively reinforce the
"economies of synergy" that independent food systems are capable of achieving? Initial support
of a particular model may be a means of achieving necessary adoption, but how should the
industry look several years out, and what types of economic behaviors can be fostered to get
there? Finally, to ensure that the needs and desires of the locale being studied are accurately
represented, which members of the independent food network in Chatham County, Georgia, are
best positioned to prototype and pioneer this new model?
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Chapter 2: Literature Review
Literature reviewed for this project covers a wide range of topics, from swarm creativity to
business model innovation, from economic calculation to the economic empowerment of the
modern web-enabled world. The purpose of this review is to establish a unifying theoretical lens
through which to view the viability of igniting an explosion of self-organizing value creation
among independent producers and consumers, in an increasingly interconnected environment
of democratized resources and shifting values. The chapter begins with a founding perspective
on how society constructs and implements knowledge to coordinate economic activity. Next,
that perspective is extended to explore the implications and opportunities for entirely new
modes of economic coordination that did not exist within the scope of independent food
production prior to the proliferation of the world wide web.
Humanity has had a dramatic and fundamental relationship with food over the past 12,000
years. At the end of the last ice age the Earth rapidly entered a warming period, which was
catastrophic for most of the large, furry four-legged mammals at that time. This was also bad
news for humans, who had just invested thousands of years constructing a survival strategy that
had suddenly become not only irrelevant but dangerous to pursue. Unless reasonable
alternatives were discovered and adopted, humans very well could have followed the mammoth
into extinction. This wasn't the first ecological shock humanity faced, and it certainly wouldn't be
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the last. Situations change, and when they do only the most flexible, inventive, and adaptive
species will survive.
High-protein hunters soon found themselves relying heavily on plant-based food, and
eventually focused their efforts on the most efficient and calorie-rich species of plants and
animals available. Agriculture was born. Over time, individuals learned to produce more than
enough food to feed themselves, allowing others to focus their time and talents on specialized
pursuits that might generate unique exchangeable value of their own. Similarly, population
centers began to specialize in different domains and trade lines were established to move
goods across land and sea, pulled along by various modes and degrees of economic gravity.
Agriculture emerged as a driving force of modern civilization, turning the raw bounty of nature
into fuel for economic growth. So disruptive was this transition that nearly every aspect of social
life was reconfigured around the new ecological and economic reality. A new balance had to be
discovered, but getting there required the invention of new tools, exchange models, social
configurations and responsibilities, governance, and risk abatement.
Socio-economic Foundation
Information is essential to every human endeavor, and the marketplace is no exception. The
study of economics seeks to explain relationships between production, availability, distribution
and consumption, but at its core it is a social science concerned with the choices and behaviors
people exhibit in response to these factors; it is the science of choice under circumstance. The
more information market participants individuals and organizations alike have at their
disposal, the more intelligent their decisions will be. However, information is not always
available nor easily accessed, especially in times of rapid, turbulent change. People are, as
Peter Schwartz states in The Art of the Long View(1996), the scenario-building animal. By
renegotiating and reassembling the causal relationships and circumstances that led to the
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present, people are able to construct elaborate stories of what couldcome to be, far into the
future, and then consider the implications of the many causal relationships and uncertainties
that connect the distant future back to today (Schwartz, 26-28). The real value of information
comes from the knowledge that is generated through the rich exchange among actors. Thomas
Davenport and Laurence Prusak, in Working Knowledge: How Organizations Manage What
They Know(1998), define knowledge as:
...a fluid mix of framed experience, values, contextual information, and expert insightthat provides a framework for evaluating and incorporating new experiences andinformation. It originates and is applied in the minds of knowers... (5)
Or, more elegantly, knowledge derives from minds at work (5).
Fritjof Capra, in The Hidden Connections(2002), emphasizes that the communication at
the heart of knowledge creation is not simply the passing off of information, but rather a means
of coordinating behavior (83); it is the tethering force that binds all socially-driven endeavors
together. Niklas Luhmann, in Essays on Self-Reference(1990), extends Humberto Maturana
and Francisco Varelas classic contribution of the autopoietic system to social systems, and
establishes communication as the mode of self-production and reproduction (3-9). Essentially,
as Luhmann explains, communicating about communication itself recursive self-referential
renegotiation recycles and reinforces the very composition of the network as well as its identity.
