The Marketplace Magazine March/April 2022

The

Where Christian faith gets down to business

March April 2022

Selling more diseaseresistant seeds: BASICS-II project helps cassava entrepreneurs in Tanzania Meet two new members of MEDA’s leadership team Mennonite farmers around the world BC woman turns front yard flowers into a business Meat from a lab?

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The Marketplace March April 2022

Roadside stand

Food, flowers, and future trends

Speaking of starchy root vegetables, read the profile of Southern Potato Co. (pp. 15-17). The Kuhl family has been farming in southern Manitoba for five generations.

The Kuhls have built a strong and growing business through core values that include a commitment to innovation, integrity, generosity and “putting people and relationships above profits.”

spend more than half their food budget eating out.

This according to “The Pleasures of the Table,” an economic history of the restaurant in The Economist magazine.

For centuries, it was cheaper to eat away from home. In recent decades, people have been happy to pay a lot extra to dine out, for convenience, for networking or for entertainment.

After two pandemic years devastated the hospitality industry in many nations, how the restaurant sector will evolve is much debated.

The future of once-popular buffet and family-style eateries is questionable. For instance, The Good ‘N Plenty Restaurant in Smoketown, Pennsylvania closed in December.

After 52 years, the Lapp family decided it was time to abandon the nearly 600-seat, all you-can-eat, Lancaster County restaurant, a story in the LNP newspaper reported.

Changing customer tastes and a lack of interest by the next generation in taking over the operation influenced the decision.

Buffets were closing across North American even prior to the pandemic. Razor-thin margins and health scares led to a long list of chains withering away or declaring bankruptcy.

A long-time buffet chain that had 700 locations across the US 15 years ago had shriveled to 80 locations by 2021, an article in Moneywise magazine said.

Farewell to buffets?

A budding vocation

Difficult as it may seem to believe in early 2022, 2019 saw Americans

Passion and a commitment to innovation are important skills for entrepreneurs. Rose Dykstra has shown both as she turned her love for flowers into the Front Yard Flower Co., an urban farming

Calling the current edition of The Marketplace the food issue might not be far off the mark.

MEDA talks a lot about food — its cultivation, processing, distribution and sale.

Agriculture is an important source of employment throughout the Global South. Accordingly, strengthening agri-food market systems is a key part of MEDA’s strategic goal of creating decent work for 500,000 people this decade.

In our cover story (see pp. 1314), you can read about MEDA’s efforts to support cassava seed entrepreneurs in Tanzania.

The BASICS-II project aims to build on work MEDA has done in Tanzania over the past nine years.

It is also helping make cassava seed systems sustainable after MEDA's involvement ends.

Cassava is best known by westerners for the tapioca that can be extracted from the cassava root.

It is grown in 80 countries around the world and is a staple in the diet of more than 800 million people.

Splendid Manitoba spuds

Follow The Marketplace on Twitter @MarketplaceMEDA

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business. (See pp.11-12).

Lab-grown steak?

It isn’t just where we eat that is changing.

Where the meat that we consume comes from may also see shifts that bypass feathers, hooves, and slaughterhouses.

By some estimates, upwards of 70 firms are “cultivating” meat in bioreactors and working on ways to bring their cellular or lab-grown products to market (See pp 19-21).

Over $1 billion has been invested in what proponents hope will take a significant bite out of the growing demand for animal protein in coming decades. Beef, chicken, turkey, pork, fish, and dairy products have been grown from cells.

Sounds far-fetched? One food industry newsletter recently reported the results of a blind taste test, where Israeli firm SuperMeat gave a panel of chefs samples of cultivated and conventional ground chicken.

No one on the panel correctly identified the lab-grown product.

Artificial intelligence on order Many restaurants have introduced digital ordering systems, allowing customers to choose menu items from a handheld device and click to send their selections to the kitchen.

A sushi restaurant in Waterloo, ON has gone one step further in efforts to replace hard-to-find wait staff. Diners at this establishment have their meals delivered by robots.

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Comments Would you like to comment on anything in this magazine, or on any other matters relating to business and faith? Send your thoughts to mstrathdee@meda.org

In this issue

Features

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Meet Wendy and Lindsay

Wendy Clayson and Lindsay Wallace are the two newest members of MEDA’s executive leadership team.

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Cultivating urban yards for profit Vancouver woman turns love of flowers into a blooming enterprise.

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Mennonite agriculture around the globe

Winnipeg historian Royden Loewen’s new book looks at farmers in seven nations.

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Strengthening seed systems

MEDA project in Tanzania supports cassava entrepreneurs.

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Sowing lots of spuds

Kuhl family’s Southern Potato Co. has deep Manitoba roots.

Departments 22 Roadside stand 24 Soul enterprise 18 Soundbites 22 Books in brief 3

The Marketplace March April 2022

Soul Enterp prise

How much is enough for a family business?

The Old Testament book of Proverbs conveys wisdom using metaphors, similes, contrast, direct instruction, and even admonishment. Consider the author’s use of both wealth and food: Remove far from me falsehood and lying; give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny you and say, “Who is the LORD?” or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God. (Prov. 30:8-9) It’s about balance — about having enough. It’s about what we need, which is perhaps not what

we want. The consequences of too much include forgetting God’s providence. Not enough, and we behave in ways that dishonor Him. Family businesses are motivated by goals. Revenue, profits, production, size, speed, scale, locations, legacy, or staff, to name a few. The pressure is immense to keep it going, to continue to increase, to continue to grow. But at some point, we end up worshipping the goal instead of God. Chasing more comes with a cost. The cost may be our physical or mental health, our family bonds, or even our relationship with God.

Lent confession and assurance (Based on Isaiah 58, verses 6-7)

Have you ever struggled with the question of whether you have enough? If you feel you have enough, what helped you reach that conclusion?

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Lance Woodbury does family business consulting for K·Coe Isom, the United States’ leading food and ag consulting and accounting firm.

The article above originally appeared as part of the author’s Faith & Family Business series of reflections on the book of Proverbs.

To read more pieces in this series, go to https:// lancewoodbury.substack.com/ Reprinted with author’s permission.

Volume 52, Issue 2 March April 2022 The Marketplace (ISSN 321-330) is published bi-monthly by Mennonite Economic Development Associates at 532 North Oliver Road, Newton, KS 67114. Periodicals postage paid at Newton, KS 67114.

