Last month, we explored how Generative Communication is a way forward when deeply held values of individual rights and responsibility versus social rights and responsibilities get in the way of responding to Climate Change in significant ways.
This blog explores these questions from the perspective of stakeholders of the U.S. Agricultural Industry. The conversation above offers a shorthand version of differing views in an imagined stakeholder group: agriculture (ag) consumers, ag producers, product processors, local university ag and climate change researchers, sustainability advocates, and local politicians. While comments may represent similar-minded folks, you can rest assured that each individual within the various stakeholder groups has a personal and unique point of view. (Read more about lifeviews here and here.)
I grew up on a small Iowa farm in the ‘50s and early ‘60s and learned to appreciate the value of independent thinking and self-sufficiency. Underneath that lived value among ag producers, I also observed deeply-held beliefs in individual rights and responsibilities. With these beliefs often came an innate suspicion of societal rights and responsibilities interpreted as government interference with ag operations and government giveaways to people who depended on tax-dollar-funded programs to get along in the world: “Why don’t they just get a job and work hard like the rest of us?”
The farmers and farm families I know also value the unpretentious, down-to-earth rural lifestyle and appreciate the rural countryside and the communities in which they live. This is despite the ever-present challenges of making a decent living: occasional droughts and hailstorms that wipe out crops and pasture lands, volatile market prices, and unpredictable trade/embargo policies. It’s not easy for ag producers to survive, but their passion for independent rural life has sustained them.
However, the ag industry, like everything else, has experienced dramatic changes in recent years. Statistics from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Economic Research Service show that there are fewer small, diversified farms and ranches today given the economic challenges of the time. Instead, ag production is concentrated on a smaller number of large, specialized farms aimed at optimal production. Diversity has given way to monocropping, the practice of growing a single crop year after year on the same land using large-scale, efficient machinery and growing methods with the goal of increasing overall profitability. Chemical insecticides and fertilizers are factored in to the profitability equation as are wide-scale irrigation systems where feasible. Intensive livestock production has similarly shifted to an efficient, high-volume profitability model.
In short, the U.S. ag industry has become increasingly complex and less sustainable, just to survive, with or without the growing concerns of accelerated climate change. Yet, according to the USDA, the ag industry contributes 11.2% to the country’s greenhouse gas emissions.
And current studies from multiple sources including the Climate and Land Use Alliance, the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting and the World Fair Trade Organization suggest that the ag industry has the opportunity to lead the way, taking actions—from adopting practices to increase carbon stored in soil or vegetation to producing biofuels to reduce the use of fossil fuels—that will significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions around the world.
The Generative Communication concept is a model for anyone who is ready to adopt a new mindset that asks us to take responsibility for how and what we communicate in our everyday interactions.
You may already be familiar with the five portals of Generative Communication:
Read more about GC here.
As Generative Communication tells us, conflict can be a good thing—if dealt with respectfully. You can actually feel the energy that genuine disagreement based on passionately held beliefs generates, and if you’re smart and patient that energy can prompt straight talk from one individual’s considered point of view, then another’s and another’s. Well-informed arguments can be enlightening, disarming, and game-changing.
In the physical sciences, interactive turbulence can create heat that results in dramatic structural changes, as chemist Ilya Prigogine demonstrated with his well-known experiments. Similarly, “heated” exchanges among humans that know how to respectfully stay with the tension of disagreement and conflict can produce structural shifts in one’s thinking and behavior, sometimes referred to as transformational change.
Respect, self-awareness and self-control are central elements of healthy disagreement. The results are far more empowering than tiptoeing around disagreements or pretending to agree.
Of course, dealing with today’s challenging dilemmas, even if everyone were to agree, is a struggle that wears us down. As soon as you think you’ve got an idea nailed down as certain, something changes—as a matter of course. This is when it’s time to pause, reflect and regroup. Taking a silent break to contemplate your values, assumptions and beliefs is a necessary component of sustained Generative Communication leading to solutions.
Rather than getting lost in endless battles about whose responsibility is it for creating conditions for accelerated climate change, or whose responsibility it is to do something about it—individually and collectively—Generative Communication asks us to take responsibility for ourselves.
After all, we’re the only ones over whom we have direct control. Taking responsibility for ourselves begins with a healthy dose of self-awareness. Who are we? What matters to us? What life events—good and bad—have contributed to our unique lifeviews? What are the triggers for our anger, discouragement, and loss of hope? What gives us energy, courage and a renewed sense of purpose?
How well we know—and communicate with—ourselves provides a foundation for opening ourselves up to Generative Communication with others grounded in honesty and mutual respect. Learning to observe ourselves—as we interact with others and the world around us—enables us consciously adjust our habitual ways of thinking and behaving on the spot! It’s up to each of us to foster open, constructive communication that searches for solutions to sustain our lives and livelihoods.
Let’s quit talking and start communicating—generatively!
2 Comments
What a fantastic article and example of a complex dilemma. Can you share a real-world example of an outcome/result by applying GC to such a dilemma?
Great question! The GC-style partnership among the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) at NC State University, the USDA, Novozymes Biotech Co, soybean producers, Benson Hill ag processors (see model linking breeders & seed producers through the ag chain to consumers), and others is a prime example of ag stakeholders working together to research solutions for water preservation. “Each side has information, each side has technology, each side has capabilities. And by putting those together, it’s a synergistic benefit to everyone.”
https://cals.ncsu.edu/news/partnerships-power-problem-solving-research/
AgWorld Consortium highlights GC-like collaborations among growers, agronomists, and ag co-ops for optimizing specialized agriculture technology to revolutionize sustainable food production: delivering breakthroughs in efficiently managing natural resources and co-creating positive change at scale. https://www.agworld.com/us/blog/value-of-collaboration-in-agriculture/