In the words of Maturana, in Autopoiesis: A Theory of Living Organization(1981):
[...] through their interactions, generate and realize the network that produces them andconstitute, in the space in which they exist, the boundaries of the network ascomponents that participate in the realization of the network. (21).
This process self-maintenance that occurs within social systems is the life blood of
creativity and rapid adaptation. The social reconfiguration of disparate concepts and objects
from a past that is as Etienne Wenger says in Communities of Practice(1998) inherently
ambiguous and open for renegotiation, brings forth original ideas, images, and methods that
better address the challenges of the moment (83). Keith Sawyer, in Group Genius(2007),
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expounds on this theory, demonstrating how the complex task of facilitating collaboration among
participants of diverse cultural and experiential backgrounds is rewarded with the richness and
originality of the creative insights that can emerge (124-125).
The inherent conflict of this social reality, as Friedrich Hayek notes in The Use of
Knowledge in Society(1945), is that
...the knowledge of the circumstances of which we must make use never exists inconcentrated or integrated form, but solely at the dispersed bits of incomplete andfrequently contradictory knowledge which all the separate individuals possess. (519)
Therefore the chief economic problem of society, according to Hayek, is the difficulty involved
in quickly and effectively adapting to spontaneous changes in circumstances across a vastly
decentralized array of individual actors, each carrying just a few pieces of the puzzle (524).
Traditionally, widespread economic coordination has been attempted by constructing
hierarchies of command, charged with consolidating information and issuing responses aligned
with a central plan. Centralized decision-making according to Hayek in The Road to Serfdom
(1949) can be not only painstakingly slow but, dangerously also disconnected from the needs
and concerns of the individuals and communities affected by such decisions (57-58). In this
way, the modern rationalization of agriculture has sought to standardize and tightly couple the
interlinking pieces of production to remove variability and improve responsiveness to centrally
administered adjustments.
Conversely, more intelligent and responsive economic coordination can be achieved
because ofdecentralization, with the proper communication device(s) in place to allow the
impact of individual decisions to cascade freely throughout the system. The price mechanism is
just such a communication device, assigning objects an indexical score embodying the core
values required to make a logical choice of substitution. The product of the price mechanism
might actually be price the dominant device coordinating participation across the entirety of
the modern global economy. Hayek demonstrates how, when availability or desire of an object
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change, its price also changes to reflect the adjustment. The man on the spot doesnt need to
know why those changes have occurred, but rather how much more or less difficult achieving
their goal will be (The Use of Knowledge in Society 525). As each decision invokes a reaction
by those also connected to the event, information of the initial change is diffused throughout the
marketplace.
Fundamentally, in a system where the knowledge of the relevant facts is dispersedamong many people, prices can act to coordinate the separate actions of differentpeople in the same way as subjective values help the individual to coordinate the partsof his plan. (The Use of Knowledge in Society 526)
The full realization of these criteria is catallaxy, a more appropriate concept than economy
which Hayek defines in Law, Legislation and Liberty: The Mirage of Social Justice (1978) as
the order brought about by the mutual adjustment of many individual economies in a
market (108-109).
Ultimately, however, the signaling content of the price mechanism the variables
observed and corresponding information shared will be entirely contextual to its respective
social system of production, which, according to J. Rogers Hollingsworth and Karl H. Mller in
Advancing Socio-Economics: An Institutional Perspective(2003)
...consists of a society's norms, rules, habits, conventions, and values, which in turninfluence the institutional arrangements (e.g., markets, the state, association, networks)which are dominant in a society.
In Contemporary Capitalism Hollingsworth and Karl H. Boyer discuss how such forms of
economic coordination are increasingly difficult to establish in environments with a high diversity
of interests and values, resulting in an increased prominence of hierarchical institutions (29).
Communication of any kind economic, interpersonal, political, or other is a means, not an end
in itself. Etienne Wenger, in Communities of Practice (1998), offers a deeper perspective into
how mutually engaged groups of people are constantly at work constructing and renegotiating
meaning, identity, and the very reality of their respective contexts (51, 149). Its not surprising,
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then, that social systems with divergent values and interests would be fundamentally incapable
of responding to changes in a uniform manner, since information flowing among and between
independent worldviews takes on entirely different meanings.
