September October 2013
Where Christian faith gets down to business
The Dorsings of Washington:
Producing superfruits for the nation
The deli case is his gallery
MEDA memories on the Old Silk Road 1
A week’s diet for a hungry planet The Marketplace September October 2013
Roadside stand
Green but business-minded A new breed of environmentalist is upon us, writes Margaret Wente in the Globe & Mail. They don’t necessarily hug trees or wear Birkenstock sandals. Nor do they expect government subsidies to do the heavy lifting for them. They are passionate about ecology, but also pragmatic and business-minded. Says one, “We want to show that you can be an environmentalist and a good business person as well.” (These kinds of folks will be no strangers to readers of this magazine.) “The environmentalists who will change the world are not the ones who believe that business is a dirty word and capitalism is evil,” Wente writes. “They’re the ones who understand how things actually work.” Real change, in her view, will be wrought by smart green thinking and common sense: “people who know something about engineering, finance, economics and manufacturing will make a lot more difference to the planet than people with empty slogans....” She quotes one disillusioned environmentalist: “There are many here who would make a valiant effort to chain themselves to a tree, but make little effort to get up every day and work at a job that may make a difference.”
of Canada, says he’d use the money to fund financial literacy programs for church leaders. “Debt is a huge issue confronting Canadian society,” he writes. “The average Canadian owes $1.65 for every dollar of after-tax income they earn.” Despite that growing problem, which can lead to family breakdown and violence, many ministers are ill-equipped to respond. “How much training do church leaders get at seminaries and Bible colleges so they can help people to live within their means? Basically nothing,” Strathdee writes. Not only that, many seminarians themselves graduate with “crippling debt loads that impair their ability to serve
and may force them out of ministry.” (The Messenger) Signing off. Parting message on the front door of a British camera store as it shut down after 78 years: “The staff at Jessops would like to thank you for shopping with Amazon.” (The Economist) We’ve long known that poverty is life-limiting in low income countries, but we didn’t know how true it is close to home. A new study by the Canadian Medical Association asserts that poverty is the number one factor in whether Canadians live long, healthy lives. “Poverty kills,” says a CMA official in urging the
And it’s expensive, too. If sheer compassion isn’t enough to want to cure poverty and hunger, there’s always the economic argument. According to USAID official Rajiv Shah, malnutrition produces economic lethargy that costs everyone. “Thirty years ago, we thought stunting was simply a symptom of children who weren’t getting enough to eat — a physical manifestation of scarcity,” he says. “About ten years ago, we started to get economic data that conclusively showed that a population too malnourished to work suffered long-term economic consequences. Individuals suffered a 10 percent reduction in lifetime earning potential, while countries saw 3 percent annual reductions in their GDP.” (Quoted in The Last Hunger Season by Roger Thurow) Word crunchers. Ever wonder who scratched the first clay tablet or penned history’s first scroll? Was it a musing scribe, overtaken by a brilliant thought that just had to be shared? It seems not, according to William J. Bernstein in his new book, Masters of the Word: How Media Shaped History from the Alphabet to the Internet. After intensive study of archaeological and paleographical research, he concludes it all started in the accounting department: “the first writing arose not from the desire to record history or produce literature, but rather to measure grain, count livestock, and organize and control the labor of the human animal. Accounting, not prose, invented writing.” — WK
What would you do with a million-dollar windfall? It’s fun to think about. Mike Strathdee, stewardship consultant for Mennonite Foundation
Cover photo of Kevin Dorsing courtesy of Lisa Dorsing, Dorsing Designs Photography
The Marketplace September October 2013
country to make eliminating poverty its top health priority. (Globe & Mail)
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In this issue
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Bearing fruit Half a century ago Karl Dorsing won a land lottery and got the last free tract in the Columbia River Basin. Today his family is the West Coast’s leading producer of frozen tart cherries.
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Artistry in the deli case Welcome to a world of patiently aged cheddar, swiss cheese with traditional “large eyes,” and a bologna you’ll never forget. Dan Neff is an artist whose canvas is the human palate.
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On the trail with a MEDA “Marco Polo.” Page 13
In his 23 years with MEDA Henry Fast made 66 overseas trips on behalf of the poor. In this excerpt from his upcoming memoirs, he gives a glimpse into one trip on the trail of Marco Polo.
