Winter 2023 Newsletter

CLIMATE-SMART AG GRANTS

Four Morrison clients secure a total of $175 million in awards through the Partnership for Climate-Smart Commodities grant program.

NAPA VALLEY

FARMWORKER FOUNDATION

BUILDING A STRATEGIC ROADMAP

Morrison’s People Solutions Manager, Jeff Boian, talks strategy and the importance of planning ahead.

Though most know Napa Valley as the country’s premier winegrowing region with exclusive, award-winning wines and flowing hills of vineyards, many overlook the dedicated and industrious workforce needed to achieve such excellence. Napa Valley’s winegrowers employ 9,857 individuals on their farms, generating approximately $15 billion in economic activity in California alone. It is through the valiant efforts of Napa’s winegrape farmers and farmworkers that this region has gained the prominence and prestige it has today, for its wines and its meaningful contribution to the wider economy.

education, professional development, and direct technical assistance to at least 21,000 farmers and farmworkers and provided more than 3,000 hours of education and assistance. This has included bilingual courses, mentoring opportunities, and English literacy training for Spanish speakers; financial literacy and budgeting in the workplace; leadership development; navigating the American school system; health education like heat illness prevention; and soil health and irrigation assessments; among many others.

GETTING TO KNOW REGAN PENNING

Learn more about Morrison Grants Services Consultant, Regan Penning.

MORRISON SNAPSHOTS

The Morrison team has been busier than ever. Check out our highlights to see what we’re doing.

CLIENT CORNER

There is always something new going on. Get caught up with our latest client news!

One of the organizations fostering this workforce is the Napa Valley Farmworker Foundation (Farmworker Foundation), a 501(c) 3 nonprofit organization that provides critical support to Napa Valley’s farmworkers and farmers through educational programs and direct technical assistance. The Farmworker Foundation’s mission is to help Napa’s farmworkers build critical life and career skills that will help them successfully navigate these challenges, knowing that the benefits of this investment will ultimately flow to the entire Napa Valley.

Since its founding by the Napa Valley Grapegrowers (a Napa-based, producermember organization) in 2011, the Farmworker Foundation has provided

In response to COVID-19, the Farmworker Foundation established a dedicated COVID-19 Task Force to meet the needs of the region’s winegrowing community providing critical information in English and Spanish to farmworkers and farmers through a video series and a podcast; bilingual employer and employee resources; no-cost health and safety kits; and no-cost personal protective equipment. In addition, the Farmworker Foundation partnered with the Boys and Girls Club of Napa Valley to provide two months’ childcare to the children of farmworkers, awarding scholarships to fund childcare needs for 62 individual children.

Furthermore, in the wake of severe climate events like wildfires and extreme drought

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$175 MILLION

IN CLIMATE-SMART AGRICULTURE GRANTS

With the United States Department of Food and Agriculture announcing a historic $3.1 billion investment in 141 projects to advance climate smart practices on the nation’s farms and ranches, Morrison was thrilled to learn four proposals we prepared for our clients were successful for a combined $175 million in total grant funding.

Morrison’s clients included the California Dairy Research Foundation, National Sorghum Producers, Elevated Foods, and California State University Chico’s Center for Regenerative Agriculture and Resilient Systems.

Each of the four projects will provide technical and financial assistance to producers to implement climate-smart production practices on a voluntary basis on working lands; pilot innovative and cost-effective methods for quantification, monitoring, reporting and verification of greenhouse gas benefits; and will develop markets and promote the resulting climatesmart commodities.

The proposals submitted by Morrison will collectively serve more than 500,000 acres of farmland across 15 states, resulting in greenhouse gas emission reductions of more than 1.3 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.

Morrison is proud to have worked with these extraordinary partners, whose project details from the USDA Partnerships for Climate Smart Commodities are included below.

Award: $65 million

Primary States Served: Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, and tribal lands

This project will implement climate-smart production practices across hundreds of thousands of acres of sorghum working lands, with the goal of reducing hundreds of millions of pounds of carbon emissions and developing markets for sorghum as a climate-smart commodity.

Award: $20 million

Primary States Served: Arkansas, Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, and tribal lands

This project will implement climate-smart production practices, activities, and systems on a large scale across cropland planted to fruits and vegetables, with a particular focus on fresh fruit and vegetable crops. Partners propose to implement practices on hundreds of thousands of acres planted to fruit and vegetables in key growing regions across the United States, and extend the producer reach to urban farmers in Orange County, California, and the Navajo Nation to meet the needs of small and underserved producers.