Independent agriculture, as previously described, hosts a vast and dynamic landscape
of interests where value is not determined by traditional means of supply and demand. The
incurred expense of choosing independently produced goods over conventionally mass-
produced food is offset by a wide range of values from an equally diverse assortment of
worldviews. However, these social systems of flexible specialization, which Hollingsworth
defines as diversified low-volume production with an emphasis on economies of scope (1998),
share many of the same goals, opportunities, and threats. How then might these decentralized
and fragmented production systems achieve better coordination so that the entire ecosystem as
a whole may become more flexible and responsive in the face of change?
A Well-Coordinated Revolution
The world is experiencing nothing short of a full scale revolution of collaboration and innovation,
unleashed by the information and communication technology breakthroughs of the past sixty
years. Todays web-enabled global citizen is more interconnected with and perhaps
interdependent upon more people from a greater diversity of cultures and perspectives in their
daily renegotiation of meaning, identity and reality than at any other time in history. What some
claim is an era of runaway individualism, social isolation and abandoned privacy is in fact a
series of examples of humanity doing exactly what it does best: removing constraints and
uncertainty through technological leverage to join together in constructing a better tomorrow.
In Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, Don Tapscott and Anthony
Williams describe how people from all walks of life now have access to the tools and channels
necessary to communicate and collaborate in nearly every mode of value creation imaginable,
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and express that it is profoundly changing the world as we know it (10-11, 247). Innovative
companies like Google, Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr and Wordpress have driven the
proliferation of this collaborative infrastructure by carefully brokering relationships of exchange
between many different types of customers within multi-sided platforms. Each customer
segment benefits directly from the value created by another. A wide range of previously capital-
intensive web services email and messaging, file sharing, video compression and hosting,
advertising, analytics, and content publishing has now become publicly accessible and
dramatically affordable, dissolving barriers to participation and sparking an explosion of
entrepreneurial innovation and value creation.
For better or for worse information today knows virtually no boundaries, coursing
throughout the connected world to all who seek it faster than ever before. Yochai Benkler, in
The Wealth of Networks(2006), explains how this enhanced access to information has
profoundly empowered individuals to act with greater autonomy than ever before; to do more
for and by themselves, and in loose commonality with others, without being constrained to
organize their relationship through a price system or in traditional hierarchical models (Benkler,
8). The combination of low barriers to participation and this loose commonality among
participants creates conditions for greater experimentation and exploration, particularly as
Benkler emphasizesfor non-market or socially-driven endeavors (11).
Richard Normann notes, in Reframing Business: When the Map Changes the
Landscape(2001), that many business ventures are no longer bound by physical location or
hard assets to operate effectively (28-29). Today its all too common to hear of new companies
launching with entirely virtual, geographically dispersed staff. In a radical reversal of Coases
Theorem1 , eliminating the transaction costs that once justified the consolidation of production
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1 Coases Theorem: Theorem by Ronald Coase detailing how, in the absence of transaction costs, tradein an externality will lead to the most efficient outcome for all parties involved.
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has now forced these operations back apart, significantly changing the definition of strategic
advantage (Tapscott, 55-57). Employees and independent contractors can now work from
almost anywhere on Earth by leveraging these ubiquitous web-based application frameworks to
communicate and collaborate as if they were in the same room as their peers. Established
businesses are unbundling their non-critical operations, choosing instead to form symbiotic
business webs where each player is free to innovate around their respective core contribution to
the partnership (Normann, 51-55; Tapscott, 214-215). With an innovative vision and the right
business logic, any member of the business web now has the opportunity to fundamentally
reframe the nature of the game and quickly re-bundle the resources necessary to align and
command a larger piece of the value creation process than they may legally own (Normann,
65-67, 83).
The key pattern across all of these different contexts is that the autonomy gained by the
hyper-connectedness and free-flow of information fosters loose coupling a concept renewed
by Orton and Weick in Loosely Coupled Systems: A Reconceptualization(1990) within the
complex, ever-evolving web ecosystem. Participants are free to explore and experiment within
a universe of possibilities and dedicate their efforts where and with whom they choose. The
dynamic topography of the social landscape underlying this environment sets the stage for a
rich collage of perspectives, motivations and norms, and an equally vast mix of possible
configurations and relationships, as well as alternative resources and competing initiatives.