Departments 2 4 18 20 22
The Old Silk Road
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Roadside stand Soul enterprise Reviews Soundbites News
Diet for a hungry world Photographer Peter Menzel embarked on an unusual project — track 30 families in 24 countries as they farmed, shopped, cooked and ate. The result — a “culinary atlas” of a week’s worth of food. Photo by Lisa Dorsing, Dorsing Designs Photography
Volume 43, Issue 5 September October 2013 The Marketplace (ISSN 0199-7130) 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 2013 by MEDA. Editor: Wally Kroeker Design: Ray Dirks
Change of address should be sent to Mennonite Economic Development Associates, 1891 Santa Barbara Dr., Ste. 201, Lancaster, PA 17601-4106. 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 contact the editor at wkroeker@meda.org or call (204) 956-6436 Subscriptions: $25/year; $45/two years.
Postmaster: Send address changes to The Marketplace 1891 Santa Barbara Dr., Ste. 201 Lancaster, PA 17601-4106
Published by Mennonite Economic Development Associates (MEDA), whose dual thrust is to encourage a Christian witness in business and to operate business-oriented programs of assistance to the poor. For more information about MEDA call 1-800-665-7026. Web site www.meda.org
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The Marketplace September October 2013
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Lead on Down on the farm The Bible begins and ends in the garden (farm?). Within paragraphs God is ordering the earth to bring forth vegetation — plants yielding seed and trees of every fruit. Flip to the very last page and Revelation speaks of the tree of life with 12 kinds of fruit, one for each month, and the “leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.” From beginning to end, the Bible features people of the soil. The first humans are assigned to tend the garden and encouraged to freely eat of it. It ensured physical survival, provided natural beauty, and became a way to fulfill vocations. Three chapters later, God is “walking in the garden in the cool of the day” (Gen. 3:8). A farmer might envision God wading through a field of wheat or strolling along furrows of potatoes. Much later, the Israelites, even in exile, are encouraged to “plant gardens and eat what they produce” (Jer. 29:5). The New Testament, too, has plenty of horticultural images. Jesus speaks of sowers going out to plant, of mustard seeds, of vineyards being pruned, of fig trees that don’t produce. His final prayers and arrest take place in a garden. The Apostle Paul uses tree grafting to depict the integration of Gentiles into the chosen people under the new covenant. What a lovely image of inclusion. The garden is often a parable of the kingdom of God. You don’t have to look far to see farm-related pointers to the ways of God with humanity — soil, planting, water, shade, weeding, thinning, pruning and harvest. The garden — the farm — is a central biblical metaphor. May those who work there see themselves as made in the image of God, and doing the work of God in the garden, on the farm, and in the various gardens of their own lives.
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Want to be a leader? Then exercise the gifts you already have, says John Bowen, professor at Wycliffe College in Toronto. He tells aspiring ministry students that if they have a good sense of who they are and their natural gifts (even business skills), they have a leg up to becoming leaders. Many students may have business experience and may even have started their own companies, “so we’re not giving these people abilities they do not already have,” he says. Instead, seminary gives them a theological framework for what they are doing. Bowen says the New Testament rarely uses the term “leader,” focusing instead on developing God-given gifts (such as teaching, encouraging or being entrepreneurial). “If someone came and said, ‘I feel called to be a leader,’ I would be quite nervous,” says Bowen. “I would ask, ‘in what way do you want to lead; who do you want to lead; why do you want to lead?’ “Whereas, if someone said, ‘I want to learn to be a better servant,’ then I would encourage them to find out what way they are gifted to serve. I think that when you are using your gifts, you probably end up being a leader.” (ChristianWeek) Photo by Brian Gould
“If I had a hammer” What does church have to do with selling hammers? More than you might think, says Becca Messman, a pastor whose first job out of college was with Home Depot. “I worked in the Business Leadership Program that was intended to fast-track young talent to middle-upper management, presumably in that company,” she writes in a blog post for The Presbyterian Outlook. At 23 she joined company executives for the opening bell of the New York Stock Exchange and helped open Home Depot stores in Mexico. In management she saw sales go up, and sales go down. “I hired people and let people go,” Messman writes. “I sat in an office with a weeping mom who had shoplifted two paintbrushes from the store while her kids waited in the mini-van.” Young recruits attended blue-sky meetings where new ideas were pitched — everything from starting restaurants to selling beef jerky. “People were rewarded for new ideas and given crystal trophies for entrepreneurial spirit,” but every idea had to connect back to the core of the business. They had to answer the question, “What does this have to do with selling hammers?” Messman eventually made a career change through a youth program of her denomination and is now the associate pastor of 750-member Trinity Presbyterian Church in Herndon, Va. “Now I wear a robe instead of an orange apron,” she says. “I attend different meetings with different notions of success and failure, winners and losers. But there is heavy lifting in church transformation that might warrant a forklift and all the best practices of industry.” She looks back fondly on the sizable investment placed in her and what that said about the company’s values. “It causes me to pose some hard questions to the church,” she writes. Such as: “How are church leaders held accountable for investing in young talent? How are new ideas fostered and championed? How do we learn from dismal failures as much as raging successes? How do we challenge our ministries that try so hard to please all constituencies with, ‘What does this have to do with Jesus?’”
