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Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems 01 frontiersin.org
A polycentric network strategy for
regional diversification of
agriculture: theory and
implementation
NicholasR.Jordan
1, DavidSloanWilson
2, KateNoble
3,
KeithMiller
3, Tara MaireidConway
1 and ColinCureton
1
1 Agronomy and Plant Genetics Department, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN, United States,
2 Binghamton University of NewYork, Binghamton, NY, United States, 3 Terraluna Collaborative,
Minneapolis, MN, United States
Widespread and substantial diversification of current agroecosystems appears
fundamental to meeting many grand challenges in agriculture. Despite urgent
calls for diversification on regional scales, particularly in regions dominated by
industrialized, low-diversity agriculture, strategies for diversification on such scales
are in early stages of development, conceptually and practically. Weoutline such
a strategy, and its implementation by the Forever Green Partnership, a public-
private-NGO coalition in support of agricultural diversification in the U.S. Midwest
region. Our strategy supports introduction and scaling of multiple novel crops
in a region, which requires development of many interdependent supporting
elements, including supportive markets, infrastructure, policy, finance, and R&D.
The core of our strategy is development of sustainable supply chains (SSCs) for
a set of novel crops. Wedefine SSCs as rudimentary systems of these supporting
elements for novel crops, linking on-farm crop production to end-use markets
while advancing economic, environmental, and social sustainability criteria
that are demanded by stakeholders. SSCs provide a scaold upon which fully-
developed support systems for multiple novel crops can be constructed, thus
driving regional diversification. SSCs cannot be“built in a day”; rather they must
evolve as production of novel crops expands over time and space, and as new
challenges and opportunities emerge. Therefore, regional diversification requires
a system to sustain this evolutionary process across time and multiple novel
crops. Weposit that an eective system can bebuilt from two crucial elements:
a process of conscious and concerted cultural evolution, and a polycentric
network that organizes and supports that process. Weoutline this system and its
conceptual basis, and its implementation by the Forever Green Partnership, and
associated challenges and accomplishments. Three years after its inception, the
Partnership has attracted substantial resources, developed a polycentric network,
and some elements of the cultural-evolution process are in place. However, node
development is uneven across the network, hindering its operation. In addition to
advancing strategies for regional-scale diversification, the Partnership is seeking
to advance conceptual and practical understanding of sustainability transitions in
agriculture, and to explore the potential value of conscious cultural evolution in
such transitions.
KEYWORDS
agroecology, polycentric governance, social networks, cultural evolution, sustainability
transition
OPEN ACCESS
EDITED BY
Carol Williams,
University of Wisconsin-Madison, UnitedStates
REVIEWED BY
Rishikesh Singh,
Panjab University, India
Anne Elise Stratton,
University of Hohenheim, Germany
*CORRESPONDENCE
Nicholas R. Jordan
jorda020@umn.edu
RECEIVED 05 August 2022
ACCEPTED 21 April 2023
PUBLISHED 18 May 2023
CITATION
Jordan NR, Wilson DS, Noble K, Miller K,
Conway TM and Cureton C (2023) A
polycentric network strategy for regional
diversification of agriculture: theory and
implementation.
Front. Sustain. Food Syst. 7:1012759.
doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2023.1012759
COPYRIGHT
© 2023 Jordan, Wilson, Noble, Miller, Conway
and Cureton. This is an open-access article
distributed under the terms of the Creative
Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The
use, distribution or reproduction in other
forums is permitted, provided the original
author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are
credited and that the original publication in this
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academic practice. No use, distribution or
reproduction is permitted which does not
comply with these terms.
TYPE Original Research
PUBLISHED 18 May 2023
DOI 10.3389/fsufs.2023.1012759
Jordan et al. 10.3389/fsufs.2023.1012759
Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems 02 frontiersin.org
Introduction
Major transitions are needed in agriculture to address its grand
challenges, including climate change adaptation and mitigation,
restoration of soil, water, and biodiversity, enhancement of health
through diet, and achieving equity and justice in agriculture, food, and
bioproduct systems (Willett etal., 2019; Klerkx and Begemann, 2020;
Rockström etal., 2020; Steiner etal., 2020). Diversication of current
farm production systems appears fundamental to meeting these goals.
rough a wide range of mechanisms, diversication can enable climate-
change adaptation and mitigation, support dietary shis, and improve
the condition of soil, water, and biodiversity resources (Lin, 2011;
Kremen and Miles, 2012; Bowles etal., 2020; Tamburini etal., 2020).
Diversication also creates opportunities to enhance equity and other
social dimensions of sustainability, if specic eorts to address social
sustainability challenges are encompassed in diversication initiatives.
Herein, wewrite to advance strategic frameworks for diversifying
agriculture at regional scales. e authors are aliates of the Forever
Green Partnership, (2023), a coalition of environmental, agricultural,
research, and private-sector organizations working to advance
agricultural diversication in the U.S. Midwest region. To guide the
work of the Partnership, wehave synthesized a regional-diversication
strategy from multiple sources, both conceptual and practical, and
describe ongoing implementation and assessment of the strategy.
Development of such frameworks appears to bein early days, despite
growing awareness of the value of diversied regional food systems
(Blay-Palmer etal., 2018; Clancy and Ruhf, 2018; Nicol, 2020), and
calls for diversication on regional scales (Prokopy et al., 2020).
Specically, wedraw on frameworks from the emerging elds of
sustainability transitions (Geels, 2019; Schlaili and Urmetzer, 2019;
Wyborn etal., 2019), systemic approaches to innovation (Hermans
etal., 2019) and the “science of scaling” of agricultural innovations
(Barrett et al., 2020; Schut et al., 2020; Wigboldus et al., 2020).
Weintegrate these by applying the emerging theory of conscious and
concerted cultural evolution (Cox and Schoon, 2019; Wilson, 2019).
We address diversication at a regional level via introduction and
scaling of additional crops in a region; these may beentirely novel
crops, or new to the region. ere are many barriers to such
diversication (Lockeretz, 1988; Meynard etal., 2017, 2018; Jouan
etal., 2019; Stefani etal., 2020; Mortensen and Smith, 2020). e
fundamental conundrum is that, absent markets, farmers will not grow
such novel crops, while without supply from farmers, market demand
is unlikely to develop. Beyond markets, novel crops also lack most
other pillars of support needed by any established crop: technologies
and ecosystems of production (comprising crops, land and soil, and
associated biodiversity); post-production infrastructure, and end-use
product production; human “capital,” including interest and know-
how; social and institutional capital (e.g., advocacy groups for the
crop); and nancial, political, legal, regulatory, and cultural support
(Lockeretz, 1988; Montenegro de Wit and Iles, 2016; Blesh etal., 2023).
e absence of such supporting elements creates strong ‘lock-in’ path
dependence that sustains established crops (Meynard etal., 2018;
Mortensen and Smith, 2020). To introduce and support a novel crop
in a region, it is necessary to organize a new socio-ecological-technical
system for the crop, comprising the above supporting elements.