While this diversity suggests extreme discontinuity close-up, social activities coalesce
into recognizable, seemingly intelligent patterns of unified behavior from a far enough vantage
point. Peter Gloor, research scientist at MITs Center for Collective Intelligence, explains how
clouds of interest form around shared pursuits and exciting new ideas, and complex patterns
similar to those seen in swarming organisms such as bees and migratory birds begin to
emerge from human communication structures. As a community takes shape a meritocracy
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emerges within, establishing order based on the contribution and competence of these
collaborative, mutually engaged members near the core of the swarm. In Coolhunting: Chasing
Down the Next Big Thing, Gloor defines these Collaborative Innovation Networks (COINs) as:
cyberteams of self-motivated people with a collective vision, enabled by technology tocollaborate in achieving a common goal an innovation by sharing ideas, information,and work (76).
The diffusion of meaning through diverse social webs is anything but linear or orderly, but
swarming behavior can be identified and even forecasted as people begin gravitating around
original, innovative ideas and the COINs that bring them to fruition (Gloor, 45-46).
Because trust and authenticity are so critical to the continuity of a meritocracy, members
have a genuine incentive to validate their own contributions, as well as the contributions of their
peers. Through this peer-to-peer accreditation, Benkler explains, self-assembled interest
clusters are self-regulating, rewarding favorable behavior and discouraging unfavorable ones,
while filtering out extraneous information (Benkler, 12). This collective validation creates a
structural basis for automatic coordination within the social system by feeding back relevant
information that corrects and reinforces the communitys trajectory toward the ideal state implied
by those very feedback loops.
Given the profound connective potential of the web, a truly powerful realization of Hayek's
catallaxy could be achieved by empowering the autonomous clusters of interest that form
around decentralized and fragmented production systems with a framework composed of
instances of renegotiable forms of coordination. Essentially, such a framework would be
structurally renegotiable with regard to the feedback loops each cluster chooses to coordinate
within itself, while simultaneously promoting the free-flow of salient information among all
clusters throughout the entire ecosystem.
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Chapter 3: Research Methodology
The purpose of this study is to deconstruct the market mechanics and social dynamics that drive
independent food production in Chatham County in southeast Georgia. Specifically, this project
asks Which types of a market models best support and positively reinforce the "economies of
synergy" that independent food networks are capable of achieving? Next, this project asks
Which members of the local community (Chatham County, GA) are best positioned to prototype
and pioneer this new model? And finally, How will independent food networks respond to a
series of possible futures?
While economics seeks to explain the relationships between production, availability,
distribution and consumption, the discipline is essentially a social science concerned with the
choices and behaviors people exhibit in response to these factors. It is the science of choice
within parameters, contexts and circumstances. Independent food networks are as much about
community as they are commerce, so to best understand the dynamics at play within the
complexity one must identify the innovative thought-leaders at core of the social web, and learn
to view the world through their eyes and empathize with their hopes, fears and aspirations.
Research Design
Figure 3.1 illustrates the phase progression of this project. This study progressed from wide
consideration of market participants to the focused and extensive contextual immersion within
the ongoing affairs of a sample of producers who are among the most central and influential in
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the area. Observational and participatory data from these experiences was sorted, clustered,
modeled and mapped to achieve a holistic, systemic perspective of the social and economic
drivers that define the business environment. These models then informed the construction of
several future scenarios which explore global drivers and their possible implications for local
practice. Findings from all of these activities shape final design criteria as well as establish a
roster of the most influential co-design candidates.
Figure 3.1. Illustrated research design
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Project Timeline
This project will be conducted in four phases from May, 2010 to May, 2011 (Table 3.1).