Publicly equipped If you are a churchgoer, you have probably attended a worship service in which all the Sunday school teachers are acknowledged, thanked and prayed for. A friend of mine told me about a teacher in one church who was offended by this experience. Surprised, my friend asked her why. She replied, “I spend an hour a week teaching Sunday school, and they haul me up to the front to pray for me. The rest of the week I am a full-time teacher, and the church has not prayed for me once.” In general, the church has done a fine job equipping Christians for the “private” areas of their lives: prayer, morality, family life, and so on. However, in general, the church has done a poor job equipping people for the “public” parts of their lives: namely, their work, their vocation. The reality is, most people spend the majority of their time in this latter, “public” area. The teacher’s comment was an important rebuke. When we as the church fail to honor Christians’ work in the world as service or mission unto God, we communicate that what a person spends the majority of their time doing in the world is not nearly as important as what they spend a very small amount of time doing within the church. — Corey Widmer in This is Our City blog
Overheard:
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“Never throw more balls than you can juggle.” (Attributed to John Naisbitt)
The Marketplace September October 2013
Superfruits for the nation When it comes to cherries, the Dorsings of Washington have few equals Photo by Lisa Dorsing, Dorsing Designs Photography
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evin Dorsing wheels his pickup along the edge of the cherry orchard, looking for a harvest crew. He seems concerned as he nears the last rows. “I’m worried,” he says. “If they’re done already, it means the crop was light.” Nothing to fear, it turns out. There they are, still picking. Still filling bins with plump dark cherries.
niche crops like cubed hay (for export to Japan); and herbs like mint. The Dorsing family has been here for half a century. In 1962 Dorsing’s grandfather Karl, a logger from Oregon who sought a safer way to make a living, won the Bureau of Land Management lottery and got the last free tract in the Columbia River Basin. Over time those initial 200 acres were parlayed into today’s 2,500-acre enterprise of apples, cherries and berries and one of the West Coast’s leading processing facilities.
The Columbia Basin is the drainage bowl of the
Columbia River in eastern Washington. Today it’s hot and brown. With only five inches of rain a year, it’s like a desert. Broad vistas of sagebrush and withered grass make it appear transplanted from California or Arizona. Except, of course, where there is irrigation, and there’s plenty of that. Fly overhead with Dorsing in his six-seat Piper aircraft and you see lush green circles cut like cookies out of the landscape by countless pivot systems. Thanks to the Grand Coulee Dam there is abundant water for irrigation, and inexpensive electricity to pump it. “Because we can turn the water on whenever we want, we can basically control our environment,” says Dorsing. “We can grow just about anything.” Diverse crops abound: potatoes (the Basin produces more French fries than Idaho), onions, carrots, corn and peas; just about every kind of fruit (other than citrus);
Kevin Dorsing grew up in the family business, running a hay baler by the time he was eight years old. But his ambitions lay elsewhere — commercial aviation. When he went off to college he did not expect to return. “I was going to fly,” he recalls. “I was never going to come back.” At Hesston (Kan.) College he took everything their flight school offered — private pilot, instrument rating, multi-engine, commercial. “I have the whole works, all the ratings,” he says. From there he went to Eastern Mennonite University, Harrisonburg, Va., to complete a business degree. When he came home for a visit he was offered a job. No formal succession plan existed at the time. “I did not want to come back here to be a tractor driver,” Dorsing says. He and his new wife, Wanda, struggled with the offer. “The big issue was family,” he says. While aviation still appealed to him, he was aware that many commercial pilots had poor marriages because of erratic schedules and long absences from home. “We really wanted a good family,” says Dorsing. The family business won out, and in 1994 he returned to Washington to run the tart cherry operation. Even then he had a glint in his eye for something bigger, like a processing plant he had explored in a college project. Looking back, he is stunned by the informality of his hiring. While he had a knack for design and systems he
To your health
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evin Dorsing doesn’t dwell on it, but he could. The biggest crops he and his family grow are known as superfruits that brim with life-giving nutrients. Cherries and blueberries, for example, contain everything from antioxidants to melatonin. Plus, they’re good for the waistline and low on the glycemic index. As for apples, well, we’ve all heard about “an apple a day....” ◆
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Photo by Lisa Dorsing, Dorsing Designs Photography
A mechanical harvester shakes tart cherries from trees. Sweet cherries are picked by hand for the fresh market. Photo by Lisa Dorsing, Dorsing Designs Photography
Tart cherries are graded prior to freezing. Many go to the industrial baked goods market.