Lithographed in U.S.A. Copyright 2021 by MEDA. Editor: Mike Strathdee Design: Ray Dirks

By Carol Penner Postmaster: Send address changes to The Marketplace 33 N Market St., Suite 400, Lancaster, PA 17603-3805

Open our eyes, God, to the modern yoke; the burden of our consumer culture, the debt that holds people fast, the myth of success which has us by the throat.

We confess that so many of us are trapped.

You offer the possibility of release; you loose the shackles of greed, freeing us from the urge to acquire at any cost, relieving us from the treadmill of busyness.

We are your new releases, telling a story for this generation.

Feeding all who are hungry, we whisper peace, clothing all who are naked, we murmur hope,

“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?

Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter — when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?”

— Isaiah 58: verses 6-7

Want to see back issues or reread older articles?

Visit https://www.meda.org/download-issues/ The Marketplace is printed on Rolland Enviro® Satin and is made with 100% post-consumer sustainable fiber content, FSC® Certified to help meet client sustainability requirements, Acid Free, Elemental Chlorine Free

sheltering all who are homeless, we declare your faithfulness.

Carol Penner is a Mennonite pastor currently teaching theology at Conrad Grebel University College in Waterloo, Ontario.

“Copyright Carol Penner www.leadinginworship.com” The Marketplace March April 2022

Change of address should be sent to Mennonite Economic Development Associates, 33 N Market St, Suite 400, Lancaster, PA 17603-3805.

To e-mail an address change, subscription request or anything else relating to delivery of the magazine, please contact subscription@meda.org For editorial matters, email mstrathdee@meda.org or call (800) 665-7026, ext. 705 Subscriptions: $35/year; $55/two years.

Published by Mennonite Economic Development Associates (MEDA). MEDA’s economic development work in the Global South creates business solutions to poverty. MEDA also facilitates the connection of faith and work through discussions, publications and conventions for participants.

For more information about MEDA call 1-800-6657026.

Web site www.meda.org

Cover photo of cassava seed entrepreneur Asha Ahmad by Madison Stadler-Rose/MEDA

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#MEDAField2Fork2022: Show us your photos Are you interested in photography and the agri-food industry?

Send your images for a chance to win top prize in #MEDAField2Fork2022 photo

contest, sponsored by The Marketplace magazine.

Send up to three of your best-quality images that highlight the agri-food sector, along with a 200–250-word summary to provide context. Photos can depict the production, processing, distribution, or sale of food to end users.

Prizes will be awarded as follows: first prize $500US, second prize $250, and third prize $100.

Winning entries will be displayed in the November 2022 issue of The Marketplace magazine, and on @medadotorg social channels.

Submissions will be accepted until August 15, 2022 at 5 pm EST. Submit images and the requested information at: Field2Fork2022@meda.org To see full contest rules, go to www.meda.org/Field2FORK2022

www.meda.org/Field2FORK2022 5

The Marketplace March April 2022

MEDA’s new finance chief is used to managing risk, complexity Wendy Clayson is MEDA’s new chief financial and investment officer When Wendy Clayson began working at MEDA, she had to keep reminding herself that MEDA is not a big organization, relative to some of the places she has worked.

Clayson, MEDA’s new chief financial officer and chief investment officer, has worked in a number of large organizations that had hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue and thousands of employees.

“I have to keep reminding myself that MEDA is not a large organization, because there’s so much complexity, and I guess I kind of thrive on that complexity.”

Much of the reason MEDA’s operations are so complex relates to the international nature of investments, contracts, and related legalities, she said.

Clayson began working at MEDA on an interim basis in September, following the tragic passing of Orvie Bowman, who died in a cycling accident.

She accepted a permanent appointment to the role, which includes being a member of MEDA’s executive leadership team, in January.

Her career has included stints in senior finance positions in the health care sector, including public and private organizations and a charitable foundation. Prior to joining MEDA, she worked as the chief financial officer at CarePartners, a 4,000-employee strong Ontariobased home health care provider.

The Marketplace March April 2022

Wendy Clayson

Clayson sees her financial oversight role at MEDA as one of managing risks “through having good systems and processes so that there are clear boundaries people can work within.”

“We need to be careful to use the money that has been gifted to us, either through (institutional) donors or the private donors…

People are trusting us to use that money to the best of our ability and translate it into creating decent work.”

Having a chief investment officer component to the head finance role is relatively new at MEDA. Clayson sees this responsibility as being of strategic importance, “something that has differentiated MEDA from other 6

players in the sector.”

Clayson travelled to Nairobi, Kenya within her first months at MEDA to work on a project investment design for a major new initiative.

During that trip, she also met Business Partners International, a MEDA investment partner that invests in small and mediumsized enterprises. That experience provided helpful perspective, she said.

“I was able to sit in their boardroom and hear face-to-face what the struggles are for them to loan money... predominantly it was the female (small business owners) that they are focused on, and really insightful.”

She doesn’t anticipate doing a lot of international travel through her work. The pandemic has both limited the ability of MEDA staff to travel and also helped the organization realize “we can do an awful lot by (the online video platform Microsoft) Teams,” she said.

Volunteer work focused on economically challenged populations has been important to Clayson. She currently chairs the board of the Michael House Pregnancy Centre in addition to regular involvement at Calvary Baptist Church, where she is a member.

She and her husband live in Guelph, Ontario. They are parents of two married sons and have two granddaughters.

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World issues a life-long interest for new MEDA senior vice-president Lindsay Wallace’s interest in world issues started when she was young.

Growing up in rural Nova Scotia, she was a Brownie, a younger version of Girl Scouts.

Brownies is an international organization that promotes the education of girls between the ages of seven and 10 in outdoor activities, entrepreneurial initiatives, and arts.

Wallace’s Brownie troupe watched several documentaries about the lives of children around the world that were being promoted as part of UNICEF’s Year of the Child. “I just remember hearing some of the stories, and just being incredibly shocked, and moved.”

In the years that followed, her interest in issues of poverty and social justice and “some of the issues that others face” grew, leading her to university studies in economics and public policy.

Her career path has included stints with government departments, international development consulting and with the Mastercard Foundation. Those roles have provided her with a wealth of experience in conducting economic research and modeling in the education, agriculture, and financial inclusion sectors.

Wallace has lived in five countries — the United Kingdom, the Philippines, Guyana, Sierra Leone, and Rwanda — and worked in more than 30, most of them in Africa.

Now, as MEDA’s new senior vice president of strategy & impact, she is a member of the organization’s executive leadership team.