Socio-ecological-technical systems are integrated sets of
biophysical, technical and social elements that function together to
meet a societal need (Duru etal., 2015; Markolf etal., 2018; Ahlborg
etal., 2019). Construction and scaling of socio-ecological-technical
systems for diversication crops is a dynamic, contingent, and
inherently risky undertaking, as many dierent elements must develop
and cohere, in an integrated process of innovation and scaling (Jordan
etal., 2016; Meynard etal., 2017; Blesh et al., 2023). Importantly,
development of certain “pillars” (e.g., novel land valuation and
nancing mechanisms, Johnson, 2020), will berelevant to multiple
novel crops for a region, creating interdependencies in socio-
ecological-technical systems development among multiple crops.
erefore, the process of regional diversication can beframed as
establishment of a mutually supportive set of socio-ecological-
technical systems for a set of novel crops.
Accordingly, our strategy for regional diversication centers on
interdependent construction of such supportive systems for each of a
set of crops. e core of the strategy is a process of conscious and
intentional cultural evolution (Cox and Schoon, 2019; Wilson, 2019),
undertaken by a collective of actors relevant to construction of these
supportive systems. Recently, this evolutionary approach to cultural
change has emerged as a novel approach to sustainability transitions
(Brooks etal., 2018; Jones etal., 2020). Weapply this evolutionary
perspective by viewing socio-ecological-technical systems as evolvable
units of human culture that integrate beliefs, values, norms,
knowledge, technologies, behaviors, and institutions (Montenegro de
Wit and Iles, 2016; Barrett etal., 2020). Specically, our strategy is
designed to drive rapid regional diversication by eciently evolving
sustainable supply chains (SSCs) for novel crops. As wedene them,
SSCs are rudimentary socio-ecological-technical systems that link
on-farm crop production to end-use markets, while advancing
economic, environmental, and social sustainability criteria that are
demanded by stakeholders. Wepropose that SSCs provide a scaold
upon which fully-developed socio-ecological-technical systems can
beconstructed and scaled, thus driving regional diversication. Below,
wepresent the conceptual basis for this strategy, and then provide case
study of ongoing implementation of the strategy by the Forever Green
Partnership. We note that while our strategy is applicable to
diversication by introduction of novel crops of any sort, the
implementation case focuses on a set of perennial and winter-annual
crop species being developed by the Partnership (2023).
Sustainable supply chains for novel crops
We dene SSCs for novel crops as on-farm crop production and
ows of agricultural commodities and ecosystem services that result
from these farm activities, and associated institutions and
infrastructure. Together, these elements constitute a rudimentary
socio-ecological-technical system, consisting of three coupled and
interactive subsystems (Duru etal., 2015).
A crop production subsystem comprising farmers
and farms producing novel crops
During initial stages of SSC development for emerging crops, this
subsystem should consist of spatially-aggregated clusters of farms
producing these crops, as clusters provide mutual support and other
advantages of aggregation (Manson et al., 2016). Such clustered
production can beadvantageously situated within areas on the scale
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Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems 03 frontiersin.org
of a small watershed, as modestly-sized agricultural watersheds (ca.
10,000 ha) appear advantageous for coordinated implementation of
agricultural diversication and conservation measures (Jordan etal.,
2018; Ranjan etal., 2019).
A post-production commodity subsystem
comprising post-production commodity
supply-chain actors and associated infrastructure
is subsystem is an inter-organizational system that eciently
and eectively manages ows of material, information, and capital
associated with the production of products, to meet economic
interests of participating organizations while advancing environmental
and social sustainability (Morais and Silvestre, 2018; Westermann
etal., 2018). It links farm commodity production to end-use markets,
and includes physical infrastructure (e.g., processing or storage
facilities), and organizations and institutions involved in supply-chain
operation or governance.
A socio-ecological subsystem comprising
natural-resource management actors and natural
resources aected by the supply chain
is subsystem comprises clusters of farms producing novel crops
that produce some environmental benet (e.g., improved condition of
soil, water, and biodiversity resources), and one or more “customer(s)”
for these benets, e.g., a city aected by attributes of water in a
watershed. e customer(s) will interact with farms to compensate
them for these benets, e.g., by monetary subsidies for new crop
production. is subsystem also includes any non-local customers for
environmental benets (e.g., for soil carbon storage) and organizations
and institutions involved in governance of relevant natural resources
and systems for compensation (e.g., payment-for-ecosystem-
service programs).
Our diversication strategy aims to drive regional diversication
by multi-sector collective action to develop SSCs that advance
economic, environmental, and social sustainability criteria that are
demanded by stakeholders. As is broadly recognized (Hermans etal.,
2019; Barrett etal., 2020), collective action across public, private, and
NGO/philanthropy sectors is critical to sustainability transitions, such
as regional diversication.
Building Sscs for regional
diversification of agriculture: a system
for interdependent development and
scaling
Development and scaling of SSCs is a
complex challenge
We presume that to attract and inspire broad collective action to
advance regional diversication, SSC establishment and operation
must provide multiple economic, environmental, and social benets
(Peterson, 2009; Boström etal., 2015). SSCs that produce this full range
of sustainability benets cannot be“built in a day.” ere are many
unknowns about SSC design and operation (Boström etal., 2015;
Wigboldus etal., 2016), and SSCs must evolve as production of novel
crops expands over time and space, adapting to new geographies, and
to new challenges and opportunities that emerge as scaling proceeds
(Schut et al., 2020). Moreover, building fully supportive socio-
ecological-technical systems for novel crops—including knowledge,
economic, political, legal, and cultural domains—construction of fully-
supportive systems is likely to bea prolonged process requiring a
multiple evolutionary steps (Cooley and Papoulidis, 2017; Geels, 2019;
Wilson, 2019; Barrett etal., 2020), via an iterative, learning-intensive
process of prototyping, evaluation, and improvement (Seyfang etal.,
2014; Gurzawska, 2019; Wilson, 2019; Barrett etal., 2020).
A development and scaling system for SSCs
To advance regional diversication by development and scaling of
SSCs for multiple novel crops, eort must besustained across crops,
scales of implementation, and time. Drawing on a range of current
models for scaling (Gurzawska, 2019; Tomich etal., 2019; Wilson,
2019; Woltering et al., 2019; Schut et al., 2020), we posit that a
development and scaling system for SSCs can be built from two
crucial elements. ese are 1) active support of a process of intentional
and conscious cultural evolution (Cox and Schoon, 2019; Wilson,
2019); and 2), a polycentric network (Carlisle and Gruby, 2019) that
supports that process.
Developing SSCs through intentional and
concerted cultural evolution
Recently, intentional facilitation of cultural evolution has emerged
as a strategy for meeting complex sustainability challenges (Brooks
etal., 2018; Wilson, 2019). e idea is to support cultural evolution by
a selective process that supports desirable and replicable cultural
innovations that meet sustainability challenges. For regional
diversication of agriculture via novel crops, the relevant cultural
innovation is in the structure and functioning of SSCs. Desirable SSC
variants more eciently and eectively advance sustainability goals of
stakeholders. Such cultural evolution can befacilitated by creating
variation through organized innovation and experimentation,
imposing selection by “rewarding what works” through dierential
provision of resources, nancial or otherwise (Cooley and Papoulidis,
2017; Sengers etal., 2019; Wilson, 2019; Barrett etal., 2020), and by
supporting replication of favorable variants. We propose that, if
undertaken collectively and in concert, and facilitated for eciency
and rapidity, these intentional processes of variation, selection, and
replication will accelerate SSC development.
