The Vivid Picture's Trade Advisory Panel

A Vivid Picture of a sustainable food system for California can only be created with significant input from food industry experts-visionaries in the business world. The project's Trade Advisory Panel has enlisted leaders from throughout the food industry who will contribute their expertise in the creation of the blueprint and action plan necessary to achieve this sustainable vision.

Who Is the Trade Advisory Panel?

The panel represents a wide spectrum of perspectives from within the food industry - leaders from California's farms, ranches, and fisheries as well as from food manufacturing, wholesale, and retail. Panel members have the knowledge, talent, and ambition to help transition sustainability from the currently small-but-growing niche to becoming the broadly accepted standard. The project is an ongoing process, dynamic and growing; leaders from various sectors of the food industry will continue to join the panel over the next year.

What Does the Trade Advisory Panel Do?

The panel plays an important role in gathering critical information about the food system of the future. Their contributions will help shape both the research and the outcomes of the project. Vivid Picture uses a "backcasting" methodology. This process involves imagining what a sustainable food system would look like 25 years hence, and then work backwards to create the systems and tools that will help achieve that vision.

Through a two-part interview process, the Trade Advisory Panel and the Roots of Change Council members will offer qualitative information about the values of a sustainable food system. The first round of interviews, currently underway, involves a visioning process, where panel members are asked to imagine what a sustainable food system would look like. Through this process a set of core, underlying values will emerge. These values, in turn, will then help determine just how to know sustainability when we see it, and how to measure its success.

The second set of interviews will take place in the winter of 2005. These interviews will petition the panel to provide strategic advice on how to achieve this Vivid Picture: for example, what new business models, educational programs, and policies will help California move from vision to action. Panel members will be asked to contribute data and other relevant information and to review the draft projects process and plans. Once the project is complete, panel members will also be asked to review and provide input to the final project draft.

By contributing their practical experience in building, developing and running sustainable food businesses, panel members will help create a comprehensive plan with actionable steps for change. The Vivid Picture Trade Advisory Panel as of July 2004:
John Ash - Founder, Ash and Company, Author
Albert Straus - President, Straus Family Creamery
Barclay Hope - President, Albert's Organics
Mark McCay - President, BC Naturals
Micheal Funk - Founder, United Natural Foods, Inc.
Craig Weakley - VP of Agriculture, Small Planet Foods, General Mills
Joe Rogoff - Regional VP, Whole Foods Market
Drake Sadler - CEO, Traditional Medicinals
Grant Lundberg - CEO, Lundberg Farms
Michael Bescanson - Regional President, Whole Foods Market
Robin Robertson - VP, nSpired Natural Foods
Kristie Knoll - Owner/farmer, Knoll Farms
Bob Cannard - Owner/farmer, Cannard Farms
Allen Garcia - Owner/farmer, Garcia Living Farms
Craig McNamara - Owner/farmer of Sierra Orchards; and President, Center for Land Based Learning
Mark McAfee - Third generation dairyman/founder, Organic Pastures Dairy
Judith Redmond - Owner/farmer, Full Belly Farms
Dan Benedetti - President of Clover Stornetta Farms, Inc.

Reported by Ali Edwards, Straus Communications
July 6, 2004

Top