Lindsay Wallace

Her role will focus on tracking MEDA’s progress in creating 500,000 decent jobs in the Global South. That involves advancing the best technical approaches to programming and leveraging MEDA’s significant body of knowledge to influence the sector.

Wallace was aware of MEDA for many years prior to her arrival.

MEDA’s focus on market systems, financing, gender equality and long-term sustainable solutions “really fits with my interests.”

“It’s a pretty complex thing to measure jobs and employment impacts,” she said. “Another part (of the role) is just making sure that the strategy is implemented in the way that is most effective. That really builds on what we know works and what doesn’t work."

She also stresses the importance of listening to MEDA’s end clients, “to make sure that they are front 7

and center in the work that we do.”

MEDA’s work in impact investing and taking a private sector approach sets it apart from many other organizations, she said.

“Impact investing is MEDA’s great differentiator.”

Wallace is a self-described “big nerd.” That joke comes easily to someone with two master’s degrees — one in public policy and administration from Carleton University, and another in economics from University of Toronto.

Her volunteer efforts include serving as a director of Oikocredit Canada. Oikocredit is a social impact firm that invests in microfinance, agriculture, renewable energy, and co-operatives around the world, with a focus on sustainable development.

Wallace is also on the board of the Canada Forum for Impact Investing and Development (CAFIID), a community of individuals, organizations and investors who treat positive social and environmental impact and financial return as coexisting priorities.

As part of that work, she coled the advisory board of CAFIID’s recent State of the Sector report.

That project had her coordinating input from a group that included MEDA CEO Dorothy Nyambi and Gerhard Pries of Sarona Asset Management.

Wallace is also a member of the advisory board of the University of Guelph’s Institute of Development Studies.

She lives in Toronto with her partner, two teenage children and two cats.

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The Marketplace March April 2022

Exploring place, faith, and relationship with the land Historian writes a wide-ranging comparison of Mennonite farmers in Global North and South Royden Loewen’s interest in Mennonite farmers around the world goes far beyond the academic.

“As far back as our genealogy goes, we’ve been farmers,” he said in a Zoom interview from his cabin at the family farm near Steinbach, Manitoba.

The retired University of Manitoba professor farms 700 acres with his son. That land includes 80 acres farmed by his greatgrandparents when they came to Manitoba in 1875.

As chair of Mennonite Studies at U of M for 25 years, he built relationships with Mennonite farmers in many countries.

That experience informs his latest book, Mennonite farmers: A global history of place and sustainability.

The book is the result of the multi-year Seven Points on Earth research program. Researchers interviewed 159 farmers from seven countries: Canada, the US, the Netherlands, Bolivia, Russia, Zimbabwe, and Indonesia.

(This work also led Winnipeg filmmaker Paul Plett to make the 2017 documentary Seven Points on Earth, which can be viewed on Prime Video and iTunes.)

Loewen’s book grew out of “an evolving interest in environmental history.”

Mennonite farmers compares the experiences of farmers from the The Marketplace March April 2022

Royden Loewen is a Manitoba historian and farmer.

Global North and the Global South in a series of well-reasoned chapters.

The work explores a wide range of topics. These include settler experiences in the North, the relationship of piety to agriculture among farmers in the South, a century of agricultural change, gender and growing food in patriarchal societies, Mennonite relations with the state, divergent attitudes about climate change, and how farmers have interacted with the wider world in the context of global markets.

Loewen chose the seven areas for study in part because of contacts built up over the years, but also to be able to do meaningful study. He wanted to do micro-analyses of particular 8

communities, to “get right into the soul of these communities and compare them.”

Asked about other geographic areas he could have chosen, he says that doing so would have meant giving in to the temptation to write a global history of Mennonite agriculture.

Instead, Loewen chose to go deep rather than wide. “That (broader history) is a different kind of book, because you wouldn’t get as intimate with the farmers from these places.”

He admits that he found himself “drawn to the edge as well as the center (of Mennonite communities).”

“Why Siberia (in Russia)?

It’s just really (cont'd pg. 10)

Bolivian Mennonite farmers maintain rural community by accessing global markets Globalization of agriculture hasn’t completely eroded the traditional, community-minded values of Mennonite farmers, historian Royden Loewen says.

But when asked how those values hold up in a modern global context, he replies: “They do so ironically.”

Nowhere is that truer than in the case of the Old Colony Mennonites in Bolivia. These farmers left Canada for Mexico in 1922 in objection to English language school legislation “as well as capitalism’s increasing hold on Mennonite farmers,” Loewen writes in his book Mennonite farmers: A global history of place and sustainability.

After World War II, “the arrival of modern technology — rubber-tire tractors, electricity, and the car — … coupled with perennial shortages of farmland” led them to migrate again, to cultivate Bolivia’s eastern frontier.

Bolivian promises of military exemption, local self-rule and church-run schools attracted 12,000 horse and buggy driving Old Colonists by the 1980s.

But this group has selectively adapted modern technologies to help it maintain its small-scale farms.

Farmers use steel-wheeled tractors to pull a sprayer full of modern weed-killing chemicals and grow genetically modified soybeans. “That seems ridiculous to us, but from their perspective, it’s not ridiculous,” Loewen said.

For the Old Colonists, steel-wheeled tractors are a check against farms getting too large or using a tractor to go to town.

“A steel wheel has a quite precise socioeconomic consequence. They won’t necessarily give it to you in those words, but it’s quite apparent to them what’s going on.”

Iowa farmers send agronomists to

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Bolivia to modernize agriculture there.

At the same time, Bolivian Old Colony farmers crisscross Iowa auctions to buy hand-me-down farm equipment that is suited to their farm sizes and situations.

“They are absolutely engaged in a global economy of sorts, but in the name of self-sufficiency,” Loewen said.

“Mennonite farmers everywhere have done this judiciously, intersecting with elements of the global marketplace in the name of self-sufficiency.”

One Bolivian farmer quoted in the book spoke of using a friend to access information via the Internet, thereby getting around the Old Colony’s ban on use of computers.

That modern information has led Old Colony farmers from Bolivia to travel to China to buy farm chemicals.

“Every one of these communities have a logic that may defy us as external observers.”

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interesting.”

On his choice of Old Colony Mennonites in Bolivia instead of exploring the Mennonite experience in Paraguay, for instance, he speaks of the need for cultural contrast.

“You’ve got to have at least one horse and buggy community. That’s where the (Mennonite population) growth is.”

While the book explores the relationship between the Christian faith of farmers in each of the areas studied and agriculture, it notes that the founder of the Mennonite sect did not share such ideas.