admits he was very green. “They took a farm boy and made him process food. ‘Go make it work,’ they said. I just shake my head at my Dad — ‘what were you guys thinking, turning this over to a 28-year-old kid?’”
Today the Dorsing enterprise has two sections
— fresh and processed. Brothers Kevin and Scott split executive duties. Scott is CEO of Dorsing Farms Inc., the orchard division; Kevin is CEO of Royal Ridge Fruits, the processing side. Together employ 125 year“There’s no sitting they round employees, 50 on the farm and 75 in the still. We love plant. Dorsing Farms Inc. new projects and grows 2,500 acres of apples, cherries (both tart processes.” and sweet) and blueberries along with hay, wheat, certified organic produce, coriander and radish seed, all well-suited to the high-desert climate of sunny days and cool nights. Their apple variety of choice is Honeycrisp, which they grow on trellises. Branches twine along carefully spaced wires to allow maximum light penetration as the fruit grows (and makes it easier to pick later on). “It’s the most expensive system but it produces the best apples,” says Dorsing. Sweet cherries, five million pounds of them, go to the fresh market. Every year some 50,000 skilled seasonal pickers descend on Washington for the harvest. Dorsing Farms will employ 150 of them. The best ones can earn $200 to $300 a day.
Some 50,000 seasonal pickers show up in Washington every year. Dorsing Farms employs 150 of them.
Royal Ridge Fruits, the processing division, is the largest producer of frozen Montmorency tart cherries on the West Coast, at 13 million pounds a year. After mechanical harvesting, bins of tart cherries are rushed to a cooling pad where they are chilled in 35-degree F water for several hours. This makes them firmer for the 7
The Marketplace September October 2013
Seasonal pickers line up to stay in “tent city,” which comes free with shower and bath facilities.
pitting machine, which uses a needle to push out the stone. The tart cherries are frozen for sale to the industrial market for baked goods (such as pies). Some will later be thawed and dried as needed for the dried fruit market. The Dorsings began drying their own cherries in 2006. Now they also have blueberries, some grown themselves and some shipped in from southern British Columbia A blueberry harvester gathers this year’s expected crop of 10 million pounds, more than triple last year’s production. and Michigan. This year they intend to process 10 million pounds of blueberries, more than triple what they did last year. Strawberries and raspberries are also brought in for drying. In 2010 they began a retail line under their own Stoneridge Orchards label. The Stoneridge brand can be found at leading retailers like Costco, Publix and others. “The foray into retail has generated a lot of excitement for us. The retail market is a whole different way of marketing fruit,” says Dorsing. The processing plant — from vats to quick freeze to bagging line — was entirely designed by Dorsing. Even operating 24/7 year-round, the 150,000-squarefoot facility is already overworked. A 50,000-square-foot expansion is planned. New products being added this fall include chocolate and yogurt-covered berries and dried sliced peaches, which will be picked in California, frozen, and dried in the Washington plant. Brothers Scott (left) and Kevin Dorsing split executive duties. Scott “Going out and finding new markets looks after the orchards, Kevin the processing. gets all of us pumped up,” he says. “We are a company that definitely does not sit he Dorsing family has been raising fruit for three generations, still. We love new projects and processes. and a fourth is just around the corner. Seven family members We love launching new stuff.” sit on the board of directors: CEOs Kevin and Scott, their father
How they get along
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Les, uncles Terry and Curt, and cousins Bryce and Patrick. Sister Lisa is a professional photographer with her own company, Dorsing Designs Photography. “We get along great,” says Kevin. Still, any family business can have ups and downs. How do they keep it together if things fray? Kevin and Scott laugh at the question. “In mid-August, between cherries and apple seasons, we drop everything and all go to the Oregon coast for a week,” says Scott. “We learn how to get along again.” Plus, there’s an annual elk and deer-hunting trip in October. “A good time for bonding,” says Kevin. “And re-bonding.” ◆