Date Activities Details
Phase 1: Field Study Preparation 4 months
May 2010 Prospectus approval Exploring Opportunities for TechnologicalInnovation and Reconfiguration in the LocalFood Industry
May 2010 Aug. 2010 Secondary research;Developing interview protocol
Exposing known unknowns, assumptionsand biases to initiate secondary research
Aug. 2010 Identifying and contacting interviewprospects
Establishing criteria for innovator profileand filtering of prospects
Phase 2: Field Research 2 months
Aug. Sept. 2010 Contextual immersion and datacollection;Iterative analysis and adaptation
Site visits, semi-structured interviews,hands-on participation, photodocumentation
Phase 3: Data Analysis 7 months
Sept. 2010 March 2011 Ongoing data analysis and modeling;Strategic scenario development
Data modeling, system mapping, businessmodel canvas development
Phase 4: Define an Opportunity Space & Design Criteria 3 months
March May 2011 Formalize findings and design criteria;Identify co-design candidates
May 2011 Project completion and defense
Table 3.1. Four-phase Project Timeline
Phase 1: Field Study Preparation
Revealing Known Unknowns and Assumptions
Known unknowns and general assumptions about independent food commerce must be
confronted for two very critical reasons. First, assumptions and subsequent biases must be
articulated and neutralized to ensure purely objective inquiry and analysis. Second, confronting
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and categorizing known unknowns establishes clear topics for secondary research. This
approach creates a solid foundation for developing an interview protocol with an informed,
refined understanding of the context in question.
Secondary Research
Secondary research explored the global drivers and trends that will affect local practice. The
USDA has been tracking organic production and sales data for several years and is a reliable
and recognized source of national statistics and analysis. The USDA has also produced
extensive forecasts and projections for the U.S. agriculture industry, which indirectly provided a
reliable starting point for constructing logic axes of driving forces. Secondary research was also
drawn from industry reports and trade association publications, and social science journals, as
well as university research projects at other universities. Finally, a series of Condor analyses
were conducted to create a comprehensive view of conversation within the independent food
community.
Identifying the Interviewee Group
Engaging the most innovative and opinion-leading producers is critical to the success of this
project. Innovators and early adopters adopter categories established by Everett Rogers in
Diffusion of Innovations (2003) are generally quite proactive in adopting new ideas, methods
and behaviors, and are widely regarded as such by their peers (Rogers, 283). Opinion leaders
within a community are not only highly influential, but also exemplify and express the systems
structure (Rogers, 27). These participants perspectives and strategies will represent those of
many other producers within their networks, providing a rich view into the community at large.
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Facebook, and newsletter mailing lists to connect with their customers, and are frequently
referenced or cross-linked by other such producers. Many producers names appear on various
online directories and farmers market vendor rosters, but for many that is the extent of their
web presence. Remaining prospects not fitting the profile of the socially-connected curator of
new ideas filtered themselves from the list by simply not responding to the invitation to chat.
However, a few producers who were frequently referenced in conversation by those who fit the
target profile were simply unable to spare the time to meet.
Identifying Leaders through Social Network Analysis
Accurately identifying the innovators and thought-leaders of the local producer community is
absolutely critical to the success of the field research phase. To ensure accuracy, another
perspective had to be woven into analysis: that of the crowd. Two distinct processes were
employed to achieve this, each with a sophisticated piece of software created by Peter Gloor
and his team of fellow researchers at MIT Center for Collective Intelligence. This program is
called Condor.
Condor allows you to create visual maps, movies and many graph metrics ofrelationships. Relationships can come from social networks, Web site link structures,and concept maps of unstructured documents, online forums, phone archives, e-mailnetworks, and many more. (Condor Manual 2.2, 2007)
While Condor is as versatile as it is powerful, this analysis will only require a few key features.
The first is the Web Collector, which will query Google Search for specifically constructed
keywords and compile the results into an SQL database for later analysis. For each initial result
a second query is executed for any possible web entities linking back to that result as well. This
multi-degree search adds a rich layer of interconnectivity, allowing Condor to analyze and
calculate relationships and various modes of centrality. The primary mode of centrality for this
project will be betweenness centrality, which is a relative calculation of importance based on the
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number of shortest paths between nodes that run over each node. A node with the greatest
betweenness centrality, therefore, is essentially a super-connector, enjoying the shortest path to
all other nodes in the network. With regard to social networks, these nodes are the leaders.
The first step in this study was to identify and analyze the communication structure that
supports the collective conversation around such topics as local/organic food producers and
markets within southeastern Georgia. By executing parallel queries that include a Google
Search filter syntax near: followed by the ZIP code for each respective town, the results were
contextualized to a web user from each locale. These localized results were then studied both
independently and together as a merged communication view. This structure was then
analyzed as a web of relationships among and between websites, news articles, blog entries,
directory listings, and forums, revealing the most commonly referenced and interconnected
nodes in the network.
