Ventura County: The Pioneer’s History
The roots of the AFA go back to 1998-99 when the Economic Development Collaborative Ventura County (EDCVC) funded a Ventura County Agricultural Industry Cluster that sought to stimulate growth and health of an industry suffering from the effect of globalization and urbanization. In 1999, EDCVC moved to implement the major finding of the Cluster: development of a public relations campaign for agriculture. EDCVC hired Ag Innovations Network (known at that time as Sunflower Strategies) to do this work. In the first set of planning sessions facilitated by Ag Innovations, Cluster members realized that a public relations campaign would not ultimately solve their problems. Instead, the Cluster members began developing the concept for creating a broad coalition of community interests that would work with agriculture on significant challenges because they could see the linkages to their own goals and aspirations for the community.
It was agreed that for agriculture to thrive, the greater population of non-farming citizens who control the political and economic future of the region must become mentally and emotionally reconnected to agriculture. In short, the project was meant to construct a system for building a new level of trust and community commitment to the existence and enhancement of agriculture.
The proposed working title of the conceived alliance was the Ag Futures Alliance (AFA) and it has never changed. Because of the recognized need for broad-based public commitment to and participation in the AFA, Cluster members agreed that agriculture must make the environmental and health concerns of non-farming residents top priorities. The Cluster invited nearly 20 representatives from a variety of civic and environmental concerns and with few exceptions the offer was accepted. Funding for a year of AFA formation meetings emerged from three sources: UC Hansen Trust, Ventura County Farm Bureau and EDCVC.
Given the years of conflict played out in news reports, public meetings, and elections, it was clear to all involved that the creation of a meaningful, two-way communication was the first step in the process. The second step would be development of trust, and the third step would be discovery of win-win solutions based on mutual respect and cooperation.
Faulkner Farm, home of the AFA Significant progress emerged from the first ten meetings held in 2000. Even before the end of that first year, AFA participants began to behave outside the usual patterns of blame, accusation, and defensiveness. It began with the decision by Environmental Defense Center (EDC) to check in with the AFA and Farm Bureau before continuing a leafleting campaign designed to educate parents on the dangers of pesticides to school children. It continued with AFA members jointly testifying before the Board of Supervisors in support of increasing the staffing in the Agricultural Commissioner’s office.
The most significant sign of success involved a serious incident of pesticide drift near a school in November 2000. Before AFA, this event would have sparked a vigorous degrading attack on agriculture by environmental and health advocates and an equally vigorous defense reflecting minimization and denial by the industry. But the months of relationship building in the AFA process, allowed Rex Laird, Executive Director of Farm Bureau, to call Lori Schiraga, EDC’s representative to the AFA, and ask to meet in order to formulate a collaborative response to the incident. That initial dialog led to a comprehensive approach to preventing future incidents and eventually to an alteration in state law pertaining to pesticide use around schools.
The second year of AFA was in large part dedicated to development of prevention program described in an Issue Paper entitled Farming Near Schools: A Community Based Approach for Protecting Children (pdf). The AFA prevention program that resulted highlights the shared risks and responsibilities of all involved: agriculture, school administrators, and government.
In the AFA’s founding year two major milestones had been reached.
Tractor at Faulkner Farm
First, a draft constitution had been completed (pdf). This document codified two sets of principles. The first set, Principles of Organization, would guide the behavior of participants as they sat in the meeting. It allowed constructive dialog and continuous building of trust. The second set, Principles of Practice, clarified what kind of agriculture members where seeking to create. A third section of the document clarifies what type of actions the AFA would undertake.
The second milestone was clarification of a process for taking action. This change model resulted from the work related to the pesticide drift incident. The AFA round table, because it was focused on developing a constitution, had created a Pesticide Policy Committee. Its members were primarily from the round table but also included key stakeholders in the community, such as the Superintendent of Schools, concerned about or connected to pesticide use around schools. This committee, which met once or twice per month, provided a report at every monthly meeting of the AFA to seek feedback, direction and consensus on portions of the emerging Issue Paper that the round table had initially tasked it to write. This committee process revealed the work method adopted by the AFA for use on other issues.
Thus, by the end of 2000, the Ventura AFA, as the first AFA in the state, had developed a prototype for making change through collaboration among diverse and nontraditional allies. Based on this initial success, the AFA has continued for five years and launched an effort to initiate similar community processes up and down the state.
For more history of the Ventura AFA you may enjoy John Krist’s Farming in Suburbia. This is a PDF file.