Facilitation of this evolutionary dynamic begins by supporting a
cross-sector group in dening its goal: i.e., a paradigm of a fully-
developed SSC for a novel crop, dened in terms of economic,
environmental, and social aspects of sustainability. Once dened,
prototypic supply chains can be evaluated against the goal, and
supporting resources rewarded accordingly. As implemented in the
Forever Green Partnership (described below), this group is a multi-
sector collaborative, representing a range of societal sectors that have
interests in diversication of a regional agriculture, and the ability to
aggregate resources to support promising prototypic supply chains.
Variation is essential to evolution. erefore, facilitation of SSC
evolution should focus on generating variation relevant to the systemic
SSC goal. is can be accomplished by organizing a system for
creating and pilot-testing novel supply chains that address the systemic
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Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems 04 frontiersin.org
SSC goal. Generally, such novel supply chains will integrate multiple
innovations drawn from multiple domains, including the technical,
social, organizational, and conceptual (Leeuwis and Aarts, 2011;
Barrett etal., 2020). In the Forever Green Partnership, this integration
is supported by an ongoing forum for persons professionally engaged
in such integrative SSC innovation, as described below.
Finally, replication of selected variants is needed in any
evolutionary process. Facilitation must ensure ecient replication of
novel supply chains that advance toward the SSC goal. In practice,
such replication can beaccomplished by adding strong communication
and “incubator” aspects to an integrative innovation forum, so that
interested parties can develop new supply chain prototypes—e.g., for
new crops or in new regions—built on successful novel SSCs.
If these elements of selection, variation, and replication can
be established, closely coupled, and sustained over time, then an
ongoing process of cultural evolution will drive SSCs toward the
systemic goal. What is needed to establish and sustain these
conditions, in practice? Wepropose that a polycentric network can
well serve this purpose.
A polycentric network for ecient and forceful
evolution of SSCs
Polycentric networks are emerging, in theory and practice, as a
strategy for addressing complex sustainability challenges such as
regional diversication of agriculture. e essential idea, quoting
Ostrom (2010), is development of “complex multi-level systems to cope
with complex, multi-level problems” (Ostrom, 2010; Dorsch and
Flachsland, 2017; Carlisle and Gruby, 2019). Intentional concerted
cultural evolution of SSCs is certainly such a problem, and therefore
we posit that a multi-level polycentric network (Figure 1) can
bedesigned to support the cultural evolution process outlined above.
It is clear that cooperative cross-sector and cross-scale networks can
advance innovation and sustainability transitions in agri-food systems
(e.g., Blesh and Wolf, 2014; Bui etal., 2016; Home etal., 2017; Meynard
et al., 2017). In particular, such networks can bring a range of
complementary innovations together (e.g., novel diversied farming
strategies and novel institutions) to advance agricultural socio-technical
systems, typically at pilot scales, and to advance scaling of these systems
(Bui et al., 2016; Home et al., 2017; Meynard et al., 2017). Most
commonly, such networks have largely functioned as singular entities,
focusing on development of place-based socio-ecological-technical
systems (Melchior and Newig, 2021). In contrast, the polycentric
network described below is conceptualized as a regional structure,
engaging multiple networks operating at multiple scales, in order to
support and systematize production, piloting, renement, and possible
scaling of multiple socio-ecological-technical systems in pursuit of
agricultural diversication on regional scale. is project thus provides
an additional case of deliberate experimentation with polycentric
networks for sustainability transitions in agriculture (Marshall, 2009;
Fasting etal., 2021; Heckelman etal., 2022). ese reported cases, while
dierent in many respects, aim to form systems of cooperation and
mutual support among local-scaled sustainability networks and
networks acting at broader scales. erefore, polycentric networks can
beseen as an eort to build on the successes of transition networks built
around a single place-based project, by engaging multiple local-scaled
networks in a polycentric “network of networks.” e goal is to provide
particular benets that emerge from eective polycentric structures, i.e.,
enhancing network-scale learning, innovation, and other collective
action, and supporting local self-determination in transition processes
(Dorsch and Flachsland, 2017; Barrett etal., 2020). Similar work, if not
explicitly framed as polycentric, is embodied in La Via Campesina
(Rosset etal., 2019), and other extensive agroecology scaling networks
(Mier y Terán Giménez Cacho etal., 2018).
For a multi-level polycentric network to support the cultural
evolution process, it must provide a goal-setting and resource-
provision group: i.e., a consortium of actors that can determine a
shared goal for diversication of a region by novel crops, aggregate
resources, and provide those resources to support emerging SSCs
that best advance the goal. is consortium requires participation
by actors that can command and aggregate resources, e.g., managers
of corporations and rms, public institutions such as water
infrastructure or economic development agencies, and NGOs, such
as environmental NGOs. For example, private rms can actively
cultivate markets for products of diversication crops that advance
sustainability goals. Relevant resources include nancial capital,
and also include political capital, moral authority (“so power”),
and “integrative power” (ability to articulate compelling visions and
bring actors together in collaborative eorts; Boström etal., 2015;
Wigboldus etal., 2016; Geels, 2019). e principal incentive for
participation is collective agency: the ability to achieve goals
together by aggregating power across sectors, to better pursue their
common interests in diversication.
At an intermediate level in the polycentric network, a system is
needed that focuses on the variation and replication dimensions of
managed cultural evolution. ese functions can beprovided by a
consortium of actors—the integrative innovation forum described
above—that can generate variation oriented to the SSC goal, assess
performance of variant SSCs relative to the goal, promote
replication of better-performing variants, and facilitate ongoing
generation of new variation. is group should bedrawn from
actors that are actively involved in innovation, and in integration of
innovations into novel co-innovation structures (Bui etal., 2016;
Kivimaa etal., 2019), with an emphasis on enabling the “bundling”
of complementary innovations in eective combinations (Barrett
et al., 2020). Actors charged with innovation within dominant
institutions in public, private, and NGO sectors are also key
participants. Wepropose that such actors have collective ability to
eciently devise, test, and to provide nuanced evaluation of
prototypic SSCs, as envisioned by Barrett etal. (2020). Moreover,
by sharing their evaluations with the goal-setting and resource-
provision group, they enable that group to carry out its key function
of rewarding high-performing SSCs.
Finally, there is a third level in the polycentric network (Figure1):
innovation actors in a wide range of domains relevant to agricultural
diversication. Emergence of key elements of SSCs frequently results
from innovation at local scales that leverages creativity and local
knowledge (e.g., building the base of supply chains by locally-tailored
integration of novel crops into existing farming systems). ese
domains include development of new crops and new agricultural
production systems, but also include supply-chain infrastructure,
end-use innovation, and other economic, social, organizational, and
policy innovation (Blesh and Wolf, 2014; Bui etal., 2016). In the
context of agricultural diversication, such actors are increasingly
organized in crop-specic networks that are focused on scaling of
particular crops for diversication, via coupled and comprehensive
innovation strategies (Meynard etal., 2017).