The second step in this study was to analyze the frequency and association of words
and phrases found within the content collected for each of the results of the first step. Several
parallel queries were executed for each locale, and the resulting data sets merged together, so
that an aggregate content analysis could be conducted. One important feature of Condors term
analysis functionality is the ability to feed in a startword list of key terms and phrases to filter
against. In this case, a startword list of every identifiable producer in the region was used so
that the most frequently referenced and interconnected names were highlighted and analyzed
within the data set.
The goal of this phase is to identify the fulcrumof the conversation, where innovators
and common participants collide to share new ideas and learn from one another, and then to
identify the most popular, commonly referenced producers within that conversation. The
resulting list of crowd-elected producers was then approached during the next phase for
interviews and first-hand observation.
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Once interviews were underway, the community was further analyzed through offline
social network analysis coupled with noted actor references and the guiding principle of the
friendship paradox. The friendship paradox, as established by sociologist Scott Feld in Why
Your Friends Have More Friends than You Do (1991), holds that any given person in a social
network tends to have fewer friends than their friends do, and that randomly selected friends of
initial participants will be closer to the center of the social network. By documenting and
mapping early contacts and interviewees references to friends and professional colleagues
involved in the local independent food network, actors of greater centrality and influence were
revealed for later consideration.
Phase 2: Field Research
Data Collection & Documentation
The value of contextual immersion and participant observation cannot be overstated. Primary
research included semi-structured interviews, frequent farm and market visits, hands-on
participation and volunteer work. Data collected from these methods include transcribed
interview audio, field notes, email conversations, newsletters and marketing brochures.
Semi-structured Interviews
A semi-structured interview protocol (Appendix A) was developed to engage interviewees in a
strategic conversation about their current business success and challenges, past lessons
learned, and concerns about the future. The goal of such an extensive protocol is not to cover
each and every question verbatim, but rather to support several conversational elements. The
protocol also includes several exercises and two printed worksheets intended to support a
visual dialogue by engaging interviewees in simple diagramming and concept sketching,
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invoked during various stages of the interview session. All participants signed an informed
consent document (Appendix B), establishing the boundaries and expectations of disclosure for
any data collected from our meeting.
The first set of questions was designed to create a rapport and put the interviewee at
ease by discussing topics like the initial inspiration for getting into and staying in the business,
favorite aspects of the business, significant accomplishments from the past year and goals for
the upcoming year. The interviewees were also asked to sort a deck of seven business attribute
cards (Figure 3.3) in sequence of importance.
Figure 3.3. Sortable business attribute cards invoke a reflective conversation about importance
The second set of questions built off of the first, focusing on the time and techniques that
go into operating their business. This section also introduced a few hypothetical scenarios, like,
If you could avoid doing one thing for the year, what would it be? and If you could only do one
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thing this year, what would it be? The purpose of these questions was to explore the time
expenditures that distract from the real joy of the practice, and, once these truths have been
surfaced, to articulate as many activities and expenses as possible.
The third set of questions shifts perspective to reflect on the partnerships and
relationships that are directly involved in the producers practice, and then to collaboratively
sketch those interactions. This exercise did not produce elaborate diagrams every time, but a
few great system maps were created when the information was forthcoming.
The fourth set of questions focuses on arriving at an informed value proposition by
exploring marketing strategies, differentiation, exchange channels and customer relationships.
Figure 3.4. Annual timeline template
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Agricultural practices change dramatically with the seasons, so an annual timeline exercise was
conducted (Figure 3.4) to help producers articulate shifting operations, expenses or concerns,
as well as different expectations among partners or customers as the year progresses.
The fifth and final set of questions brought everything together and shifted the
conversation forward into the future, beginning with a discussion about the interviewees source
of inspiration and cause for admiration within their profession. After invoking heroes and
thought leaders came probes for concerns about the future, one- and five-year aspirations for
their own business, and ten-year predictions for independent food production at large. Like
each previous set, a hypothetical scenario was proposed. This particular exercise is based on a
question borrowed from Kees van der Heijdens conversation protocol from Scenarios: The Art
of Strategic Conversation (2005). First, the interviewee was asked If you could ask a fortune
teller three questions about the future and get three perfect answers, what would those
questions be? Once the questions are established, the interviewee was asked to imagine that
they are now the fortune teller, and to answer each question so that the future turns out better
than the present. Finally, the interviewee was asked to answer those questions again, however
from a perspective that the future will become much worse than the present. Responses to this
exercise were incorporated into future scenarios which would directly impact this interviewee.
