Revitalizing communities
With food at the center, can we reignite the human connections that are missing–and so desperately needed–in our digital age?
Innovating Communities is a reader-supported newsletter. I invite you to leave a comment, share this article with others, consider a paid subscription, or support my efforts more directly. I offer talks, panels, AMAs, keynotes, and subscriptions. Please let me know how I can help.
This interview was originally published in the Ranch Foods Direct newsletter, and I’m proud to share my mission there. Ranch Foods Direct, founded by rancher and entrepreneur Mike Callicrate, is more than a butcher shop, it’s a movement to restore integrity to the food system. Callicrate has long been a leading advocate for family farms and regenerative agriculture, advising on films like Food Inc. and FRESH and books such as Fast Food Nation and The Omnivore’s Dilemma.
If you care about where your food comes from and how it shapes your community, I encourage you to visit Ranch Foods Direct and subscribe to their newsletter here. You’ll find a network of people who believe, as I do, that food can be the foundation for thriving communities.
From the October/November issue of Food for Thought by Ranch Foods Direct:
Revitalizing community with food at the center
What if we could innovate communities to ignite human potential and well-being in the digital age? That’s the core question behind the writings of Ranch Foods Direct customer and long-time business consultant Mark Dancer. His newsletter on Substack, Innovating Communities, explores new developments at the “intersection of food, community, and business innovation.”
HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN SHOPPING AT RANCH FOODS DIRECT?
I’ve been coming here as long as I’ve been in Colorado Springs. I moved here in 2015. Shortly after that, I don’t remember who, but somebody locally told me the store was great. I was born in Kansas and so there was always that connection too.
WHAT KEEPS BRINGING YOU BACK?
I love the fresh healthy local nature of the food. I like being able to talk to a skilled craftsman, the butchers who know what they’re doing and are proud of it and have opinions on how you should cook things. I love the fact that there is more than just meat from the farm, that there are other producers and growers represented too. It’s a one-stop shop for things that are real and healthy.
YOU MENTIONED BEING FROM KANSAS. DO YOU HAVE A RURAL BACKGROUND?
My dad was born on a small plot of land outside of a tiny town called Caney, just north of Tulsa. He was actually born on the farm, although it wasn’t much of a farm. They did have their own dairy cow. My family on both my dad and mom’s side were mostly in the oil and gas industry. They were welders and foremen and procurement people, but mostly workers on the gas pipelines. My dad ended up in the Navy, including serving during the Vietnam War. He moved back to the area after he retired and had a second career there. While I was growing up, we lived all over the states and the world. But what we did on our vacations is we went home to Caney, Kansas, so I spent my summers and holidays there.
WHAT IGNITED YOUR INTEREST IN USING FOOD AS A CATALYST FOR COMMUNITY?
I’m a Naval Academy graduate and served in the Navy for six years. I lived in Oregon for a while and then went to business school. But my career for 25 years was working for manufacturers and distributors on their channel strategies, business strategies and innovation. That’s when I started thinking about the customers of the supply chain and about communities as a customer. Anthropologists say that communities are where we come together as humans to do what we can’t do alone. But all the digital transformation has been about the individual and about global scale. It doesn’t really have a focus on the community. Social media and online platforms in some ways work against communities. So I think we can innovate communities using technologies, but using human-centered innovation. Because communities are kind of the forgotten institution.
SAY MORE ABOUT THAT.
If you think about the role of communities in connecting us with what makes us human, right at the top of the list is food. If you’re thinking about innovating communities, you have to start by thinking about local agriculture, and eating as a ceremony. You start by thinking about being connected to place. Everybody eats, right? So if we’re going to innovate communities, food is the natural lever for starting to think about engaging communities to help us live as humans in the digital age. Food can never be virtual.
TELL US ABOUT YOUR NEWSLETTER.
I’ve written somewhere around 200 articles on Substack. I started it about three years ago. It’s been a journey for me. This is where I’ve ended up and this is my focus: how can we innovate communities, starting with a what-if question? I’m a systems thinker, and one technique we use is the what-if statement. My what-if statement is this: what if a community decided to eat its way to better health, well-being and prosperity? Every citizen in every business can get involved in that. Even a business that has nothing to do with agriculture or food can help its employees eat better and come together through food.
DO YOU KNOW ANY COMMUNITIES THAT HAVE DONE THAT SUCCESSFULLY?
I’ve done some research, and there’s not a lot. There are some European communities that have local gardens or a strong health movement. But the idea of sitting back and thinking of a community as an institution, not as just a place for activism or social impact or politics, I think that’s still pretty fresh.
TALK ABOUT RANCH FOODS DIRECT IN TERMS OF CREATING A COMMUNITY AROUND FOOD. WHAT ARE YOUR IMPRESSIONS?
The commitment to healthy agriculture and healthy ranching is where it all starts. The way the cattle are fed, the way crops are treated, it starts there. I think the presentation in the store is part of it. It’s very casual; the experience is very authentic. It’s not designed by somebody who might design the interior of a scaled-up fast-food restaurant, which can be effective, but a bit cynical. Manipulative even. So the environment is not necessarily what a consumer packaged goods expert would do. It seems to me that it’s just very authentic, and it has evolved. It reflects the people who own it and the people who work there.
DON’T YOU THINK PEOPLE ARE CRAVING THAT KIND OF AUTHENTICITY THESE DAYS?
I think as more and more of our lives become digital, or virtual, and enabled by artificial intelligence — there are huge benefits in that — but there are things you can’t get through a screen, or from a chatbot, even though those things are going to be very influential. It flattens the experience. It’s a less human experience. It’s a mediated experience. There’s nothing mediated about walking into the Ranch Foods Direct store. It’s you and the produce, you and the meat, you and the people behind the counter. You can meet the owner and even get to know him personally. That’s the power of human connection. It’s about being connected to our food and water, to our energy and our work, and to the places we call home. Just feeling connected to something greater than ourselves.
The Ranch Foods Direct newsletter continues to document how individuals and small businesses are working together to restore food integrity and community resilience. The edition with my interview features stories on regenerative composting and the risks of “big tech” consolidation for small producers and independent retailers. The RFD newsletter is a source for my research and, I hope, for your ideas and innovations.
As always, I welcome your thoughts. Leave a comment, send a DM on Substack, or reach me at mark.dancer@n4bi.com.
Together, let’s build thriving communities, one innovation at a time.