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Dorsing’s office in Royal City shows signs of what keeps him busy. One wall bears two pages out of a child’s coloring book, crayoned in an earlier time by sons Trenton (10) and Trevor (seven). Naturally, they are pictures of bright red cherries. Beside his computer there’s a stapled sheaf of by-laws for New Life Fellowship, a local congregation the Dorsings helped start last year. The family used to attend Warden Mennonite Church, 40 miles away, but longed for something closer to
serve the multi-ethnic and But as every farmer also largely unchurched populaknows, there are payoffs. Dorsing, for one, finds it all tion of Royal City. Its inauspiritually fulfilling. He idengural service last December tifies with those who feel a drew 120 people. Dorsing is eginning this fall, packages of Stoneridge dried sense of “calling” in their proud of the role his compafruit will carry a special message from MEDA. work. In his company, that ny and extended family have Each package will bear a little sticker pointing call is expressed by deliberplayed in its formation. to MEDA’s “Helping Farmers” project. Peel it off and ate efforts to build robust Prominently displayed is there’s a message underneath with directions to a employee relationships and a calendar from Ukraine. Bespecial website to learn more. Traffic will be tracked to to share bounty widely. sides being on MEDA’s board see how many people visit the site. “We’ve been in a service of directors, Dorsing also Kevin Dorsing is enthusiastic about the MEDA mode for a long time,” he serves on the board of Agro programs he supports and hopes others will be drawn says. Capital Management, a to this platform. “The point is to encourage others to MEDA-related company that try it,” he says. sells and finances equipment One persistent chalHe sees the foray into cause marketing as helpto small farmers in Ukraine. lenge for Dorsing’s industry ing not only MEDA but also his company, as it shows That fits well with his conis getting labor, not only what kinds of things they support. cern to support smallholder seasonal pickers but also “It’s not just a benefit to MEDA. It’s a benefit to farmers, not only in Ukraine skilled labor and executive us, too,” he says. but also in places like Africa positions. Not everyone is “God has blessed us with a gift for business. (see adjacent sidebar). eager to relocate to an outMEDA has been good at showing how others have Dorsing resonates with of-the-way locale like Royal done it. It’s been great to be able to support the orgathe tensions faced by farmCity. nization.” ◆ ers everywhere, whether big “If I’m not sleeping, it’s or small. He knows what about a labor problem of it’s like to focus heavily on a some sort,” he says. crop, to think of little else all year, only to see it wiped out Housing 150 pickers can be a challenge. The Dorsby hail or frost. “Going to all that work and seeing it not ings maintain their own “tent city” featuring large rented pay off can be frustrating,” he says. In the cherry business tents with shower and bath facilities, all regulated by the it seems there’s “some incident” every third year or so. state health department. Crop diversity helps pick up the slack. Pickers, who stay for about a month, occupy the tents for free. “It’s a good draw for us,” Dorsing says. “People wait in line for them.” While fruit growers often feel over-regulated, Dorsing applauds the State of Washington for working closely with producers to develop a practical tent program. The company also makes permanent housing available to selected year-round employees. It provides the water and sewer system, drills a well and puts in the foundation. Employees are responsible for constructing the house, which the company finances at no interest. At present there are more than a dozen such houses in two separate locations. “We do this so they can build equity,” says Dorsing. “It’s good for them and good for us. It builds loyalty. Housing is really tight, and there’s a waiting list.” On a different labor front, Dorsing watches keenly the ongoing debate on immigration in the southern U.S. Companies like his rely heavily on migrant workers who are eager to take the laborious jobs that most domestic workers disdain. He is concerned that hard-line anti-immigrant attiThe fourth generation is not far behind. Dorsing’s son tudes could harm the entire economy. Trevor, age seven, works on the cooling pad where bins of “If they do close the border down,” he says, “our tart cherries are chilled in cold water before being pitted. industry is in trouble.” ◆ He’s also learning to drive forklifts and tractors.