Data Collection Tools & Equipment
Simple data collection tools were employed for this study. An iPhone Voice Memos app was
used for recording interview audio and post-interview reflections, which was then synced to
iTunes for easy playback and transcription. Photo documentation of market events, interviews
and tangible data analysis methods were also used. Condor (social network analysis software
developed at MITs Sloan School of Management) was used to observe and analyze large
virtual communities, as well as online activity concerning local actors within the study scope. All
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digital data was stored on a personal computer, as well as external and cloud backup storage.
Notebooks, sketchbooks and Post-Its were used to capture, sketch, explore and articulate
complex ideas, relationships and systems during the data collection phase.
Phase 3: Data Analysis Process & Procedures
Data collected during the second phase was analyzed extensively through a series of sense-
making and pattern-constructing methodologies.
Affinity Diagramming
Key observations, statements, questions and perspectives were extracted from the transcript
record of each interview and notes from spontaneous encounters. These individual extractions
were saved on 3.5x5 notecards with a small reverse-side mark indicating the interviewee of
origin. This allowed processing of cards both by interviewee and as an aggregated collection.
Notecards were sorted into clusters as new and unique hierarchies and modes of relation
emerged from the data (Figure 3.5). The goal of this process was to give the data voice so that
it might reveal deeper patterns of behavior and causality than that of individual interviews alone.
Figure 3.5. Affinity Process: constructing categorical relationships to make sense of complexity.
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Business Model Canvas
The business model canvas (Figure 3.6), developed by Alexander Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur
and hundreds of volunteer contributors from around the web in their book, The Business Model
Generation, is a tool for spatially reasoning with the many interconnected components of a
business model. A business model is simply too complex and too abstract for a person to hold
the entire concept in their mind. Osterwalder et al. s canvas enables effective deconstruction,
exploration and prototyping of business models, not just by individuals but by collaborative
teams as well.
Figure 3.6. Business Model Canvas: Key Partners (KP), Key Activities (KA), Key Resources
(KR), Costs and Expenses ($C), Value Proposition (VP), Customer Relationships (CR), Channel
(CH), Revenue Stream ($R), and Customer Segments (CS) (Osterwalder)
A series of canvases were created to synthesize secondary research, but were further
refined as primary data became available through research. This iterative process helped
expose initial misconceptions while laying the groundwork for more informed conversations
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about each interviewees business model and strategic approach to surviving in their particular
business environment.
Strategic Scenario Development
Findings from primary and secondary research were combined into a set of three scenarios: one
exploring a future defined by business as usual, as held by the participants of the study as well
as opinions and projections from the industry at large, and two alternative scenarios that cover a
range of possible futures. These scenarios will ultimately provide high-level strategic guidance
and design criteria for the concept development and prototyping phases.
Phase 4: Define an Opportunity Space & Design Criteria
Formalizing Findings and Design Criteria
The final phase of this project was to articulate the findings of this project through the
establishment of design criteria for effective application and implementation. This phase also
presents recommendations for future research and exploration.
Research Limitations
No local food economy is the same as any other. Some are very large and robust and some are
just getting off the ground, with many various stages of development in between. The network
analyzed in this study offers a limited number of actors matching targeted adopter categories.
While the goal is to achieve rich, qualitative depth of understanding, the small sample size
available in this particular context may produce findings that are inherently limited in their
widespread application.
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Chapter 4: Analysis & Findings
The guiding research questions of this project were designed in such a way that satisfying the
first would provide the foundational basis for the next, which would then support the last. This
means analysis was conducted for each question concurrently with preparation for the next.
The first question, Which producers within the local independent food network are best
positioned to represent the community at large?required a blended methodology of
environmental observation and social network analysis. The resulting collection of producers
and affiliations were then approached with a wide array of primary research methods to reveal
greater patterns within the tacit hopes, fears, opportunities and challenges of the community, as
well as which the second question probes the market models which are emerging to face the
gravity of this shared reality. Finally, a series of strategic scenarios will be developed to
concretize th
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