by Ann Armbrecht
The Power of Vision
The late Donella Meadows often spoke about the power and importance of beginning with vision.
“Vision is the most vital step in the policy process,” she wrote in 1994. “If we don’t know where we want to go, it makes little difference that we make great progress. Yet vision is not only missing almost entirely from policy discussions; it is missing from our whole culture. We talk about our fears, frustrations, and doubts endlessly, but we talk only rarely and with embarrassment about our dreams.”
And so before a recent meeting with the Sustainable Herbs Initiative Stewardship Council, I traveled five years into the future to envision the herbal products industry if our work has succeeded. What does that world look like? And what is my part in that world? We then did the exercise together as a group, which was a powerful and inspiring way to then focus and guide our actions. I share some of my vision below.
Five Years from Now, SHI’s Work has Succeeded
I am in a field, it’s a trade show and I’m surrounded by people, like all trade shows, but we are outside. It is joyful. Vibrant. Real. Not extravagant. We are remembering our roots.
And then I am visiting Finn Rautenbach in villages with harvesters of pelargonium at Afrigetics in South Africa. They have the support they need so they aren’t always just getting by, always needing to cut corners to make ends meet. They have a buffer and so that pressure is gone. There is respect.
I move out to the whole industry now. Fraudulent cheap products fall away because that respect and fairness means people don’t feel the need to cheat or cut corners. And so there is more ease.
Overall there is less. And what there is is distributed among everyone, not just those at the top.
The focus no longer is about trading plants for products. Now the plants are a vehicle for connecting communities. They’re conduits for building and creating resilience, everywhere, throughout the steps from source to finished product.
Value goes to things that are valuable. Resources are used to create good livelihoods for everyone.
The flow of energy is different. Not a sucking, not plundering but replenishing. That is the key shift. Life creating life all the way to the source so people aren’t drained in their work. That work is nourishing. It is not a system that is extracting as much as possible each step of the way. Instead it is feeding and in the feeding we are all nourished. Profit is a pathway to that nourishment not the end goal.
SHI is a networked structure weaving connections between people and places, with the plants as guide. We aren’t trying to change others. We are the change.
Where We Are Now
The herbal products industry right now is far from this vision. Those closest to the source – harvesters and farmers – are squeezed by those the furthest away. Companies trying to do the right thing must compete on the shelf with those who aren’t. Trade shows are inside casinos in Las Vegas, Nevada or on the edge of Disneyland in Anaheim, California. SHI is only a small player in a huge system. And the most active members are some of the smallest companies.
Sharing the Vision
“Of course having a vision isn’t enough,” Donella writes. “Of course it’s only the first step toward any goal.”
Yet, she also says, “I have stopped challenging myself, or anyone else who puts forth a vision, with the responsibility of laying out a plan for how to get there. A vision should be judged by its clarity of values, not by the clarity of its implementation path.”
As Donella told me years ago, it was the early 1990s, I’d just returned from Nepal and wasn’t sure what next to do. “Vision my future,” she said. And then share it, with her and with others. By sharing it, others can then join me in making that vision real.
Which is why I’m sharing this vision now.