This is a CTP of initiative: Arche Noah (Austria)
This critical turning point consists of the reactions to the financial crisis in 2008 which initiated a broader movement of gardening renaissance, urban gardening, food self-sufficiency and this created completely new situation in the life of the organisation, starting new organisational commitments to better prepare for change in the future. The change that the financial crisis entails first created a general sense of fear, instability and existential concerns which also led to self-sufficiency activities. Clearly, the change started with the (re)emergence of a new mentality – as the interviewee puts it, “Austria did not suffer from the crisis itself so much but apparently this started to change people’s minds. People started to think about that they might potentially loose something – money in this first case.” On the action level the change implied new type of consumption patterns: “We were quite astonished to see that not only in AN but in general in the gardening business a boom started in Austria.” As a main aspect of the change the interviewee emphasized its all-encompassing characteristics that gave a big impetus in the gardening and seed sector: “It was a sector level development that could be perceived from everywhere.” … “It was astonishing to see that the effect of the financial crisis was bigger than let’s say the food sector scandals before.” This new way of thinking also implies that completely new norms were introduced: “In fact, food scandals did not change much – people did not start saying ‘give us more vegetables or food because we cannot eat industrial products anymore’. However, after the financial crisis it did not seem so strange anymore that people grow food in the city.” The financial crisis is often regarded as one of the three Fs (fuel, food and finance) that caused a broader crisis globally. The global crisis and its repercussions created completely new experience within the seed and food networks. As the interviewee also noted “Of course one can always tell that these are different trends that overlapped and it was a coincidence. But at least in Austria it was something completely unknown, after decades of green lawns and nicely cut trees without vegetable gardens. Mainstream gardens were representative and full of pesticides – so it was a bit like a shift in paradigm that gardens will be again for food production. OK, it seems now a bit of exaggeration but it was the feeling at that time”. The financial crisis has become a critical turning point in the life of AN because of the massive societal need for regaining knowledge about food growing: “even in Austria, a very rich country it was more like an idea of quality of food that we should take care and regaining knowledge about food growing, yeah, and this really had a big effect on Arche Noah.” On the organisational level the most important effect is that “many of those initiatives [emerged in the crisis years] are now very important niche or field of experimentation in vegetable diversity”.
Many developments contributed to this CTP to happen and get perceived by the interviewee as “a big experiment that has not been possible before”. As the interviewee puts it, “I feel that since then knowledge about growing really exploded. It had also to do with social media, quick sharing of information in urban gardening and also big retailer who were trying to be trend setters”. AN started an experiment with a range of stakeholders to shape biodiversity conservation through the market. They cooperated with retailers and retailers gave back money for the cooperation. They also started cooperating with a big spectrum of producers – from small-scale to bigger entities: “The socio-economic diversity of stakeholders became important”. A further condition this CTP depended on is the EU seed regulation which also helped to boost membership and many members started to help in creating new membership. The CTP really contributed to increase the number of AN members and created unexpected insights on the organisational level: “In all the seminars we learn that membership is not important anymore, time is over. But it turned out that it is still important. From a stable 6000 members AN managed to reached to 13000-14000 after these years. This is circa ten percent increase in every year.” As an organisational condition of the CTP in 1997 a small non-profit was founded and the reason is not only to separate conflicting parties but to fulfil the big demand from stakeholders to purchase diversity. AN could not fulfil the demand through the association for many reasons (tax, infrastructure, etc.) and this new enterprise helped to build up a new network of seed, plants, food producers as partners: “AN became a platform as we do not produce ourselves but choose partners for this network of organic farms”. In sum, an important element that contributed to this this CTP to happen is the massive demand from 2008 to grow and purchase vegetable seeds. AN created partners’ farms to produce seeds, and these seed became available through the enterprise selling the partner farms’ seed. “Therefore this became a crystallisation point in the network, as a broader portfolio went to the enterprise and stared to reach out to people; anyone could take seeds home easily and start their own garden without being professionals.”
Events that helped evoke the CTP: the financial crisis in 2008, boom in gardening business and urban agriculture, need for accessible knowledge about food growing, access to seed. The critical turning point ended when the association managed to double its membership and virtually recruited all who were interested in gardening in Austria.
Several organisational level discussions were involved with the CTP but these did not lead to disputes. There was also a strong sense of unity about harvesting the results of previous hard work: “I would not say there were contestations internally. True, we were not used to it as we were working in a niche somehow and we were used to people, you know smiling at AN, saying ‘that’s nice what you are doing but it has nothing to do with reality’. We more felt like prophets. So people were thinking of AN, ‘OK you just dream your dreams’. And suddenly so many people came and we did not have to repeat why biodiversity is valuable. We were astonished.” During the discussions the main discourse was about how to interpret what happened and how to react: “is it just a trend, what would be next steps”. So various strategies emerged and were considered. One discursive point was about how to control activities that are coming. Other point was to trigger further innovations that help biodiversity to thrive. These discussions led to the CTP is sense that helped the reorientation of mission. The articulation of this new reoriented discourse can be traced as a synthesis of previous discourses: safeguarding thousands of seed varieties, and constructing business processes to help this conservation work. As the interviewee says, “the compromise was that the controlling markets idea and trigger innovation idea should help cooperate with many actors build model partnerships, good ways of cooperation”.
The global crisis was not at all an anticipated event and the consequences were even less expected. The challenge was the other way round: “what do you do if you work for something very hard to happen and then it starts to happen. The awareness and interest in our topics suddenly raised a lot.” So the impact of such unanticipated event can be “rather positive”. It was a turning point also in a sense that the organisation unexpectedly started to feel its investments. Previously the main challenge was “how can we manage with very limited resources, or how to make a lot from very little”.
The CTP presented important lessons for the organisation and also informed later practice. As a main learning point the interview identified on the personal level that “it was very challenging in term of responsibility”. As a director she felt the “responsibility became even bigger to do the right decisions. Previously it was easier: you have little resources and you do your best to achieve, and it was easier to say it is good enough.” Therefore, main lesson was the significance or weight of responsibility on the personal level. As an organisation AN got more resilient and more socially aware. “The learning was to be more aware of different future scenarios, think more of the future and find internal structure and enhance the internal competencies and capacities to be more aware of what is going on not only in the circle but also on the level of society. I do not want to say that the effect is that we are perfect in all that, it is not true, but that there is much more awareness of these capacities and competencies”. On the organisational level the CTP helped AN to find resilient internal structures and be more aware of what are the possible strategies to choose from. As the interviewee emphasized the lesson of the CTP was “to ensure that internal processes have integrated these questions to follow the right strategies, that is to make up alternatives and be prepared for different futures”. All in all, it had a positive outcome pressed for finding role in a more complex environment: “you are working in a niche and all of a sudden it becomes the trend then the whole stakeholder situation becomes much more complex. So much more interesting work”. As the main lesson AN learned that stakeholders and members’ demands are one thing and the organisational purpose is always beyond that: “We had our mission but we were much less people, it was a niche topic. Now it is the other way around: balance is needed, and mission goes beyond trends.”
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