Last night I was in my happy place – and that is inviting the community (non-farmer audience) to codesign what the future for our region could look like if we worked together and created a road map to get there
My journey has taught me its pivotal to start where people are at and do some applied research
To help me understand where my audience was at I introduced the Sustainability Circle concept
I said the role of farmers is to
- produce safe, affordable, nutritious food whilst
- treading as lightly on the planet as possible,
- ensuring worker safety and animal well being and
- being an active community member.
I then said in an ideal world farmers will make enough income they wont need to prioritize one sustainability circle responsibility over another
But in an era where food is just 10% of our income and we have come to believe food at rock bottom prices is a birth right farmers often find they have to prioritize
I invited the audience to put their farmer hat on and make their choices using a Mentimeter poll
The two graphs below compare the audiences choices to mine (the farmer) .
Are my choices on the left or the right?????
VERY IMPORTANT NOTE
I did this research at the end of my presentation and prior to doing this I showed these three slides
If we keep consuming the earth’s natural resources and generating the same amount of waste we will need 1.8 planets
and then I highlighted this
Is it surprising when asked to make spur of the moment decisions the audience made the choices they did?
We are all a product of our life experiences, the choices we make so often depend on where we are standing and what we choose to see
I see this when I look out my window
What do you see?
Creating a bright future is a shared responsibility.
Has there ever been a more important time for farmers and the community to reconnect and have conversations and build relationships ?
A refection from me
To be a successful farmer you have to be able to deal with ambiguity as you are often going from one daily crisis to the next.
On our farm we had the mantra – always prioritise the things with a heartbeat first