Jordan et al. 10.3389/fsufs.2023.1012759
Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems 05 frontiersin.org
An implementation case: the Forever
Green Partnership
The Forever Green Partnership is an intentional experiment
in applying the conceptual models outlined above in a project of
regional diversification. This case study of the Partnership is
intended to contribute to both the theory and practice of those
engaged in the scaling of novel crops. Case studies allow
researchers and practitioners to examine factors that influence a
unit of analysis over time (Flyvbjerg, 2011). Weuse qualitative
data (interviews and observations), aiming to support readers in
forming naturalistic generalizations, i.e., transfers of knowledge
that occur within the.
reader and their context (Stake and Trumbull, 1982). Such
generalizations are based on context-specific settings and depend
on the reader to apply the learnings, findings, and implications
from the case study to their experiences (Stake, 2006). Specifically,
wehighlight the origins of the Partnership, its present structure
and functions, and comment on its progress to date. Our
discussion of progress is informed by semi-structured interviews
with members of the two major nodes of the Partnership network,
which were conducted and analyzed by the Partnerships’
professional evaluators (co-authors Miller and Noble) during
summer 2021 and summer 2022, ca. nine and 21 months,
respectively after the key nodes of the Partnership had been
established by an organizing group. Interviews explored
understandings of the node that the interviewee was participating
in, interactions with other nodes, and the nature and functioning
of the Partnership as a whole. Interviews were conducted with 9
of 14 members (2021) and 9 of 18 members (2022) of the Strategic
Steering Committee (see below), and 10 of 16 members of the
Learning and Experimentation Network (see below). Interviews
were recorded, transcribed, coded, and analyzed using qualitative
methods. Wehave also drawn on observations of meetings of
both nodes, which weattended as participant observers, recorded,
and transcribed.
FIGURE1
Conceptual model for polycentric network for evolution and scaling of SSCs. The network has three levels, as defined in text. Two levels are groups: a
goal-setting and resource-provisioning group articulates goals for SSCs, and provides resources to support SSCs that advance its goals. This group is
multi-sector, with relevant sectors indicated, as examples, including agriculturalists identifying with Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC Ag),
and environmental non-governmental organizations (Env NGOs), and agricultural non-governmental organizations (Ag NGOs). The SSC variation and
evaluation group informs goal-setting/resource provisioning groups regarding “what works” in SSC development. This group unites a range of SSC
innovators for exchange of SSC innovation and development approaches, and collective evaluation of these. This group is also multi-sector; again,
relevant sectors are indicated as example. Crop-specific research & commercialization groups develop crops and implement SSCs for these crops. The
SSC variation and evaluation group is informed by and provides feedback to crop-specific research & commercialization groups. Interactions occur
between the goal-setting and resource-provisioning group and crop-specific research & commercialization groups but are less frequent and intense
than the interactions described above.
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Context and diversification strategy
e Mid-Continent of North America is one of the most
productive agricultural regions of the world, but cropping systems are
dominated by short-lived summer annual crops. ese systems leave
soil exposed for much of the year, resulting in degradation of soil and
biodiversity (Asbjornsen etal., 2014; Prokopy etal., 2020). ese
impacts threaten long-term food production in this global
breadbasket, which may also bereduced by eects of climate change.
Moreover, predominant cropping systems have major impacts on
drinking water (Temkin etal., 2019), and diminish other ecosystem
services related to water (Brauman, 2015), such as navigation and
recreation. To protect the region from these mounting threats, and to
sustain a signicant element of the global food system, regional
agricultural diversication is essential (Prokopy etal., 2020). e
Forever Green Partnership has formed to pursue a particular
diversication pathway: making farmland “forever green” with a set
of crops that advance continuous living cover (CLC) agriculture in this
region. CLC agriculture denotes agricultural systems in which there
are living plants and roots in the ground throughout the entire year.
Crops that advance CLC in this region include winter-hardy cover
crops, which are generally dened as annual crops grown to enhance
soil, water, and biodiversity without harvest of any agricultural
commodity (e.g., seeds or biomass), other winter-hardy crops that
produce such commodities, and perennial crops. Specically, the
Partnership is supporting development and commercialization of a
portfolio of such crops for this cool-temperate region of North
America, aiming to enhance a wide range of environmental and
economic benets to the region (Asbjornsen etal., 2014; Schulte etal.,
2017). A leading developer of these crops is Forever Green Initiative
(2023), a consortium of crop developers that is central to the
Partnership. e Initiative is carrying out collaborative crop R&D
eorts that span genomics, plant breeding, agronomy and agroecology,
post-harvest handling and value-added processing.
Formation of the Forever Green Partnership
e Partnership was formally launched in 2018 by the co-directors
of the Forever Green Initiative and several conservation groups
(Friends of the Mississippi River and Minnesota Environmental
Partnership) with nancial support from the Minnesota Clean Water
Council (a multi-sector governing body charged with distribution of
public monies dedicated by statute to improving water resources in
Minnesota). ese conservation groups had grown increasingly
interested in market-based diversication of agriculture as a pathway
to meeting their water conservation goals. To pursue this vision, they
proposed a coalition of environment, agriculture, research and
business organizations in support of agricultural diversication via
CLC agriculture. is coalition was also of interest to the Forever
Green Initiative, as a complement to its crop R&D. Aer deliberation,
a working charter for the Forever Green Partnership was established
by late 2019. e charter established a “Strategic Steering Council” and
“Learning and Experimentation Network” as two novel core elements
of the Partnership, complementing the R&D capacities of the Forever
Green Initiative. ese two groups were organized in 2020, and began
meeting monthly in the second half of that year. In 2019, the Forever
Green Initiative received grant funding that supported
commercialization of the most advanced crops via development of
markets, and supply chains to serve those markets. e current
structure and activities of the Partnership (Figure2) are described
below, followed by a reective account of the Partnership’s progress
to date.
Strategic steering council
e Council is intended to function as the goal-setting and
resource-provision group of the polycentric network described
above—i.e., a consortium of actors that can set a goal for CLC
agriculture, aggregate resources, and promote SSCs that best advance
the goal, by dierential allocation of these resources. At present, the
group includes 17 active members (Table 1), drawn from state
government, non-prot advocacy groups representing a range of
interests including conservation, regional mainstream agriculture,
rural community development, historically marginalized groups, the
private sector, and the research and commercialization work of the
Forever Green Initiative. e group aims to broaden the base of
support for CLC agriculture across a wide range of societal sectors
represented in the Council, so that these sectors can provide political,
nancial, and other forms of concrete support for advancing such
agriculture. is support is intended to be provided selectively,
providing support to SSCs and other CLC scaling eorts that accord
with the Council’s shared vision for CLC agriculture. In interviews,
members described themselves as wanting to beof use, experienced
in thought and action leadership, and willing to oer their reputation,
knowledge, capabilities, connections, and other resources to advancing
CLC agriculture. Specically, activities included discussion of goals
and values (including social visions) for CLC agriculture, in pursuit of
a shared vision for CLC agriculture in the region. e group has also
held many learning sessions with innovators in relevant sectors (e.g.,
in rural development, and in new strategies for nancing CLC
agriculture) to develop shared understanding of these innovations and
potential for engaging associated sectors in eorts to advance CLC
agriculture. Aer these formative activities during the rst year of
operation, the Council turned its hand to denition and
implementation of an agenda of “ambassadorship and advocacy” by
which the multi-sector base of support for CLC agriculture could
bebroadened and deepened.
