Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
The use of new knowledge, innovation and
multiple stakeholders is at the heart of SAI.
SAI carries out its mission through commodity-
specific working groups - coffee, dairy, fruit,
arable and vegetable crops, and water and agri-
culture. In particular, the dairy working group
includes an array of formidable global dairy
companies: Arla Foods, Cayuga Marketing,
Danone, Delaval, Fonterra, Friesland Campina,
General Mills, the Innovation Center for US
Dairy, Kraft Foods, McDonald's, Nestlé, Novus,
PepsiCo and Unilever. The group has established
many relationships and alliances around the
world. It has developed, published and imple-
mented educational programmes related to
their comprehensive
Principles and Practices for
Sustainable Dairy Production
. The group has
worked on resolving issues of how to measure
sustainability at the global level while imple-
menting local programmes of sustainable dairy
practice in as diverse locations as Mexico,
Chile, Pakistan and India.
The second example comes from the
Netherlands and was a project funded by the
Dutch innovation programme called Trans-
Forum. The project was named The Northern
Friesian Woods. The agriculture in this region
of the Netherlands is dominated by dairy pro-
duction. Some sample statistics give a snapshot
of the region: 850 farmers with 40,000 ha of
land, 148,000 residents, 1700 km of wood
banks managed by farmers and 300 million l of
milk production a year (2.7% of the Dutch
total) generating income of €91 million. The
Association of Northern Friesian Woods had
as its mission: 'The development of agricul-
ture and the regional economy, in conjunc-
tion with strengthening the cultural-historical
landscape and its ecological features.' They
created a multi-stakeholder coalition that
included government, several universities and
NGOs to implement a comprehensive pro-
gramme to carry out the mission.
New methods of production and new
products grew from the work. The programme
encompassed regional branding for tourism
and value-added dairy products, harmoniza-
tion of agriculture with the need to protect the
National Landscape designation for the region,
developing energy sources in the form of wood
pellets from the previously underutilized wood
banks, and linking the attributes of sustaina-
bility and closed-loop farming to their market-
ing of value-added products. All three Ps of
sustainability show simultaneous enhance-
ments with the unified work of the region's
participants.
Much more could be said about both exam-
ples. The intent here is to show that the concept
of managing sustainability productively can be
achieved.
Takeaway Concepts
Sustainability, be it in dairy or any other
dimension of food and agriculture, can best
be understood through the lens of wicked
problems - ambiguously complex, value-
laden and not solvable in any conventional
sense. We seem to be in a time in which many
problems are becoming increasingly wicked,
as value-diverse stakeholders are increasingly
willing to exercise their veto power over what
industry does. Wicked problems and figuring
out how to manage them will be more rele-
vant to what knowledge institutions, govern-
ments, businesses and societal organizations
must do.
New knowledge is critical to managing
wicked problems. Only new knowledge can
overcome the twin barriers that existing
knowledge faces: (i) lack of legitimacy across
relevant stakeholder groups; and (ii) 'frozen'
trade-offs among key system components.
New knowledge creation requires multiple
stakeholders co-creating system innovation
through aligned incentives and active experi-
mentation in practice and in scholarship.
New knowledge co-created has stakeholder
legitimacy, and when it is focused on system
innovation, it has the potential to turn trade-
offs among profit, planet and people into
complements
To play a role, knowledge institutions
and their faculty must practise
transdisciplinary
scholarship
combining transdisciplinary research
with transdisciplinary outreach and education
that engages stakeholders as peers throughout
the innovation and wicked problem manage-
ment process.
