MARCH 2023

Dear Friends,

During the last few weeks, I've been wondering about partnership. How do we choose who we share our lives with, who we work with, who we trust and give to, who we stand together with in the face of so many unknowns?

This pondering was spurred by three seemingly disparate conversations. One was with a group of wheat farmers from the east side of Washington State in the U.S.. Another was with a Mongolian advocate for the grasslands in his country. The third was with a family foundation representative from the Bay Area in California.

Each conversation stirred this deeper questioning about partnership:

I came to these conversations after an exhausting, uncomfortable, exhilarating climb through the concepts captured in Hospicing Modernity by Vanessa Machado de Oliveira. One of the gifts of this book, for me, was the challenge to not rush to a solution, not rush when it feels uncomfortable, but rather to become comfortable with discomfort. And in terms of partnership, realizing that it takes a lot of time, energy, and commitment to do the work of building partnership, especially when those in the partnership come from different socio-economic realities.

Let me share with you a very brief profile of each conversation, and the questions it left me pondering.

They laughed when sharing that at a recent meeting, they were handed a packet with four pages of regenerative seals that they could choose from to make regenerative claims in the marketplace. "How do we know how to separate the wheat from the chaff?" they asked.

Such an appropriate question from wheat farmers.

Through our discussion, we realized that we all truly cared about entire ecological uplift. Many programs are designed with a focus on a single practice or component, such as covering soil or stopping/decreasing tillage. While this sounds great, my concern is that reducing the complex work of restoring ecological function to a single action makes it replicable and controllable, and too easy to take a few new actions, without really changing anything.

It is business as usual underneath a beautiful regenerative seal. It also creates a competitive marketplace that is confusing to all the people in the supply chain. Instead of creating partnerships for discovery in the regenerative space we are forced to pick teams.

I wonder how we choose the right partners? Those who will communicate who we are, and what we stand for to the world and to consumers? How do we know when real changes, real shifts are happening, or when it is the same extractive models (of people and land) with a new dress on?

I am deeply interested in this conversation, this work, and how Holistic Management (with its focus on behavior and well-being) can contribute. I shared our statement of purpose, our Holistic Context, and how we must behave as well as our focus on working with women, displaced and marginalized people, and uplifting voices that have historically been kept silent.

This is where learning to sit with discomfort is very important to the work of meaningful change, and building true relationships across the racial, social, and economic boundaries in our society. I wonder, is a document enough? I want to make sure it doesn't put us at ease because we checked the box, did the right thing, and as a result feel that we are good people, while preventing us from stepping into the tense yet profoundly rewarding work of dismantling systemic racism and sexism in ourselves, our homes, our communities, and workplaces.

**The Mongolian Grasslands:**

At the time of our meeting he was very busy and was apologetic for being consumed with work and slow to respond.

The delays were because his organization was buying a bank. He explained that they could not find funding partners who shared their values so they bought a bank, and were designing a regenerative finance model. Clearly, he did not mess around, or make excuses.

After that, when he said he was committed to saving the Mongolian grasslands, I believed him. He had absolutely no tolerance for anyone who wanted anything less. He said he had several meetings with carbon market people and he turned them all away as partners because they were not truly committed to restoring the grasslands.

I was so impressed with his clarity in terms of who he wanted to work with, and who he would not be distracted by in his mission to save his beloved grasslands. I wondered how I could show up to each opportunity with the same level of clarity, and be so comfortable saying no.

I would love to hear how this sits with you, and how you are navigating this time and these questions, which seem to me to be the ones that will shape the future of our shared regenerative work.

Thank you for helping me reflect and think through conversations, together.

Love,
Abbey

C O M M U N I T Y

We are grateful to be able to work with talented, diverse, creative people.

This past weekend Jackie Eshelman had the privilege of building her first hat with her good friend, Cate Havstad-Casad. Cate is part of UVE’s Network of EOV Producers with Casad Family Farm. She is also a badass mom, the owner-operator of Havstad Hat Co., and just started a regenerative leather bag company called Range Revolution.

Naturally, Cate has time on the weekend to help a friend make a hat from Soil and Sunshine! Jackie’s 100x Beaver felt hat was dyed using the earth from Central Oregon and it is absolutely perfect.

Stay tuned for the final product and keep an eye out for Jackie sporting it in the field this monitoring season!

WHO DEFINES REGENERATIVE?

Organizations, companies, and even countries are rushing to define regenerative. If UVE were to define regenerative for ourselves, our business, our network, and our region, what would we say?

The first thought that comes to mind is that a definition is meaningful and yet, reductionist. As if the big “R” Regeneration is only ONE thing and only an “expert” holds the answer. At UVE, we just don’t think that way. In our experience, regeneration is unique to each place, each land steward, and each landbase. In other words, regeneration is unique to context and is the expression of land indicating balance in the myriad of relationships of the Ecosystem.

UVE’s network of producers, our regenerators, are as diverse as the landscapes, enterprises, families, and communities they steward. It is Ecological Outcome Verification (EOV) monitoring that weaves the hard work of the network together and shows our individual and collective progress on this regenerative journey. EOV data illustrates the effects of our behavior on the Ecosystem and provides a short feedback loop to monitor and adjust our actions, when desired outcomes are not being realized.

Regeneration is a story, or rather a collection of stories, each with its own unique voice. We look forward to sharing the stories from our diverse network of land stewards in the coming months.