Award: $4,999,800

Primary States Served: California

Award: $85 million

Primary States Served: California

This project will build climate-smart dairy markets and provide financial incentives for dairy producers to adopt climate-smart manure management practices to reduce methane emissions, leveraging matching funding from non-federal sources.

This project would work collaboratively with regional small and historically underserved producers to launch the North Valley Food Hub for Climate-Smart Agriculture. The Hub plans to provide farm-to-fork integration through marketing and sales support for project climate-smart commodities by consolidating transaction costs, creating a one-stop shopping platform for buyers and a marketplace for growers to post and promote their products. The project plans to support producers in implementing a variety of climate-smart cover crops; notill or minimum-till practices; nutrient management; enhanced efficiency fertilizers; planting for high carbon sequestration rates; and soil amendments. An incentive payment is planned to be offered for each producer implementing an advanced practice.

Morrison has extensive experience writing successful applications for clients for USDA programs. For more information on how Morrison can help your business or organization secure state or federal grant funding, please contact the Morrison Grants Team by email at grants@morrisonco.net or call us at 530-893-4764.

Morrison Managing Principal Toni Scott celebrates the announcement of Elevated Food’s grant award with Steve Brazeel, Elevated Foods Founder and CEO (left); and United States Department of Agriculture Under Secretary for Farm Production and Conservation Robert Bonnie (right).

STRATEGIC PLANNING:

A ROADMAP FOR ORGANIZATIONAL DIFFERENTIATION, AGILITY, AND EXECUTION

In today’s Internet age, you can find pretty much anything online. It’s easy to waste countless hours scrolling through cat photos and squander even more time scrolling through Instagram, only to realize that everyone else’s life is better than yours and that you must have the latest fill-in-the-blank item that the algorithm gods strategically placed in your feed. You can find a recipe for the world’s best pumpkin pie and can even find what exactly is in mincemeat pie.

You can also find all sorts of quotes about strategy, like: “You have to be fast on your feet and adaptive or else a strategy is useless” and “Strategy is a pattern in a stream of decisions.” You can even find strategy-adjacent quotes like “Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.”

While these may be catchy, they’re not all that helpful when it comes to implementation of an organization’s strategy. Catherine Cole, writing for Harvard Business School (2020), noted:

“According to research … 85% of executive leadership teams spend less than one hour per month discussing strategy, and 50% spend no time at all. The research also reveals that, on average, 95% of a company’s employees don’t understand strategy at all.”

Think about that: 95% of employees don’t understand strategy at all! While this is astounding, it should not be all that surprising if executive leaders rarely discuss strategy. Cole continues by saying, “It’s no wonder, then, that 90% of businesses fail to meet their strategic targets. Before an organization can reap the rewards of its business strategy, planning must take place to ensure its strategy remains agile and executable.”

So what exactly is strategy, and how does an organization plan for and ensure its strategy is agile and executable? To answer this, we’ll look to Michael Porter, writing for Harvard Business Review (1996), where he states there are three underlying strategic positions that organizations need to be aware of:

1. Strategy is the creation of a unique and valuable position, involving a different set of activities

2. Strategy requires you to make trade-offs in competing, including choosing what not to do

3. Strategy involves creating ‘fit’ among a company’s activities

Complementing Porter’s three underlying strategic positions listed above, A.G. Lafley and Roger Martin, in their book Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works (2013), indicate that “strategy is an integrated set of choices that uniquely positions the firm in its industry so as to create sustainable advantage and superior value relative to the competition.” Lafley and Martin elaborate more by stating that “strategy is a coordinated and integrated set of five choices: a winning aspiration, where to play, how to win, core capabilities, and management systems.”

Cole describes strategic planning as being the “ongoing organizational process of using available knowledge to document a business’s intended direction.” While traditional thinking might have you convinced that strategic planning helps an organization chart a direction that includes becoming better than the competition, Porter sees things differently; he argues, “Strategy is about setting yourself apart from the competition. It’s not [emphasis added] a matter of being better at what you do – it’s a matter of being different at what you do.”

