How to Shift from Transactional to Relationship Based Sourcing
At an early Sustainable Herbs Initiative meeting, Guido Masé, Head Formulator for Traditional Medicinals, gave a presentation on strategic formulation as a way to support what he called the People-Plants-Place (PPP) unit. Most companies formulate new products based on market trends, either to use popular herbs or to address conditions that are in the news: sleep, stress.
Guido proposed something different. At Traditional Medicinals they were working to develop a process of formulating new products that pays attention to market trends, while also supporting the cultural, economic, and ecological resilience of key supply partners. This could mean increasing volume of ingredients they already source from that partner. Or incorporating new ingredients that partner can provide. Or thinking at the ecoregion level, where plants that thrive together become part of a shared strategy.
The People Plants Place Unit
Reframing the PPP Unit from the SHI Toolkit 3.0 written by Nikita Agarwal, Product Manager at Herb Artizan, outlines this vision and the steps needed to implement it.
I started this work following herbs to the source because of a feeling I used to have when shopping. When I put an item – can of beans, a box of tea – into my shopping cart, I sensed the people and places behind those products also tumbling in. My purchase pulls those strings.
Guido is suggesting turning that around. The primary processors in South India, in Peru, in South Africa could instead pull those strings. They might identify plants that matter to their communities. If those plants can find their way to stable markets with fair prices, the buyers become part of their network, contributing to the stability and resilience in the region. It’s not the sucking sound of extraction. It’s something different.
“This model proposes that the health of the PPP unit drives, or at least informs, formulation and market development and that both the brand/buyer and the farmer/aggregators are responsible for supporting and nourishing that PPP unit.” Nikita adds that the PPP unit is seen as a living socio-ecological organism, not a mere link in the chain. Sourcing becomes a way of strengthening the resilience of that organism.
Formulating in this way requires more time, more continuous dialogue, more ongoing investment: pre-financing, seed banks, making investments in the overall health of the suppliers with whom you are working. The chapter outlines these steps.
But as I recently re-read it, I realized a deeper shift is needed, one that touches both on the heart of what we are trying to do at SHI and also on why it is so challenging to actually follow these steps in practice.
Scavenging or Replenishing
A deeper conceptual shift, the paradigm shift which Donella Meadows calls the most powerful leverage point for systems change, is needed. Lori Briscoe, an herbalist and founder of Appalachian Teas & Botanicals articulated this shift to a group of twenty-four industry participants on the first SHI Learning Journey to Appalachia. We sat in a round table discussion with wild harvesters and a small-scale herb processor in an abandoned high school in southwest Virginia. We were there to hear their stories and understand how the herb companies represented in the circle could help.
“First the timber companies extracted timber from this region. Then the coal companies extracted coal. And then the pharmaceutical companies came,” Lori said. “This community doesn’t want to feel like the coal companies are coming back but companies need to demonstrate that the herb industry will act differently. If this medicine, these plants go out into the world but don’t heal our communities, that is sick and twisted.”
We were silent. What she said was true. And we all knew the very real risk that in the end the herbal industry was no different than the others. Not from a lack of caring. Everyone in that room cared deeply. But because of the system within which we were working.
On the drive back to the hotel, Trent McCausland brought up something that Carol, one of the harvesters, had mentioned about scavengers and replenishers. Harvesters who are scavengers dig what they can to make a quick buck. Replenishers are those who care about returning to harvest in the future and so they take care. Their choices shape the long term health of that patch of goldenseal or ginseng.
Most industries, including the herbal products industry, maximize short term benefits at the expense of long term health, especially the expense of the plants and the communities from which companies source. This is exactly the tension Guido’s model addresses.
Knowing How to Love
I was recently speaking with Sebastian Pole, co-founder of Pukka Herbs and founder of Herbal Reality, about our work at the Sustainable Herbs Initiative. He said that it seems our work is less about sustainability and more about building and deepening the culture of companies. “If you have a company that knows how to love,” he said, “then you are going to win. If you have one focused on outputs and KPIs, then you won’t. People won’t stick around.”
Twenty-six years ago, I visited ranchers near Steamboat Springs working with conservationists to protect the Elk Valley ranchland. We spoke with Lynn, a third-generation rancher who had lived in Colorado her entire life.
“This is an incredibly beautiful place. One of the reasons it’s still really beautiful is because there’s been a group of people who have spent their lifeblood working to keep it this way. We love what we do.”
She paused. “You can’t legislate morality. You can’t legislate love. You can’t legislate a sense of caring. If it’s not there, it’s not there… And the land loves you back. If you’re allowed to care for it and do what’s right, it loves you back by being productive and healthy and taking care of you.”
The challenge, of course, is to honor that love in an economic reality that doesn’t support that. Lynn and her husband loved that land, but they didn’t legally own it. At the end of our conversation, she told us that their lease had expired and they had been asked to leave. In the end, their love wasn’t enough.
Supporting Care
This is what Guido is trying to address in talking about strategic formulation. Care has to be at the heart of it. You have to care about the wellbeing of farmers in South India or wild harvesters in northeastern Kentucky. You have to care whether your actions make their lives more difficult or easier in order to do what is needed to ensure you aren’t making their lives more difficult.
Individuals can care. Most companies aren’t structured to support that care.
In this context, talking about relationships in sourcing can quickly become transactional: having a relationship is a means to the end of getting the product. For the effort required to be sustained, the intention has to go deeper. And that intention has to be supported. Or people will give up.
That is the cultural shift that is needed, the foundation from which everything else can flow. It’s a practice of returning to care, again and again.
How do we begin? And once we have begun, what do we do next? And then how do we continue? If you work for a company, the first step is simple: pick one plant. Learn everything about where it comes from, who grows it, what pressures it faces. Start there. Then find others, in your company or beyond, who care about similar things. The PPP chapter outlines the goal. We will be working on putting that into practice, beginning with our hearts, in the upcoming SHI Learning Lab.