Menno Simons, the Dutch priest who is the namesake of the largest group of Anabaptist denominations, felt there was nothing sacred or particularly virtuous about being a farmer.

Dutch farmers, in fact, feel the least connection between their religious faith and their occupation, Loewen noted. Resistant to being part of a study of Mennonite farmers, they prefer to think of themselves as Dutch citizens selling to a global marketplace.

One hundred years ago, 40 per cent of the US population lived on farms. Today, it is about one percent.

Society has massively gotten into rural depopulation, with some areas of Manitoba, Iowa, and Ontario’s Waterloo County, among others, being outliers within the Mennonite world, Loewen said.

He suspects that if a study was done of Mennonite farms versus non-Mennonite farms, the former would show smaller average farm size and greater social cohesion.

The book contains some stories that may upend conventional The Marketplace March April 2022

assumptions. A chapter on women and agriculture showed that in seemingly patriarchal farming communities, women had considerable knowledge and authority.

When speaking in low German, Old Colony farm women in Bolivia speak “as authorities on the state of their farms,” Loewen said. “They know every aspect of it.”

Mennonite farmers differ drastically on their views of climate change. Farmers in the Global South, who lack the technologies to mask the increases in climate extremes, express concern for their livelihoods.

By contrast, farmers in the Global North, who have access to social safety nets through crop insurance and other supports, don’t think shifts in climate will affect them as much as other places.

Two Manitoba farmers quoted in the book have spoken of looking forward to global warming. That 10

opinion is common across the prairies, in part due to studies showing that southern Manitoba, southern Saskatchewan and southern Siberia are among the few places that will benefit from climate change, Loewen said.

For one Altona farmer, regenerative agriculture involves Roundup, a widely used weed killer that is controversial in some areas.

By applying this chemical, he is using fewer fossil fuels, tilling the ground less and killing fewer earthworms.

Loewen has made different choices. Before he retired, he and his son cropped 320 acres of wheat and canola. They now have added hemp, oats, and alfalfa in more than twice that amount of land, “plus we went organic, which is a way of doubling the work.”

Influenced by his son, he became “evangelical” about organic agriculture five years ago, following three difficult cropping seasons.

“The chemical companies were making more money on our land that I was,” he recalls.

Loewen hopes his book will help readers see how faith is lived out every day in various contexts, particularly how various farmers approach agriculture, the intricacies of nature “and the sacredness of that.”

He also hopes the Mennonite experience will help illuminate the meaning of environmental history and how humans interact with nature.

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(Mennonite farmers: A global history of place and sustainability is published in the US by John Hopkins University Press and in Canada by University of Manitoba Press)

Cultivating urban yards for profit Vancouver woman turns love of flowers into blooming enterprise Rose Dykstra’s flower business grew out of being bugged — quite literally.

Chafer beetles and critters that feast on them were ruining the front lawn of the Vancouver home she has lived in with her family since she was a toddler.

She took out the lawn and grew vegetables for a time.

Eventually, she “wondered if there’s something else we could do with this.”

So, in March 2017, she decided to try growing flowers.

Dykstra loved the dahlias that her grandmother used to grow and the sweet peas that her father, David Matis, grew up backyard trellises.

When she came up with the idea of a pilot project to see if she could make a go of small-scale farming in Canada’s third-largest city, she had been working as a wedding photographer for eight years.

“I was always drawn to the colors and textures in wedding bouquets and loved photographing them,” she wrote on The Front Yard Flower Co.’s website.

Her 2017 production included growing zinnias, snapdragons, and other flowers in her yard as well as a small part of a neighbor’s yard. “There were several other companies growing vegetables on urban yards in Vancouver, but nobody was doing flowers.”

She sold flowers to a local florist who had a focus on supporting locally produced product.

“I wasn’t particularly looking for a new thing to do, I just kind of stumbled into this, really.”

“It seemed like there was a real

hunger for that kind of thing, and it just kind of snowballed from there.”

For two years, she kept doing wedding photography while growing her flower business, doubling production annually, selling at two local farmers markets between April and October and supplying her florist customer.

By the third year, she closed her wedding photography business. One of her employees will be returning for a third year this spring. Last summer, she also employed two students and had a florist helping her part-time.

Dykstra, 43, also sold at winter markets in 2021, “trying to get more into Christmas stuff, just to extend the season,” selling wreaths, ornaments with dried flowers in them and wreath kits.

The selling season begins again at the end of March with daffodils and anemones. Weather

photos courtesy Front Yard Flower Co.

Rose Dykstra loves flowers.

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TheMarketplace MarketplaceMarch MarchApril April 2022 The

co-operating, she begins selling tulips the first week of April. That month is “full on tulips. It’s a busy, busy time.”

Dykstra grows 80 variety of tulips and expects to harvest 16,000 tulips in 2022, up from 10,000 last year.

“We’ll see if we can move them all.”

This year she will expand her operation from three-quarter acres in Richmond to include a threeacre leased property in a more permanent home in the nearby hamlet of Steveston. “We outgrow everything we have every year, so basically we’ve been moving or expanding every year for the past four years,” she said.

The Young Agrarians, a farmerto-farmer educational resource network for new and young ecological, organic, and regenerative farmers in Canada, helped her find the site through a land matching program. “They’ve been instrumental in me finding land.”

Her path to floral entrepreneurship was not predictable. Dykstra graduated from Simon Fraser University with a degree in geography and worked for the province of British Columbia for several years before

doing wedding photography.

Vancouver’s Urban Farming Society, an organization that provides education, advocacy, networking, and business support for people growing food within the city, was a bit of a guide for Dykstra. But for the most part, she had no business model to follow.

“I kind of just learned as I went, a lot of trial and error.”

She did not have a green thumb while growing up, although she fondly remembers eating veggies from her father’s garden. “I was never really invited to (help).

It was kind of his thing.”

Her father still grows tomatoes at age 94, using raised beds Dykstra and her husband have built for him.

The Front Yard Flower Co.’s niche is in direct-to-consumer sales in the Vancouver area, Dykstra says.

Greenhouse growers in the Fraser Valley area sell the bulk of their products to a wholesaler, a

Rose Dykstra

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market she knows she cannot compete in.

Dykstra has had requests to do deliveries outside of the Vancouver area but doesn’t currently have the capacity to take on those orders or a desire to do so. She also wants to be as local as possible and have “as small a (n environmental) footprint as possible.”

“I’d rather have people come to us than doing custom deliveries.”

Plans for the Steveston property include having a floral farm store up and running by July. She hopes to operate that year-round, including doing workshops with small groups of people.