In interviews aer the rst year of operation, some Council
members expressed appreciation for the Council as a forum for robust
intersectoral exchange and cooperation around common interests in
CLC agriculture. Illustrating this, one council member shared, “the
original concept was that wewould, through this interdisciplinary,
iterative sort of workshopping model, wewould bring all that expertise
and come up with more of a synthetic pathway.” Another underscored
the benets of the diverse group, stating “there aren’t that many
organizations that have that kind of potential reach across so many
sectors. Summing up the unique potential of this group, one member
shared, “[my] personal excitement is that Icannot nd another group
like this…that is building something and not just researching.”
While members see potential in the Steering Council, they also
expressed frustration about barriers to working jointly, i.e., as a
council, to scale CLC agriculture. Perceived barriers included lack of
clarity about the role and autonomy of the Council within the
Partnership, uncertainty about the ability of Council members to
inuence the strategic actions of the Partnership, and insucient
understanding of needs of researchers and commercialization sta. As
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one member stated, “I think it’s important that everybody beon the
same page about what their role is, and what we are trying to
accomplish with the [Steering Council]. And Ido not think wequite
have that, yet.” Another member spoke to the need to better
understand the evidence behind the social, environmental, and
economic benets.
In response to the role uncertainty, over the course of the second
year, the conveners of the Steering Council guided conversations and
oered content to help the group determine how to operationalize its
role in advocacy. ere was largely agreement that the Steering
Council’s role in advocacy should befocused on building collaborative
relationships with particular sectors around mutual interests in CLC
agriculture. Several work streams came into focus during year 2, and
aer some experience attempting to launch such Council initiatives,
it became clear that additional sta capacity was needed. Interviews
aer the second year indicated some appreciation of learning about
topics and perspectives that are “outside of the circle” in which most
Steering Council members operate. However, barriers to eective
action by the Council were still perceived, namely the continued
desire to rm up the Steering Council’s purpose and the need to
operationalize the advisory role. One member illustrates this by
stating “ere should bea 2-way conduit…these members should
betaking their knowledge of the fears, aspirations, biases of their
sector and bringing that to the Partnership so that if weare going
astray so that wewould know that.” Other members spoke of the need
to put boundaries around the scope of the conversations and clarify
priorities: “We are opening up these wicked problems ––while Ireally
like those, Iamwondering if wecan bring this back to….how do
wepromote winter barley. Sometimes Ithink my mind sits in the area
of ‘the next steps of barley is this’‥‥how do wemove from niche to
bigger.” In December, 2022, the Steering Council claried that its
purpose is to “advance Continuous Living Cover agriculture by
contributing constructively to the development and sustainable
commercialization of new cropping systems by: (1) Providing
feedback to the Forever Green Initiative and the Partnership about
strategic decisions, emerging issues and opportunities, and timely
questions; (2) Providing resources to the Forever Green Initiative
(relationships, nancial, and other resources); (3) Acting as an
ambassador for the Forever Green Initiative. To support this claried
role, in the coming year, leadership of the crop research and
commercialization teams will identify emergent topics that would
benet from strategic input from the Steering Council. rough these
developmental eorts, council members have advanced the Steering
Council toward its intended goal-setting and resource-provision roles
in the cultural evolution system outlined above—in particular,
members have agreed on a goal for CLC agriculture—but their
resource-provision roles has not yet been substantially implemented.
Learning and experimentation network
is group is intended to serve as the intermediate level of the
polycentric network, focusing on the variation and replication
dimensions of intentional cultural evolution. e Learning and
Experimentation Network (referred to henceforth as the Network) is a
group of persons professionally engaged in commercialization and
scaling of CLC crops via market and supply-chain development.
Members (16 as of this writing) are aliated with ve dierent
organizations or advocacy groups (Table1), and work together to share
information and experience from their work to scale these crops. In
parallel to the Steering Council, the Network began its work by sharing
notions and visions about the nature of CLC agriculture, and then
FIGURE2
Current State of the Partnership. As presently implemented, the Partnership’s polycentric network includes a Steering Council engaged in advocacy
and ambassadorship in support of CLC agriculture, a Learning and Experimentation Network engaged in co-learning and action research on scaling
CLC agriculture, a Commercialization, Adoption, and Scaling group building pilot supply chain projects, a set of crop-specific R&D teams advancing
particular CLC crops, an organizing group, and a number of working groups addressing policy development and politics, equity and inclusion, and
strategic communication. Major interactions are illustrated with two-headed arrows; for simplicity, working groups are omitted. Other inter-group
interactions occur, but are less frequent and intense than those illustrated in the diagram.
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proceeded to a series of sessions focused on dialog on key aspects of
day-to-day work. Topics have ranged widely, including framing and
narrative for CLC agriculture, innovations in “green” nance, and
developments in agricultural cooperatives. In interviews aer the rst
year of operation, Network members voiced much appreciation for the
learning and support that the group provided. ey also expressed much
uncertainty about the purpose and function of the Network, its role in
the Partnership, and its autonomy. One Network member expressed this
in saying, “I do not think there’s broad understanding in the Network of
what the Network is supposed to befor or do. And so, that’s where Isee
the disjointed…confusion.” Several members spoke to the potential they
saw in the Network; for example, one member stated, “How could that
team spend 2 h every other week to really inform one another what
weare doing, solicit input on key decisions that Ithink they would have
a good perspective on, get access to resources and relationships that
wewould not otherwise have, and start leveraging that.”
In the second year of its operation, the Network began a series
of discussions focused on evolving challenges in commercialization
and scaling, with each meeting featuring a central challenge
narrated by a member. Recently, the Network has agreed to pursue
an explicit program of action research (Touboulic and Walker,
2016) on particular challenges and opportunities in
commercialization and scaling of CLC crops. In a group reection
conversation aer the second year of operation, Network members
articulated a clearer sense of the group’s purpose, value, and role in
the Partnership. One member commented, “I truly see some really
beautiful trust that has been built between this entire group. is is
not an easy place to bevulnerable but weknow that vulnerability
drives innovation and risk taking.” is statement is indicative of an
apparently shared sentiment that trusting relationships have
developed in the Network, and that this trust permits candid and
vulnerable discussions of issues in scaling work. ese trusting
relationships were also seen as providing provided peer support that
could becalled on when needed. For instance, when one Network
member was a panelist alongside another Network member, she felt
she did a better job sharing her message because of the trust and
collegiality she had built with this other person through the
Network. Members also voiced a clearer sense of the Network’s
identity and purpose: a forum and incubator for sharing experiences
and insights in the work of scaling CLC agriculture, across a range
of crops, ecosystems, and institutions.