Marketing with cause
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The Marketplace September October 2013
Artistry in the deli case Welcome to a world of patiently aged cheddar and a bologna you’ll never forget
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an Neff reaches into the refrigerated display case, pulls out a chub of sausage and carves off a sample. It’s Lebanon Bologna, a robust morsel with hints of tang and smoke. Another sample is sweeter and milder. It’s Sweet Bologna, a recipe he developed to improve on a local tradition of smoked farm style bolognas. No wonder he beams with pride; it is nothing short of captivating. Then it’s to the cheeses, and a sampling of Quebec cheddar, aged seven years. This is no wimpy cheese; it’s ripe with character. As third generation owner of S. Clyde Weaver Meat and Cheese, Neff spends a lot of time around his two key products. His main store in East Petersburg, Pa., sells — brace for it — 150 kinds of A little science, meat and another 150 of cheese, not to mention a mouth-watering array of delicatweaked recipes cies ranging from salads to peanut butter pie. and careful Spend some time with him and you find he is not just a storekeeper, not just a aging join forces purveyor of sandwich fixings, but an artist whose canvas is the human palate.
be chilled for lunch meat. Refrigeration was growing beyond the icebox stage and this put them at the front edge of the emerging lunch meat business. “That became their keystone product,” says Neff. “It put them on the map.” to improve on Neff’s father and two other sons-inlaw bought the business from Weaver, When Neff strides into work and tradition their father-in-law, in the 1950s. The next dons his apron, he channels a vibrant histwo decades were growth years; more and tory of family enterprise. more market locations were added. He was born two miles from where his main store Dan Neff worked in the family market from the age now stands. Back then it wasn’t surrounded by a sea of of 10. “We’d load the unrefrigerated truck at 3:30 in the auto dealerships, as it is now. He grew up in the shadow morning, then drive to Wayne near Philadelphia and drop of the family business and its mythic traditions of flavor off product, then go farther into the city to the 69th St. and innovation, both of which remain crucial to him Upper Darby market and set up a market which would today. run from 6 a.m. to 1:30 or 2 p.m. Then we’d pack up the His grandfather, S. Clyde Weaver, entered the meat unsold product and make the 65-mile trip home.” business in 1920. He and his wife Emma first went to In college Neff carefully tended the building blocks market in Lancaster and then several years later to Roseof a career that he would find personally fulfilling and mont and Lebanon, Pa. honoring of the past. In the 30s they started making boiled hams that could The Marketplace September October 2013
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ploys 60 full-time staff and 150 part-time. Neff likes to develop or tweak products that others make and supply to him. Dan Neff: The most fun is relationships, “the personal side,” but a close second is One popular item is Lebanon discovering and developing new products. Bologna, a “semi-dry fermented sausage” which has to be made within a 70-mile radius of At Penn State University College of Agriculture he Lebanon county in order to use the name. Some liken its chose a broad curriculum that would let him select what taste to summer sausage or Thuringer. he needed: agriculture, food science, accounting, busiLocal lore has it that Neff’s great-grandfather Daniel ness and refrigeration. He graduated with a bachelor of Weaver may have been the first to produce the legendary science degree in 1971. sausage back in 1893. With the military draft still in force, Neff volunteered “Great Grandpa apparently got his recipe from a for alternative service in Peru with Wycliffe Bible Translatramp on the road who had this old world recipe and oftors. His assignment was in community development but fered to swap it for a few nights’ lodging,” he says. when the commissarian suddenly left with health probEven better, to Neff’s taste, is his own Sweet Bologna. lems Neff offered to take his place. “Nobody had ever Working with a local butcher, and relying on early experivolunteered for that before,” he recalls. He spent the ments he conducted on lactic starter cultures, he tinkered next two years managing food services for 300 people at with the ingredients, sugar levels the base in Yarinacocha, which was serving the and cure times to produce a distranslators in 30 languages in the jungle and A special stash of tinctive sweet-sour flavor. mountains. After a year of service he traveled home and cheddar is getting Back in the 1990s Neff married Carol Herr from his home area. They was looking for a new source of both served in Peru for the next year and a half. older and older, but cheddars after his Vermont supWhen they returned to Pennsylvania in 1974 he plier decided