“I have a lot of ideas, but things will have to be rolled out slowly, over time.”

She has a five-year lease on the Steveston land, with an option to renew for another five years.

“I hope the (owners) will be agreeable to having us there for longer.”

Her flower business will be using a fraction of a 30-acre property that will be otherwise used for growing vegetables.

Her long-term goal is “to really be an asset to the community there, and also the wider community.”

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Building a strong distribution model for cassava seed in Tanzania Cassava has long been a major food source in many African nations.

But changing rainfall patterns and lack of access to quality seed stock of the starchy brown root has led to the spread of diseases that threaten to wipe out crops.

Over the past nine years, MEDA has worked to strengthen the cassava seed system in Tanzania.

A four-year pilot program was followed by the five-year BEST (Building an Economically Sustainable Seed System for Cassava in Tanzania) project.

MEDA is continuing that work through the Building an Economically Sustainable and Integrated Cassava Seed System Phase II (BASICS- II) project.

BASICS- II started in Nigeria in 2020 as a five-year, $14.3 million US effort funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The

Stephen Magige

Tanzania portion of the project, which MEDA is a subcontractor on, is just over $2.5 million US. MEDA’s work will run for three years, until the end of 2025.

“We’ll be operating in 11 regions of Tanzania, the same regions that BEST Cassava was operating in,” said Stephen Magige, MEDA’s country project manager for the project.

Cassava is an important crop for food security in Tanzania, especially for areas that do not get a lot of rain, he said. “It’s a crop that can handle climatic changes, because Gidion Shango cuts off a stem of a cassava plant other crops like maize cannot persist when of cassava that are resistant to sevthere is either too much rainfall or eral diseases that can cost growers not enough rainfall.”

80-100 percent of their crops.

While cassava is the secondThe nature of the cassava crop most important crop in Tanzania poses challenges, given the bulk after maize, its market share is and perishability of the “seeds” increasing, with more people used to propagate new plants, as growing and consuming it, he said. well as susceptibility to disease.

“In the previous years, cassava was The “seeds” refer to cuttings of perceived as a poor man’s crop, but stems that can be cut and planted, then the status changed to become similar to seed potatoes. an important food security and The project is working income-generating crop.” to promote varieties that can Deals have been signed to withstand disease, as well as a export cassava to China. sustainable distribution model MEDA is promoting 10 varieties for entrepreneurs that will help 13

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farmers access certified planting materials when they need them, and at an affordable price.

In the past, government policies of occasionally distributing planting materials for free, and the farming culture led to unsustainable distribution practices and de-motivated entrepreneurs.

Governments used to distribute free plant material frequently to support its goal of food security.

“People are not used to buying cassava planting material. People used to get the planting material from their neighbors, their relatives for free.”

But free distribution of inferior varieties often led to the spread of disease. Fields are small and close together, so the chance for infection is large.

MEDA has trained businessminded farmers on sustainable cassava growing practices, so they can produce and sell diseaseresistant varieties to other farmers.

The cassava varieties being promoted did well in different ecological zones (rainfall amounts and soil types).

MEDA has also used a demonstration plot to show the superiority of the varieties being promoted.

MEDA works to encourage governments to source plant materials from seed entrepreneurs and distribute these materials only in places where there are not seed entrepreneurs.

The long-term strategy is to have all cassava seeds sold.

This model is being tried in

other countries. Pilots are underway in Kenya, as well as Rwanda, Burundi, and other areas of Tanzania where MEDA is not working.

In Tanzania, MEDA is working to increase participation of women throughout the industry's cassava seed chain.

Besides helping to grow cassava, women process cassava into flour, which is used to prepare porridge. They also sell the product in the fresh market.

MEDA aims to increase the number of women in seed production, which can be more profitable.

Producing plants that can be used for cuttings to propagate new plants can provide proceeds of between $800 and $1,000 an acre for entrepreneurs who plant at least four acres.

It can take nine to 12 months to get a harvest, whereas some other crops can be planted and harvested several times in a year. Most of the investment is required in the first year, as one crop will provide the seeds for the next planting.

MEDA currently has 600 seed entrepreneurs working in 11 regions.

Priorities in the next three years are to provide training and support for the current network of cassava seed entrepreneurs.

MEDA is also working to build capacity for the supporting structure of a system where others will help to sustain this work after the current Shaban Bisaki, a certified seed entrepreneur, holds a cassava root from his seed multiplication business in Kigoma. project ends.

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The Marketplace March April 2022

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Passion for the land Southern Potato Co. is a thriving family operation The Kuhl family is modest when asked about the size of their potato-growing operation.

But there is no question about their devotion to the land and how important farming is to this family. Kuhls have been tilling the land in southern Manitoba for five generations.

“Passion and opportunity,” Marlon Kuhl said when asked about why the Kuhls have continued to farm.

Marlon, along with his brother Jeremy, represents the fifthgeneration of Kuhl farmers. The brothers divide responsibility for the business of Southern Potato Co., an 11,000 acre operation that has recently undergone major expansion.

Marlon oversees fresh potato and chipping operations of the Winkler-based firm, while Jeremy looks after seed potato and other crop lines. Their sister Andrea, who works as a teacher, serves as the company’s vice-president of philanthropy.

“There’s no doubt we had the opportunity to get into the business based on what previous generations had built, and that’s a significant opportunity which we don’t take for granted,” Marlon said.

“In order to not only sustain that but keep on building on what previous generations have built, there has to be passion there as well.”

Communication among family members has been key to success, says Marlon’s father, Keith.

“We’ve been willing to take the time to invest in relationships within the family, and to work

A potato harvester feeds potatoes into a truck that runs alongside the tractor.

through issues, rather than let the issues eat us up,” he said. “We’ve always been careful to take the time to put together a business plan and ensure that what we are looking for is aligned with that business plan.”

Potato acreage in Manitoba has increased steadily in recent years. There were 80,000 acres of potatoes grown in the province in 2021, up from 64,000 in 2018. “The demand is pretty much industrywide,” Keith says.

The Keystone potato producers’ association thinks that will continue. Manitoba, currently the third-largest growing region in Canada, is trending towards becoming the nation’s primary potato-producing area, it says.

Access to good land, irrigation and the presence of processing plants 15

contribute to the growth, Marlon said. Location is also a factor.

“Manitoba’s really central to most of North America. Freight and logistics is an advantage that we have coming out of Manitoba. It enables us to export all over North America, really through the United States and into Mexico as well.”