Looking forward, the group was eager to share its emerging
insights about its work, which they view as poorly understood by most
other actors in the Partnership and agriculture generally. For example,
the group hopes to inuence policy development and other activities
of the Partnership, such as strategic communications. ese activities,
if implemented, will help the group carry out its envisioned functions
in the regional diversication strategy, namely to facilitate the
variation and replication dimensions of intentional cultural evolution.
To date, these activities are only partially implemented: the
professional exchanges within the group are likely to begenerating
variation, as members transfer ideas for pilot-scale systems. For
example, steward ownership (Sanders, 2022), an innovation in
intellectual property ownership, originally applied to one crop, has
recently been applied to another, as a result of communication among
Network members. However, replication functions, and interactions
TABLE1 Participants in Forever Green Partnership’s Strategic Steering Council and Learning and Experimentation Network, during 2020–2022.
Sector and Location Organization Participation
Agribusiness, Minnesota Agribusiness (retired former executive) Steering Council
Agribusiness, Minnesota e Plant Pathways Company Steering Council
Agribusiness, Minnesota Worthwhile Ventures, Inc. Steering Council
Agriculture NGO, Minnesota Agricultural Resources Utilization Institute Learning and Experimentation Network
Agriculture NGO, Minnesota Intertribal Agriculture Council Steering Council
Agriculture NGO, Minnesota Kilimo Minnesota Steering Council
Agriculture NGO, Minnesota Minnesota Corn Growers Association Steering Council
Agriculture NGO, Minnesota Minnesota Farmers Union Steering Council
Agriculture NGO, Minnesota Naima’s Farm Steering Council
Climate NGO, Illinois Solving for Pattern Steering Council
Climate NGO, Minnesota MN350 Steering Council
Environment NGO, Minnesota Friends of the Mississippi River Steering Council
Environment NGO, Minnesota Minnesota Environmental Partnership Steering Council
Environment, University Extension, Minnesota Green Lands Blue Waters, University of Minnesota Steering Council
Government, Minnesota Minnesota Department of Agricullture Steering Council
Research and commercialization, Wisconsin Michael Fields Agricultural Institute Learning and Experimentation Network
Research and commercialization, Wisconsin Savannah Institute Learning and Experimentation Network
Research and commercialization, Kansas e Land Institute Learning and Experimentation Network
Research and commercialization, Minnesota University of Minnesota Steering Council, Learning and Experimentation Network
Research and commercialization, Wisconsin University of Wisconsin Learning and Experimentation Network
Rural community development NGO, Minnesota West Central Initiative Steering Council
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with the Steering Council leading to dierential resource provision
have not yet been robustly implemented.
Commercialization, adoption, and scaling group
As CLC crops developed by the R&D eorts of the Forever
Green Initiative near commercial readiness, the Forever Green
Commercialization, Adoption, and Scaling Group supports piloting,
adoption, and scaling of these new crops and systems by growers,
supply chain partners, end-users, and others. is group, now
comprising ve sta committing 100% eort, organizes and provides
strategic technology transfer, risk-sharing, technical assistance,
communication of technical properties, enterprise development,
policy innovations, and extensive cross-sector partnership. At
present, these activities focus primarily on the most
commercialization-ready of Forever Green’s portfolio of crops,
including Kernza® perennial grain, the ‘cash cover crops’ pennycress,
winter camelina and winter barley, perennial ax, elderberries, and
hybrid hazelnuts. For these crops, pilot SSCs (Table 2) are being
organized at a range of sites in the Upper Midwest region of the
U.S. In each instance, this group convenes multiple supply-chain
stakeholders—including end-use and intermediary rms, farmers,
clients for environmental benets produced by the crop, and other
stakeholders—in collaborative eorts to develop a spatially-
concentrated cluster of production of the focal crop, in a setting
where there is active interest in the economic, environmental and
social sustainability benets that such a cluster could potentially
provide. ese clusters of production enable all parties to pilot and
“debug” systems and innovations needed to create viable SSCs, e.g.,
post-production infrastructure or innovative public policy support
for CLC agriculture. ese activities are closely coordinated with the
R&D teams for each of the above crops.
R&D teams
At present, ca. 75 scientists, primarily located at research
universities in the Midwest region of the US, are developing 16
perennial and winter annual crops and associated cropping systems,
and post-production handling and value-added processing systems,
in aliation with the Forever Green Initiative. Each eort is organized
as a working team focused on a single crop or small group of crops,
and includes geneticists, plant breeders, agronomists, environmental
scientists, food scientists, and commercialization experts.
Ad-hoc working groups
e Partnership includes a number of working groups that have
been developed since inception in 2019, all of which embody the
cross-sector and cross-scale interactions integral to building and
implementing a polycentric network for regional diversication.
Working groups include an organizing group that provides overall
coordination to the Partnership, and a newly-formed strategy group,
with members drawn from most of the groups described above. e
strategy group is charged with rening the strategy of the Partnership
as a whole, and improving working relationships among the parts of
the Partnership so as to enhance eective pursuit of its strategy.
Another key group is striving to insure that commercialization and
scaling of CLC agriculture proactively addresses justice, equity, and
inclusion issues in agriculture. ere are also standing groups for
strategic communications, and a political working group that engages
in policy advocacy and lobbying.
Progress of the Forever Green Partnership
e Partnership was implemented de novo in 2019. As noted,
initial design, implementation, and operation of the Partnership were
guided by the conceptual models outlined above. ese models have
been largely embraced, as working hypotheses, by the organizing
group that provides overall coordination to the Partnership.
Challenges
Formation of a novel polycentric network is clearly an ambitious
and inherently challenging project, and is expected to require some
years of development before the network becomes eective in pursuit
of its goals (Hileman and Bodin, 2019). At the time of writing, the
Partnership is not yet fully functioning as a polycentric network for
conscious cultural evolution, as envisioned in the regional
diversication strategy outlined above. In essence, the Partnership has
not yet developed certain “enabling conditions” that are important to
eective polycentric networks (Carlisle and Gruby, 2019), such as
agreed-upon rules of operation, cross-scale deliberation and learning,
and mechanisms for accountability, all of which are important to
facilitation of cultural evolution. ese conditions appear essential to
the processes of conscious cultural evolution (variation, selection, and
replication of SSCs). ese enabling conditions require agreements—
and sustained collaborative activities—across nodes in the network,
which highlights node development as a key milestone in the
formation of eective polycentric networks. Ostrom’s core design
principles (Wilson etal., 2013) for eective cooperative groups oer a
helpful touchstone for assessing development of eective network
nodes. Principles most relevant to the initial development of individual
network nodes include a shared understanding of a nodes’s purpose
and key activities, and processes for decision-making and distribution
of costs and benets of group participation. Achieving and
implementing these shared understandings is likely to becomplicated,
particularly when a node represents a voluntary association in a
“community” situation (Cabrera et al., 2018), as opposed to an
organization whose leadership can mandate participation.