Strategic planning involves making choices –sometimes difficult ones – that will shape the future of an organization. All organizations –big and small – are faced with making these decisions in one way or another. Peter Drucker said, “If you want something new, you have to stop something old.” Porter echoes that by saying, “The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.” What choices are you and your organization currently facing? Are there practices that you need to decide to no longer carry out? Are there items you need to decide to no longer produce or grow or focus on? How might these decisions impact your future? How might these choices help you to differentiate your organization from the competition? It’s in these differences that customers decide who/what is better for them.

While the future is unknown, it is essential that organizations make every effort to make strategic choices and plan for what could be the next phase of their operations. John Kotter says, “Leaders establish the vision for the future and set the strategy for getting there; they cause change.” Change is disruptive … and essential. How is your strategy preparing for you for change, for an unknown future?” Are you and your leaders talking about strategy enough to help cast vision and inspire employees to carry it out into the future?

At Morrison, our focus has always been on recognizing, respecting, and meeting the needs of our clients. We have assisted many with strategic and long-term planning, helping to meet the needs of organizations as they plan for a successful future.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jeff Boian is a manager at Morrison working in our People Solutions practice. To get in touch with Jeff, reach out to him by email at jboian@ morrisonco.net or by phone at (530) 809-4679.

conditions, the Farmworker Foundation has worked tirelessly to provide both immediate relief and education to help combat long-term climate impacts. For example, the Farmworker Foundation responded to the 2020 Glass Fire that burned more than 67,000 acres and caused an estimated $1 billion in losses for the Napa wine industry by distributing 25,000 N95 masks to protect farmworkers during harvest, supporting a farmworker wage replacement program, and distributing step-by-step guidance on dealing with smoke exposure and smoke taint testing for crop insurance claims, among many other efforts. They also launched educational programs on wildfire recovery and prevention, irrigation

management to address drought concerns, and a Climate Workshop Series available in English and Spanish with expert speakers from University of California, Berkeley. All of these programs continue to be in effect today.

This work of the Farmworker Foundation continues to be critical to the success of the overall agriculture industry. Their dedication and skill is highly valued in a community that sets the standard for world-class viticulture practices and produces world-renowned wines. Through education and opportunity, the Farmworker Foundation, with the

strong support of the winegrape growing community, works to open doors, encourage growth, and change lives.

Morrison is deeply honored to have worked with both the Napa Valley Grapegrowers and Napa Valley Farmworker Foundation to help the organization secure more than $1.5 million in grant funding to advance their educational programs over the years. The testimonies of lives changed through their important work is a source of great inspiration for us as we continue to collaborate on meaningful projects that benefit Napa Valley farmworkers and farmers.

MORRISON SNAPSH TS

ACCOUNTING DISCUSSION

GROUP

Morrison hosted the Accounting Discussion Group organized by Butte College Accounting Instructor Beth Dunn. The conference room was at full capacity as attendees discussed employee retention efforts, remote work, and of course, accounting! Thanks for putting this amazing group together, Beth!

NEW MORRISON SIGN

As we continue to settle into our new home, Morrison is very excited about our latest addition to the office. Thanks to the hard work of Sandy and her team at Magoon Signs, we are pleased to show off our newly renovated monument sign! Haven’t seen it yet? Stop by and say hi!

RUN FOR FOOD

The tradition continues another year as the Morrison team volunteers for the Run For Food’s packet pick up on Thanksgiving week. Fleet Feet hosted once more in downtown Chico as our staff helped runners pick up their packets. The annual Run For Food supports The Jesus Center, one of Morrison’s very own clients!

MORRISON CHRISTMAS PARTY

The Morrison team enjoyed food and festivities at the annual company Christmas celebration. Lunch was served at 5th St. Steakhouse followed by a hot cocoa bar, white elephant gift exchange, and board games in Morrison’s new conference room. Oh and don’t forget the trivia and Lego building contests. What’s a Morrison event without a little competition?

GETTING TO KNOW

REGAN PENNING

Q&A WITH REGAN

IF YOU COULD HAVE A SUPERPOWER, WHAT WOULD IT BE?

If I had a superpower, it would definitely be teleportation. I love to travel and experience new places, but I am not a fan of airports, TSA, or crowded airplane seats. I suppose the ability to fly would be a close second.

WHERE IS SOMEWHERE YOU HAVE NEVER BEEN BUT HAVE ALWAYS WANTED TO GO?

