Part 3: Sustainable Herbs Program Learning Lab

by Ann Armbrecht, SHP Director

 “If you don’t know how things are connected then the cause of problems is solutions.”

Amory Lovins (in Thinking Like a Plant)

Mapping Supply Networks

Herb companies know that transparent supply chains lead to higher quality herbs. They know that long term relationships matter. And that climate change, biodiversity loss, and labor shortages threaten the long term supply of the raw material on which the botanical industry depends.

There is a lot of talk about the importance of addressing these challenges, of investing in sustainability, and of consumers demanding more investment in social and ecological sustainability. Yet, why aren’t more companies taking action at a larger scale to address these challenges?

Some herb companies source up to two or three hundred plants from around the world. These include roots, leaves, flowers, and resin. Each of these plant parts must be handled in particular ways to maintain the quality and to ensure that the phytochemical constituents needed are still present in the finished product. This diversity means that talking about transparency and traceability in only general terms quickly loses the specificity needed to lead to concrete action.

Mapping as a Tool for Seeing Beyond What We Normally See

To address this gap, companies in the Sustainable Herbs Program Learning Lab are sharing among themselves a series of case studies focusing on a specific species that their company sources. We began this process with three presentations. I quickly realized this format wasn’t going to lead us to the deeper issues we needed to address. In the next meeting, we adapted the 3D mapping tool from the Presencing Institute to map the supply network of that species as a way to see the larger system in which that species moves. Following Amory Lovins’ comment above, our goal was to identify underlying connections in order to tease out possible solutions that don’t simply make things worse.

After a brief practice leading participants through imagining the whole supply network for the species they selected, they used whatever objects they had on hand to map that network. I then asked a series of questions based on the Theory U model that they responded to in writing. These included asking what they loved about the map, what parts they were most drawn to, what areas made them lose energy. What hard truths needed to be spoken? What did they see/notice in the system that they hadn’t noticed before? What or who was missing from the map? If this model were designed for you to learn from and could speak, what advice would it give you?

Moving from Transactional Relationships 

Theory U talks about listening to the future that is emerging, a way of taking action that places as much value on how things are done as on what is done. This is because how things are done determines the quality of the relationships that are formed. And, as those involved in sourcing herbs make clear, the quality of the relationships determines the outcomes of the work.

And so it is not that a focus on process is beside the point, something extra to do for those with time and energy. It is because that focus builds the foundation for making the deeper systemic changes needed. That is where shifting from transactional relationships to those that are regenerative to everyone involved begins.

Circles of Care

In the mapping exercise and the discussion that followed, everyone listened. They listened to the plants they were working with. They listened to the stakeholders and issues that appeared in their maps. They listened to each other.

One person who works at a US-based brand told the story of his great grandfather who had to leave his farm and family where he grew sugar beets to become a miner because the market for sugar beets dropped significantly and he could no longer make a living farming. The mapping exercise, he said, made him acutely aware of the impact that they as businesses have on their growers. What happens if these farmers spend years growing these crops, only to have them fail?

Others spoke in different ways about what one participant called the circle of care, about how to grow that circle of care so that those using and selling and manufacturing the products understand what it takes to harvest and grow those plants and the impacts of faraway decisions on people and communities and places.

Promoting Wellness or Extracting Wellness?

One person talked about the disconnect between promoting wellness in a finished product by extracting wellness from the plants and the communities in ways where, as another said, that flow of energy is not reciprocated. Is there a way to shift from this extractive mentality to what another participant called an “enchanting” mentality: “Enchanting isn’t magic – it’s a long-term, committed walking of the same pathways over and over.”

“What struck me the most was the amount of “new perspective” comments that the exercise elicited. And, a lot of overlap in the content those new perspectives provided,” this participant wrote in a follow up message. “I don’t know if companies have figured out how to do this yet, but I felt like we had it figured out yesterday – at least in the way you sometimes have things figured out in a dream, only to wake and find it a little more complicated than you thought.”

Moving to Tangible Action: The Case of Rhodiola

As another participant shared, “Now we have all of these beautiful thoughts – maybe the next step is to explore how we can, as a group, move these thoughts into tangible actions?”

In the following session, Nate Brennan from Pacific Botanicals shared a case study on rhodiola that built on the mapping exercise. His presentation and the discussion that followed seems more important for what he chose to focus on than any specific recommendations for action. He talked about the specific relationship with a supplier, the mixed impacts of regulations, especially CITES, challenges of cultivation especially in a changing climate, and other challenges. These case studies are works in progress where, because of the trust built among members, people share challenges they might not share in a more public setting so that everyone can learn from the specific challenges and share ideas about how to address them.

Individual members, who are SHP Supporters, then take these ideas back into their own work to see how they help them see and consider what perhaps they hadn’t before — or see it in a new way or understand a possible course of action that hadn’t been evident.

To me, the key is that the discussion that arose from that deeper quality of listening created a quality of connection and attention that I believe lays the groundwork for a different kind of action. We will continue to explore and eventually share the case studies that arise from these conversations.

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