As may beexpected from these considerations, development of
the nodes of the Partnership has been complicated and slow. Interview
data show that, for many participants in these nodes, shared
understanding of each node’s purposes and activities—and of
interactions among nodes, and of the Partnership as a whole—has
been slow to develop. Importantly, many participants express strong
interest in taking action, and have been somewhat frustrated by
deliberative activities, particularly in the Strategic Steering Council.
An important challenge is developing the nodes as semi-
autonomous groups that are self-directed and self-governing, as
opposed to being convened and directed by the project organizers,
with relatively passive participants. In principle, this “semi-
autonomous” attribute is critical to the ability of a node to function in
a polycentric network on a sustained basis (Wilson etal., 2013). An
important strategy for meeting this challenge has been to nd ways
for the node’s activities to be valuable to participants even if the
polycentric network is not yet functioning as a whole. Progress has
been made in this respect for the Learning and Experimentation
Network, whose members have actively embraced the opportunity to
exchange experiences, information, and strategies regarding their
work of developing new markets and supply chains for continuous-
living-cover crops. is has been less successful for the Strategic
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Steering Council, but there has been increasing energy around taking
individual and collective action as advocates and ambassadors for
continuous-living-cover agriculture and the Forever Green
Partnership. e Commercialization, Adoption, and Scaling node has
achieved self-direction and organization.
Crucially, webelieve that node development has been limited by
lack of resources for two key developmental activities. First, wehave
lacked capacity to engage with node participants in ongoing
one-to-one discussions around their interests in node participation,
questions, and concerns. ese discussions appear important to stay
in touch with participants as they engage in the slow, ambiguous, and
complicated work of node development. Second, there has also been
a lack of resources for organizing and supporting cross-sector and
cross-scale activities of the Partnership as a developing polycentric
network. Such activities include information-sharing and other
learning, carrying out initiatives that engage multiple nodes, and
formation of shared understanding regarding collaboration between
nodes in a polycentric network. Certainly, these activities and
interactions are the lifeblood of eective polycentric networks
(Carlisle and Gruby, 2019). In interviews, Steering Council members
expressed that these activities were highly important to their ability to
oer concrete support to scaling CLC agriculture, which is the core
TABLE2 Pilot supply-chain projects for various continuous-living-cover crops associated with the Forever Green Partnership in various US states
(Illinois, IL; Iowa, IA, Kansas, KS; Minnesota, MN; Montana, MT; North Dakota, ND; South Dakota, SD; Wisconsin, WI).
CLC Crop Location Features Number of
farmers
Number of supply
chain actors
Spatial extent
Kernza Perennial
Grain
MN, KS, WI, MT Technical and nancial support for
geographical clusters of piloting
farms, farmer production
cooperative, novel public (MN)
seed capital fund for value-added
enterprises CLC
82 approved growers in
US; roughly 30 growers
in MN
3 seed sources, 1 MN seed
processor, 1 WI seed
processor onboarding, 1 WI
grain processor onboarding
~2,500 ha total licensed
total, ~900 ha in MN (as
of Oct 22)
Winter Camelina MN, SD, ND, IA Technical and nancial support for
geographical clusters of piloting
farms
9 MN growers in
2021/22 pilot project;
2 seed sources, 2 seed
processors, 4–6 major
commercial actors conducting
internal pilot production, 1
for-prot biotech business
oering contracts
~40 ha in 2021/2022
pilot, 100 ha acres of
industry pilots planted in
2022, multiple + 4,000 ha
pilots planned for 2023
Hybrid Hazelnuts WI, MN, IA 6 clusters of growers across Upper
Midwest, pilot processing plant in
Ashland, WI, network of leading
‘Go-First Farms’ in each cluster;
piloting innovative germplasm
ownership and land-access
nancing
50–75 growers across
clusters, small number
of growers and
researchers (~10)
account for roughly half
of all production.
3–5 producer groups, 4
nurseries conducting
propagation, one publicly-
owned pilot processing line, 1
retail products brand, direct-
to-consumer sales by growers
and modest inclusion of
Midwest-grown hazelnuts in
limited-distribution food
products
40–80 ha of hybrid
research, early
commercial, and
hobbyist production
CLC Crop Location Features Number of farmers Number of supply chain
actors
Spatial extent
Perennialized
systems, including
managed grazing
(Grassland 2.0)
Primarily WI
(some work in
Driless Region of
IA, IL, and MN)
Partnering with farmer and citizen-
led watershed groups to build
shared ‘Story of Now’ and Vision
for the future, and to identify and
take action on pathways to the
future.
Currently 10–15
farmers engaged in the
grass-fed meat supply
chain work in the
Dritless started in 2022.
Building out network in
2023. Custom dairy
heifer grazing network
in central/north-central
WI ramping up.
Currently 6 farmers,
expanding in 2023.
Five local “learning hubs”
built on watershed based
groups. Two supply chain
development pilot projects
covering 3 of the 5 Learning
Hubs. For the meat supply
chain work in the Driless,
engagement with 3 processors
in SW Wisconsin and 1 beef
aggregation and sales
cooperative that also has some
processsing.
~250 ha in Custom dairy
heifer grazing network
Winter barley MN Early commercial scaling of new
winter barley lines in partnership
with regional seed companies and
malting industry
10–20 at launch of rst
winter barley variety
Two seed company partners,
early engagement with major
(global) maltsters located in
the region
Unsure
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purpose of the Council. ese resource limitations may beparticularly
problematic in limiting “learn-by-doing” experiences for participants,
as there is indication that participants in polycentric governance can
increase the scope of their participation over time (Hileman and
Bodin, 2019), aer gaining experience. Recently, the Partnership has
received new grant funding to support these cross-sector and cross-
scale activities.
Accomplishments
Importantly, the main elements of the Partnership—as an
implementation of the regional diversication strategy outlined
above—have been formed, and certain key functional aspects of the
network are coming into robust operation. First, new and highly-
active elements of the Partnership have emerged, such as the
Commercialization, Adoption, and Scaling group of the Forever
Green Initiative, which was not part of the original design for the
Partnership (Figure1). at group and the crop-specic R&D teams
have developed a set of pilot supply chains (Table2), thus creating a
set of variant SSCs, as is essential for the conscious cultural evolution
process. For Kernza® perennial grain, these pilot supply chains have
grown rapidly in the past several years, and now span thousands of
acres, and many marketed products. Moreover, a parallel
commercialization group for CLC crops has recently been initiated by
the University of Wisconsin, demonstrating the replication that is key
to cultural evolution. Second, the Partnership is achieving a growing
reexive capacity as a key tool for building an eective network,
through the action-research methods that are being used by the
Partnership’s evaluators, and by members of the Learning and
Experimentation Network, and the recent formation of an evaluation
group drawn from the network’s nodes, to assess functioning of the
polycentric network as a whole. Finally, the Partnership been
successful in attracting and integrating resources, which is a
fundamental purpose of polycentric networks (Carlisle and Gruby,
2019). ese include ongoing operational support from the Clean
Water Council of the State of Minnesota, and from philanthropic
sources. A large research grant was obtained in 2021 for a participatory
action-research (Touboulic and Walker, 2016) project focused on the
Partnership, seeking to characterize and evaluate the Partnership
through the eyes of participants. In the 2022 Minnesota Legislative
session, new state nancial support was given to the Partnership,
because of broad political support for the Partnership and continuous-
living cover agriculture. Very few other legislative proposals attracted
such broad support, which spanned two political parties that share
power in the Legislature. is success shows the resource-provision
potential of the Steering Council, as members of the Council invested
considerable political capital in organizing the necessary breadth
of support.