Southern Potato recently increased its operations by 5,000 acres to reach its current size.

Many of the province’s potatoes end up at one of three French fry plants for processing.

Southern Potato doesn’t serve that market. It grows potatoes for the fresh (consumer) market, for the Old Dutch Foods chip company, and seed potatoes.

About half of the firm’s fresh potatoes, its largest area of business, will make their way out The Marketplace March April 2022

of Manitoba for sale throughout North America.

Southern uses a three-to-four year crop rotation. The Kuhls grow a variety of cash crops, including wheat, corn, canola, soybeans, and some edible beans, in addition to the 3,000 acres of potatoes they will plant in 2022.

The industry is becoming increasingly complex. Southern irrigates about a third of the land it uses to grow 16 different varieties of spuds.

The company retires one potato variety and adds a newer replacement every year. The changes are brought about by customer demands, or better disease resistance or yield in new varieties.

The seed potato business requires Three generations of Kuhl farmers, clockwise from top left: Marlon, Jeremy, Keith, and Keith’s father, John. careful attention to bio-security, so consistent in that, and as we are expect to stop farming while he it is a separate farm within a profitable, we’ll give more.” is living. But he tries to stay out farm. “Potatoes have often been Keith says that he doesn’t of his sons’ way and admits that compared to a petri dish,” Keith his responsibilities “have reduced said. “They attract bacteria and significantly.” virus(es).”

Of late, one of his primary jobs “I’ve often wondered Southern lists generosity as is to “have a good relationship one of its core values and a part with the bank.” how people that don’t of its sustainability plan. The firm Quality control for Southern’s have faith farm, because chipping business is extensive. It regularly donates to international development organizations such includes collecting a sample of it’s such a high risk as MEDA, IDE and the Canadian potatoes, cutting the potatoes into business.” — Keith Kuhl Foodgrains Bank. chips according to Old Dutch’s “We have certain organizations specified thickness, and frying that we support, year in and year them in similar conditions to their out,” Marlon says. “They become production facilities. an actual part of our operating Potatoes are grown for short, budget. We do see some variability mid-, and long-term storage. “One in our business, so we try to be of our objectives is to market The Marketplace March April 2022

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potatoes year-round,” Marlon said.

“We use different varieties for different reasons, some that mature quickly and we can harvest in August. Other varieties that store much longer, we can store pretty much up to (the following) August.”

Farmers who grow potatoes are at the mercy of disease, too much or too little moisture or early frost.

But Keith shrugs off a question about the difficulties of the farming life. “There’s certainly different challenges that we face, but we’re used to dealing with challenges.”

Decades of experience and a strong faith in God is central to that calm response.

“I’ve often wondered how people that don’t have faith farm, because it’s such a high risk business,” Keith said. “I’ve heard numerous other farmers say that there’s no need to go to Vegas (to gamble), because we have much higher stakes here.”

Over the years, as Marlon and Jeremy became more involved in the operation, Keith regularly reminded them of the need to trust in God. “We have to do whatever we can, we have to take care of our responsibilities, but we then have to have faith in God that he will provide for us, that he will provide the rains, the sun, and the people.

I have told them that, if we don’t have faith, ultimately we have nothing.”

Marlon downplays any suggestions of Southern Potato working to become an even bigger player in the industry. “We want to continue to follow through on the values that this company is built on, and continually improve our business, service our customers incredibly well, focus on growing high-value and high-quality products and employing great people.”

“We never really set out with any goal like that, that we want

to become one of the biggest,” he said. “That’s not really that important to us. It’s more about how we do business, be that relationships, business success within things like achieving goals, achieving yields… Scale just kind of happens.”

But more consolidation is likely within Manitoba’s potato industry.

“There’s not a lot of people left who want to get into the business, and as farmers end up without the next generation that is interested in carrying on, often selling it is a way to get out.”

Keith is pleased to see his grandchildren, a sixth generation

of Kuhls, working in the business.

The company has 50 full-time employees and seasonal staffing of another 90 people.

“I certainly hope that we’ll end up having lots of grandchildren involved in the operation, there’s lots of opportunity,” he said. “But as I told my children, don’t come back to the farm because it’s what you think I want, come back only because that’s what you want.”

Keith was insistent that his sons go to college before returning to the farm. He hopes any grandchildren who want to be part of Southern Potato will follow a similar path.

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credit iStock/deepblue4you

Facts about potatoes Potatoes were first domesticated in South America.

They were introduced into Europe via Spanish conquistadors in the 1570s and became widely grown in the Americas by the early 1700s.

A potato famine in Ireland caused by a fungal disease in the late 1840s led to the starvation of one million people. That event led another 500,000 Irish people to emigrate to Australia and North America.

The potato is a dietary staple in 130 countries, making it the world’s fourth most-produced staple — after wheat, corn, and rice.

Manitoba is one of the three largest potato-growing provinces in Canada, accounting for close to one-fifth of all Canadian production. Prince Edward Island on the east coast has historically been the largest producer. Alberta is just 17

marginally ahead of Manitoba.

There are between 350,000 and 400,000 acres of potatoes grown in Canada annually.

That seems like a lot to a layperson.

But Canadian production is similar to the potatoes grown in the state of Idaho.

Idaho accounts for over one-third of potatoes grown in the top 10 US potatogrowing states.

Potatoes were the first vegetable grown in space, aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia, in 1995.

In 2019, almost 672 million pounds of potatoes were used for chips and shoestring French fries in the US. Over the past decade, US fresh potato consumption has been declining.

Consumption of fresh sweet potatoes, which are not biologically part of the potato family, has been on the rise.

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The Marketplace March April 2022

Soundbites

Produce with packaging that you can eat A Swiss supermarket chain is replacing plastic wrapping used to protect vegetables and fruit, Fast Company magazine reports.

The move comes as European nations try to find ways to reduce plastic waste.

France has banned plastic packing on individual cucumbers and 30 other fruits and vegetables.

The new law, to be fully in effect by 2026, should eliminate more than one billion pieces of plastic annually from the waste stream, the story suggests.

What will prevent cukes, bananas and other perishables from bumps and bruising? An invisible, edible, plant-based coating. A cellulose coating is made from mash left over when fruits and veggies are blended for juice.

The Marketplace March April 2022

This new approach is expected to reduce produce waste, which is currently estimated at 25 percent.

One report suggests the coating can help bananas last seven days longer.

Newsweek Magazine lists Apeel, a company working at this solution, in its 2021 list of business disruptors.

