permaculture

[Toby Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com>]

SoC Research Farm was a place I taught at several times, thanks to Scott 
Pittman (who knows more about this than I do, but I do know a bit from 
talking to many who worked there). 

The Farm always had very high staff turnover, was terribly underutilized, 
never seemed able to really get off the ground, and was marred by constantly 
changing plans and directions because no manager seemed to be able to last 
there for more than a year or two, and often much less. This sort of chaos 
made it unlikely that good people would stay. Every time I was there, 
particularly for the last 3 years, there were always troubles of one sort or 
another going on, and it often looked like very little was being done there. 
Some good work was done there, but overall it was a money-loser that was 
completely subsidized by Mars, and couldn't have kept running without the 
large cash infusions that the corporation kept plowing into it. The staff 
understood that Mars would eventually tire of pouring money into a losing 
operation, and yet they still never were able to make it profitable or make 
it look like a successful operation. Mars finally pulled the plug. They 
stayed with it an awfully long time. So I can't really blame Mars for tiring 
of getting so little for all the money they put into it. Without Mars's 
subsidy, it would have failed much earlier, as no small seed business could 
have possibly afforded to run such a place. I wish it could have been better 
run and been more successful, but it wasn't.

Remember that the research farm is only a small part of Seeds of Change. The 
firm itself is still operating in much the same way it always has. Most of 
the employees I talked with felt that being bought by Mars (which happened 
years ago), even though it went counter to the ideological beliefs of many of 
them,  turned out to be good for them, and made it possible for the company 
to develop. But some people didn't like it, for sure.

But I will miss that farm. It was a sweet piece of ground.

Toby
http://patternliteracy.com



On Nov 30, 2010, at 9:33 PM, Lawrence F. London, Jr. wrote:

> On 11/30/2010 11:21 PM, Scott Vlaun wrote:
>> I've worked with Seeds of Change for the last 17 years as a photographer
>> and writer. While recent events have been difficult to swallow for many,
>> including me, there are still a lot of well intentioned people there
>> that are working hard to support organic seed growers and increase the
>> stock of high quality organic seed on the market. They also still
>> support a lot of community gardening projects. We all knew that there
>> would be compromises when they were taken on by Mars, but millions of
>> dollars worth of good organic seed has been grown and distributed none
>> the less.
> 
> I had heard that Mars bought SoC outright, shut down the research farm and 
> seed production facility in New Mexico, fired all the employees,
> shut down the operation completely, locked the gates and plan to sell the 
> entire farm while keeping some outlet stores operational in the Northern 
> Midwest with plans to market new products created by Mars California 
> operation.
> 
> I am glad to hear that SoC is still doing good things. Do you have more 
> information?
> _______________________________________________
> permaculture mailing list
> permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
> Subscribe, unsubscribe, change your user configuration here:
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/permaculture
> Read the public message archives here:
> https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/permaculture
> Command to put in your browser's Google search box to search these archives:
> site:lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/permaculture [search string (omit the 
> brackets)]
> List Usage & Guidelines:
> http://ibiblio.org/permaculture/documents/permaculturelistguide.faq
> Permaculture http://www.ibiblio.org/permaculture
> Permaculture Mailing List Blog
> http://permaculturelist.blogspot.com
> permaculture forums http://www.permies.com/permaculture-forums
> List contact: permacultureforum@gmail.com