Evaluation and reflexivity in the Forever
Green Partnership
e Partnership seeks to build a collective critical awareness of its
performance and to improve over time. ese aspirations are
implemented by ongoing, multi-faceted, collective evaluation of all
levels of the polycentric system, and of its function as a whole, in terms
of key functions, outputs, and outcomes. is evaluation is based on
participatory action research (Touboulic and Walker, 2016),
implemented through developmental evaluation practices (Patton,
2010). ese techniques serve to elucidate the experiences,
perceptions, assumptions, and understandings of participants, and to
create multiple deliberative settings for discussion of these, within
nodes of the Partnership, and among nodes. Such wide-ranging and
ongoing assessments are costly, requiring facilitation from skilled
evaluators, and the investment of time, and cognitive and emotional
engagement from all participants. In the face of the complexity of
regional diversication, a particular focus of evaluation is supporting
reexivity, engaging participants in “questioning what we, and others,
might betaking for granted—what is being said and not said—and
examining the impact this has or might have.” (Cunlie, 2016). Such
reexive work is widely seen as essential to addressing complex
challenges (McLoughlin etal., 2020), such as development of “complex
multi-level systems to cope with a complex, multi-level problem,” to
quote Ostrom (2010) once again. In late 2022, the major nodes of the
Partnership (Steering Council, Learning and Experimentation
Network, Organizing Group, and Strategy Group each had gatherings
for the purpose of reviewing Ostrom’s core design principles, with
emphasis on articulation of each group’s purpose, autonomy of group,
internal trust and equity, and give/get.
Discussion and conclusion
Fundamentally, our project is concerned with achieving a crucial,
broadly-supported sustainability transition in agriculture:
diversication at regional scales. Our eort to develop a regional-scale
diversication strategy is part of a growing body of theory and practice
addressing sustainability transitions in agriculture (El Bilali, 2020;
Scoones etal., 2020). In this body of work, the multi-level perspective
(Geels, 2019) is an overarching theoretical framework (El Bilali, 2019),
underlying most current approaches. e multi-level perspective
posits that sustainability transitions result from the joint operation of
‘top-down’ pressures for change in dominant systems (e.g., broad
societal demand for climate mitigation and adaptation in agriculture),
and the availability of scalable alternatives to dominant systems that
meet such demand, typically resulting from ‘bottom-up’ innovation.
In practice, however, most sustainability transition eorts in
agriculture focus narrowly on particular scales or sectors, rather than
attempting to coordinate activities across sectors and scales (El Bilali,
2020). Undoubtedly, this reects the diculty and cost of organizing
the joint operation of eort broadly across sectors and scales (Schlaili
and Urmetzer, 2019). By organizing a cross-scale and cross-sector
project, weaim to advance understanding of sustainability transitions
in agriculture.
We also aim to advance understanding of the value of conscious
cultural evolution in sustainability transitions such as regional
diversication, inspired by drawing on recent advances in
understanding of conscious cultural evolution and its facilitation
(Brooks etal., 2018; Atkins et al., 2019). Sustainability transitions
frameworks oen seek to support adaptation and evolution of
fundamental societal systems. However, these frameworks have not
explicitly united with the developing theory and practice of facilitated
and intentional cultural evolution as a sustainability strategy (Schlaili
and Urmetzer, 2019). is union oers much: if evolution and
adaptation of cultural elements such as food systems is the goal, then
attention to the fundamental drivers of cultural evolution and
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adaptation is warranted. Specically, wepropose that intentional
design for facilitated cultural evolution can markedly increase the
likelihood of progress in the adaptation and evolution that is essential
for transition in agriculture. Our project is thus part of a larger stream
of work exploring conscious cultural evolution as a novel approach to
sustainability transitions (Brooks etal., 2018; Jones etal., 2020). As
Brooks et al. note, cultural evolution is a unifying framework,
clarifying the logic and underlying dynamics of strategies such as
adaptive management and innovation systems.
Finally, weseek to contribute to broader use of principles and
practices of responsible innovation and scaling (Kuzma, 2019; Schut
etal., 2020; Stilgoe etal., 2020) in addressing sustainability transitions
such as regional diversication. Of course, innovation and scaling are
of the essence in agricultural diversication, and calls for their
“responsibility” acknowledge that all scaled innovations produce a
mix of outcomes, some benecial, others not (Herrero etal., 2020).
e foundations of such responsibility are anticipation, reexivity,
inclusion, and responsiveness (Stilgoe et al., 2020). e use of
polycentric governance and conscious cultural evolution provide
many opportunities to implement these principles in practice. Via the
internal deliberations of these networks, and ongoing feedback
between the top-down and bottom-up scales in polycentric networks,
there is much scope for anticipating consequences of particular
diversication pathways via inclusive and participatory processes, and
for collective reexivity and responsiveness to perceived shortcomings
of diversication strategies.
For example, a key value of the Partnership is to avoid
diversication strategies that perpetuate current social injustices in
agriculture. By implementing this value in goal-setting and
resource-provisioning activities, and collaborating with farmers
from historically-marginalized groups to develop diversication
pathways (i.e., SSCs) that respect this value, the Partnership is
striving to practice responsible innovation and scaling with respect
to this goal. is requires engagement of multiple interested and
aected parties in a holistic discussion of ends and means of
innovation and scaling, participatory and inclusive anticipation of
outcomes of alternative diversication pathways, and on-going
mutual learning and reection on the innovation and scaling
process and its outcomes. ese processes—albeit challenging,
deliberative, and unpredictable—are all inherent in the Partnership’s
polycentric and evolutionary approach. Weargue that responsible
innovation and scaling are essential to navigating sustainability
transition projects in food and agriculture, and through
implementation of the Partnership’s strategy, weseek to build
practical and conceptual approaches to taking such responsibility.
Data availability statement
e datasets presented in this article are not readily available because
interview data were gathered under a condentiality agreement.
Summaries of interview data will bemade available. Requests to access
the datasets should bedirected to jorda020@umn.edu.
Author contributions
NJ and DW developed the conceptual model. NJ, DW, KN, KM,
TC, and CC contributed to the case study. KN, KM, and TC planned
the evaluation research. KN and KM analyzed and interpreted
interview data. All authors contributed to the article and approved the
submitted version.
Funding
is research was funded by grants and contracts from the
Foundation for Food and Agricultural Research, Walton Family
Foundation, Minnesota Department of Agriculture, and SAES-
University of Minnesota.
Conflict of interest
e authors declare that the research was conducted in the
absence of any commercial or nancial relationships that could
beconstrued as a potential conict of interest.
Publisher’s note
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors
and do not necessarily represent those of their aliated organizations,
or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product
that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its
manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
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