Apeel markets itself under the slogan "food gone good," saying it will help produce stay delicious and nutritious twice as long.

Apeel’s plant-based coating is being used by several large grocery firms, including Kroger, Costco, Shoprite, and Walmart. The firm is looking to expand in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Matching livestock producers and grain farmers A new initiative is working to

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improve soil health by connecting farmers who have available grazing pasture or cover crops with livestock owners who are seeking grazing land.

The Manitoba Grazing Exchange is an online platform that aims to return livestock into the cropping landscape.

Having livestock on cropping land to graze fall or winter stubble converts high-carbon residue such as corn stalks to low-carbon organic material. This improves the carbon-to-nitrogen ratio for better soil health in cropping fields.

For ranchers, the grazing provides a post-harvest feed source for cattle.

The project is modelled on similar initiatives in South Dakota and California.

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Steak without steers?

Ontario firm among scores of companies working to commercialize lab-grown meat Ali Shahin has long been interested in tissue engineering as a way of improving people’s health.

His PhD and other degrees are in biomedical engineering. The notion of regenerative medicine, creating tissues and organs in the lab to transplant instead of relying on donated organs, fascinated him.

A side project led him to shift his career focus. Shahin decided that the emerging field of cultivating animal protein in the lab “could be more impactful on everybody’s life and the planet.”

Now, as CEO of Kitchener.

Ontario-based Evolved, the 30-yearold entrepreneur is working to grow a company to help satisfy the ever-growing demand for meat.

The firm builds on technology started at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.

Not long ago, the idea of meat grown in labs from stem cells seemed the thing of science fiction.

In recent years, some of the world’s largest agri-food companies have invested more than $1 billion in a sector that promises to bring cultivated meat to market in five to 10 years or less.

In mid-2021, JBS, a Brazilian firm said to supply 20 percent of the world’s meat, invested $100 million in the sector. It bought a Spanish start-up firm and announced that it expects to bring “cultivated meat” to the European market by 2024.

That announcement was dwarfed by a $347 million US funding round that Israeli

iStock studio casper

startup Future Meat Technologies announced in December. Future Meat says it plans to break ground on a large-scale US production plant this year and be up and running by 2024.

Its timeline will depend on how quickly the US Food and Drug Administration approves the production and sale of lab-grown chicken.

By 2050, global demand for meat is projected to increase by as much as 50 percent. Some studies suggest there is neither enough available land nor fresh water to allow conventional agriculture to meet the projected demand increases.

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Evolved did its first financing — a $2.3 million (CDN) investment round led by Maple Leaf Foods, Canada’s largest meat company — in September.

The company currently consists of Shahin and John Cappuccitti, a former director at Velocity, the Kitchener business incubator where the firm does its lab work.

At time of this writing, Evolved was recruiting for another scientist, a cell biologist.

Given the number of competitors that have been working on scaling lab-grown meat for years, it might seem that Evolved is late to the game.

The Marketplace March April 2022

But Shahin is confident Evolved has a “second mover advantage” that will help the firm catch up.

“We know what the problems are,” he said.

A number of smaller firms are focusing on culture media, bioreactors, or tissue engineering.

All of these are ingredients in the recipe to get lab-grown product to the marketplace, he said.

“We have a lot of partners for each of these aspects.”

Ali Shahin The Marketplace March April 2022

A bioreactor is a vessel where stem cells taken from animals are nourished in a nutrient-rich soup of sorts.

Technology and product development are Shahin’s main interest and focus.

He is happy to defer John Cappuccitti left a job at a business incubator to join Evolved. to Cappuccitti on questions of business problems commonly consumed meat in and strategy.

North America, will be their second Both men say their decision area of focus. to pursue the high-risk work they The true cost of meat, if all are doing comes from a desire to farm subsidies are removed and the make lasting change. “My wife and environmental costs are factored I had our first child in September, in, would be much greater than and I want to do something that what we currently pay at stores. A could actually impact her life going paper published by the University forward,” Cappuccitti said. of Berkley’s Sutardja Center for Tyson Foods was one of the Entrepreneurship & Technology early investors in the lab-grown put the subsidy-free cost of a (also known as cultivated) meat hamburger at $30 US. space. Its CEO at the time, Tom Lab-grown meat will neither be Hayes, talked about the potential of that expensive nor as inexpensive moving from cell to fork (inception as what North American consumers to completed product) within two are used to. to six weeks, compared to several “It’s natural to believe that this years for raising cattle. is going to be a premium product, Cappuccitti believes that timeline at least for the short to mediumwill become a reality. “No one term,” Cappuccitti said. understands what the actual way Some of Evolved’s competitors forward is (path to mass production), are mixing plant-based protein in but I can say confidently, at least with animal cell-based products from our end, yes those timelines in order to significantly reduce are definitely possible.” product cost.

“This is humanity’s first go “Processed meat (containing with this problem and this way, plant-based materials) is going to and there’s so many novel things to be a lot easier to commercialize out still solve.” and get to the point where we have Evolved is focusing its initial price parity,” Shahin said. development efforts on beef, the “We don’t really know if we most difficult protein to grow in are going to be allowed to use a lab, due to its environmental the actual term of meat applied footprint. Chicken, the most to these products. So maybe even 20

if they have like five percent of their product from … plant-based materials, they can’t call it meat.”

Premium-priced product may not help areas of the world where increased demand for protein will come from in the coming decade.

But Cappuccitti believes this will change in the medium term, 10 to 15 years out. Some countries that are net importers of meat

are looking at the advent of labgrown meat as a way to solve food security issues.

Nations such as United Arab Emirates, Korea and Singapore will be willing to invest in cultivated meat research and related infrastructure in coming years, he predicted.

“You’re also going to have so many new players enter the

space… We don’t see it being a long stretch to think Amazon is going to buy a company in this space for their Whole Foods brand.”

“You’re opening up an entirely new world of competition and groups that are going to be involved, so I think you’re going to get there on, not just price parity, but possibly even better over time.”

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Lab-grown meat will become mainstream, but perhaps not for awhile yet Lab-grown meat will eventually play an important role in meeting the world’s growing appetite for animal protein, industry observers suggest.

“By the year 2050, we’re going to need every source of protein that we can possibly muster in the world with the increased population and just meeting the nutritional demands,” Bill Aimutis said.

“Frankly we can’t just grow animals to meet that demand. It’s also going to require plants and cell culture and fungi and algae and quite a few other things.”