Regan Penning serves Morrison clients in areas of grant writing, grant administration, and project management. She brings her skills and experience in communications to effectively serve clients seeking competitive grant funding through the United States Department of Food and Agriculture, California Department of Food and Agriculture, California Energy Commission, and other granting agencies.

Prior to her role at Morrison, Regan worked for over ten years as director of communications at Youth With A Mission (YWAM) in Chico, California, after previously serving nine years in Guatemala City, Guatemala, in bilingual communications for the same nonprofit organization. As communications

director, Regan oversaw all media and marketing efforts as well as mobilization of college students into community and global outreach initiatives. She has served in leadership development, volunteer training, mentorship, and team debrief and evaluation roles.

The missions training program for Guatemalan teens Regan co-founded in 2001 has trained hundreds of underserved youth, many of whom now serve throughout Central and South America.

Regan studied Public Relations and Spanish at the University of Louisiana at Monroe, and Biblical Studies at the University of the Nations.

Since the first time I discovered it in an art book in my dad’s library, I have wanted to go to the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City. I’d love to take a renaissance art pilgrimage across Italy. I also had the bad luck that my one visit to Paris coincided with a strike at the Musée d’Orsay (where all the great impressionists like Monet, Renoir and Van Gogh can be found), so I definitely need to teleport back there for a day or two.

DO YOU HAVE ANY HIDDEN TALENTS?

Speaking of art, I enjoy drawing and painting and have taught art classes. My favorite medium to work in is oils; I like the challenge of painting portraits and using color to kindle emotion and imagination. I love to sing and act and have been on stage with our local community theater, the Chico Theater Company. Being in the spotlight with a great song is a phenomenal (and somewhat terrifying) experience that I hope to repeat again soon!

WHAT DO YOU LOVE ABOUT MORRISON?

The best thing about Morrison is its people. There is a high level of trust among team members, and for good reason! They are amazingly talented, kind, and a joy to work with. I also love the variety of work that we do, and the opportunities to learn new things all the time.

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Chico, CA 95973

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BUSINESS & ACCOUNTING ADVISORY • PEOPLE SOLUTIONS • GRANTS FOLLOW

US

CORNER CLIENT

The Morrison Client Corner is a regular feature of our newsletter. Here, you’ll find updates on what a number of our clients are up to, their achievements and milestones, and the generally great things happening in their companies or organizations.

If you’re a client of ours, we’d love to stay up to date with what is going on within your organization and invite you to share your highlights in this space. Feel free to send any press releases, newsletters, or happenings to Susanna at ssteffen@morrisonco.net.

BRAD MOORER TAKES THE HELM AT MBG

Brad Moorer continues his commitment to excellence at MBG Marketing as the newly appointed President/CEO of the company. As the former CFO/VP of Value Added Business, Brad has taken care of customers and growers alike for more than 12 years. Formed in 1936, MBG Marketing is a producer owned blueberry marketing cooperative which has quickly gained a leadership role in the Michigan blueberry industry. With more than 300 growers, it is the largest marketer of fresh and processed cultivated blueberries in the world.

Morrison is proud to congratulate Brad in his new role with this remarkable organization.

EMILY ROONEY – PROFILE IN LEADERSHIP AWARD

The California Agricultural Leadership Foundation Profiles in Leadership Award was awarded to Ag Council President Emily Rooney in early October. Emily is an accomplished alumnus who has continually shown a devotion to her community as well as a commitment to the future of agriculture in California. She has worked with multiple organizations including the FFA Foundation, Valley Children’s Healthcare, California Agricultural Leadership Foundation, California Farmland Trust, and National Council of Farmer Cooperatives. (Did we mention she also launched Ag Council’s Capitol Farm Connection podcast?) Congratulations Emily, we are thrilled for you!

CHICO STATE’S 60TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE FARM

For over six decades, the University Farm has played a significant role in the Chico community, from its diverse crops and livestock to its educational benefits and global industry research. On November 5th, the University marked the farm’s impact during its 60th anniversary celebration. Tours were offered to guests via wagon ride, led by the Chico State Agricultural Ambassadors. Dinner was served as exciting renovations were revealed by President Hutchinson and Dean Stock for the new Agriculture Training and Research Center that will be built at the Farm.