But Aimutis, director of the North Carolina Food Innovation Lab, is doubtful of industry claims that lab-grown meat will be available at a supermarket near you in the next year or two.

For one thing, governments haven’t yet decided how they will regulate such products, he said.

And sale of “cultured” meat products at the same price as conventional meat is “at least a decade away, if we have some really good scientific advances over the next five to six years.”

Simon Somogyi thinks changes may come more quickly. Somogyi, who holds the Arrell Chair in the Business of Food at Canada’s University of Guelph, believes lab-grown meat products will be widely available in North America within two to five years.

Some highly-educated, high-income consumers who are concerned about climate change and humane treatment of animals will be willing to pay a price premium for new products, he said. “It’s not a very large market segment, but it does exist.”

Both professors see a ground meat product as most likely to be the first

Bill Aimutis

Simon Somogyi animal protein that we will be able to buy that has never had hooves or feathers.

Aimutis thinks a blended product, similar to the 50-50 plant-based and animal protein blends that are already found in supermarkets, will be the first to 21

scale up production. “It’s a little bit easier to match up with some of the volumes and get the textures and flavors that you need coming through with meat and cultured meat together.”

Many technical challenges lie ahead for firms that want to mass-produce meat from animal cells.

Finding enough stainless steel for vessels where the cells will be grown, as well as growth factor — bovine serum albumin for beef — at affordable prices could limit the sector’s growth in the short-term.

Major corporations such as Cargill, JBS Nestle, Unilever and General Mills are best-placed to make the multi-billion dollar investments required to bring these products to the masses, Somogyi said.

That means small players are likely to get swallowed up.

These new products could provide a marketing edge for some quick service restaurants that want to promote themselves as offering humanely raised meat, he suggested.

At the same time, the Burger Kings and McDonalds of the world are highvolume, low-margin businesses, so getting prices down will be crucial. Somogyi doesn’t think most North American consumers will stomach paying $12 for a single serving of chicken nuggets, which have been offered in Singapore.

Aimutis thinks consumers will need to be educated about cultured meat before they accept it.

He points to the history of genetically engineered foods that have come out.

“It was a long, arduous educational process to make people realize that these products were safe.”

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The Marketplace March April 2022

Books in brief

A call for regulation to protect the common good The Profit Paradox: How thriving firms threaten the future of work by Jan Eeckhout (Princeton University Press, 2021, 336 pp, $27.95 US) How does Erin, a young lady with three college degrees, end up earning $12 an hour at a tech help desk in Arizona? In The Profit Paradox, economist Jan Eeckhout uses his chance encounter with Erin as a springboard to help connect the dots of market power and its massive ramifications for work and society as a whole.

Based on statistics from the last 70 years, the book explains what is different about the last 40.

Wages for low-skilled workers have stagnated or even decreased in real terms, and profits from steadily increasing productivity go to a few.

While acknowledging that we live better, healthier, and longer than our ancestors of three or four generations ago, the author makes a passionate call for “the protection of competition, not competitors or businesses.” This includes putting “trust” back into antitrust regulations. He observes that Alphabet, the parent company of Google, has acquired an average of one firm a month for the last 18 years.

Frequent references to the natural tendency of dominant businesses to build larger and deeper moats around their castles help keep the theme in focus. The author is clear that something needs to be done, but he admits it won’t be easy and political will is key.

Can democracy survive in a The Marketplace March April 2022

society where wealth is concentrated in a few hands? Where lobbying is used very effectively to create and perpetuate market power?

The book is generally wellwritten, engaging, and balanced.

Perhaps the biggest challenge is found in the George Orwell quote on the first page: The trouble with competitions is that someone wins them.

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Henry Friesen is a chartered accountant who lives near Winnipeg

What means normal in an abnormal world?

Not Quite Fine: Mental health, faith and showing up for one another by Carlene Hill Byron (Herald Press, 2021 223 pp., $16.99 US) This book is an important reflection on the growing mental health crisis in the Western world, one that has seemingly accelerated since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

Author Carlene Hill Byron is well-versed in the subject, having 22

struggled with depression and bipolar disorder throughout her adult life.

She notes the skyrocketing number of people who have been treated for mental health problems since the introduction of mass market psychiatric drugs. And yet these chemical interventions have been inadequate at best.

Suicide rates in the US increased by 35 percent between 1999 and 2018.

Shifts in societal values have contributed to the problem, Byron suggests. Before the 20th century, grief was viewed as a long, painful experience. Now, deep sadness following a loss for more than a short time is not socially acceptable.

Loneliness, anxiety, and depression are American epidemics.

A study of mental health in 26 countries found generalized anxiety disorder is three times as common in high-income nations as in lowincome ones.

Not Quite Fine examines questions of meaning, purpose and belonging.

It explores the importance of listening and helping people feel included, issues of people not feeling qualified to help, and the appropriate role for the church.

A 2017 European study found that engagement in communities of faith are the most effective depression preventive measures. Byron concurs, writing: “Congregations are social enterprises that are intended to nurture hope.”

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Books in brief Sharing the secrets of the world’s largest online retailer Working Backwards. Insights, stories and secrets from inside Amazon by Colin Bryar and Bill Carr (St. Martin’s Press, 2021 286 pp, $29.99 US) Amazon’s success has radically transformed many industries.

In Working Backwards, company veterans Bryar and Carr provide a fascinating look at the principles and practices that came to define Amazonian culture during its climb to dominance in the areas where it competes.

The book’s title refers to how Amazon develops new products and services. Work begins by defining the customer experience, writing a press release and FAQ (frequently asked questions) document, long before the first prototypes are conceived.

The company’s culture of being

an “invention machine” led to the success of the Kindle book e-reader, Prime and Prime Video, and the astonishingly profitable Amazon Web Services.

Customer obsession, bias for action and ensuring that responsibility for projects is lodged with “single-threaded leaders” are among the principles the book explains.

A results focus meant that executives did not receive bonuses and were instead compensated in company stock that did not begin to vest for 18 to 24 months. To benefit financially, they needed to help Amazon grow over the long term.

Amazon’s Bar Raiser approach to hiring was designed to ensure hiring teams did not end up settling for ill-suited candidates. The company’s two pizza teams — no more people on a team than could be fed with two pizzas — worked well in product development.

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Company founder Jeff Bezos banished PowerPoint from meetings, requiring organizers to circulate six -page written reports instead.

The book concludes with suggestions on how to incorporate the best aspects of “being Amazonian” into other businesses. -MS

The Marketplace March April 2022

The Marketplace March April 2022

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