to focus on its own joined the family business, looking after puryou’ll have to wait label. He came upon a leading chasing, administration, market schedules and Quebec producer and is now general management alongside his Dad, who its sole importer. Despite higher until 2020 to try it with his brother ran the operation until 1985 price and strict import laws, he when it was sold to the third generation. In likes the Canadian product because it has lower moisture 2010 Dan Neff became majority owner after he bought and more curd texture than its American counterpart. his brother’s share in the business. He ages it himself and distributes it across the country Today the company is present in eight farmers marunder the Old Quebec label. The oldest he sells regularly kets (including the historic central market in downtown is seven years, but on a tour of his refrigeration vaults Lancaster). In addition to its main store and restaurant in he points to a special stash that he has been aging since East Petersburg it operates a second shop and restaurant 1999 for the company’s centennial in 2020. in a shopping center in Lancaster. Altogether Neff em11
The Marketplace September October 2013
hard to find in supermarkets. The large eyes signal the quality of longer curing time which gives the bacteria more time to work its magic and produce a distinctive nutty, sweet flavor, but they can bung up a supermarket’s mechanical slicers and packagers. Accordingly, the industry has redefined grading specifications so that lower-quality swiss can be called Grade A even though it has fewer, smaller holes and thus less flavor. “Grading has changed to accommodate packaging, but we still sell what is considered an off-grade with more eyes,” says Neff. That said, he concedes that supermarkets are doing a better deli job than they used to, though most offer only a third as many cheeses as he does. “We are a second stop, we know that, so we have to do better.”
Neff also sells Ohio and Wisconsin cheese as well as smaller batches of local cheese made in the plant of an Amish family at the south end of the county. He’ll gladly discourse on the character of a good cheese, extolling a “high-open swiss” or an “over-set swiss with lots of eyes,” referring to the large air holes or bubbles that are
Making choices We invited Dan Neff to share a few personal words about faith and his workplace culture. We got him on a busy day.
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s a businessman I stand at the center of my community serving many interested parties. These include: family, business, church, employees, customers and civic organizations. While writing these lines about balancing priorities, choosing avenues to support, and determining the priority of today’s activities, my fire company pager sounded and notified me of a barn fire two miles north of town. The Marketplace sidebar would have to wait. I am a volunteer driver for the fire company. That was 8:52 a.m. It is now 12:30 and I am back to choosing my priorities to catch up on the things I had planned for the morning. Yes, we all choose. What does it mean to be the hands and feet of Christ in 2013? I enter each day with choices. Will I be short-sighted or long-sighted? How can I live out the directives of Christ amid today’s opportunities? For the short term I need to respond to the immediate tasks of the day, realizing that the greater calling is for the long-term good of those around me. For me that means being purposeful about understanding and improving the culture of the company. When I studied agriculture and business in college, not much was said about company culture. I continue to learn how company culture plays a part in the lives of owners, employees, customers and others, while at the same time affecting profitability and longevity for the company. With Christ as our example, we serve each other in a myriad of different relationships, with the ultimate goal of serving his kingdom. — Dan Neff
The Marketplace September October 2013
Like many small business owners, Neff chafes under the frustrations of government bureaucracy such as the logistical demands of the new health care law and an “unproductive and self-consuming” dollar-a-week municipal tax that must be tracked and filed for each employee in every jurisdiction where he operates. Still, he enjoys the life of a culinary artist and says he’s having fun preserving an almost century-long tradition as a seller of quality foods. “The most fun I have is in the relationships we have with suppliers, employees and customers, the personal side. But a close second is discovering and developing products, hearing what people would look for or want and saying ‘I’ll work on that and see what I can do’.” Upcoming new products have to do with “open-fire flavors” such as pulled pork and barbecued pork, both new to his traditional market sector. He’s also resetting the seasoning on his bratwurst and working on more soups and cheeses with a flavor bump of hot peppers. With three sons now involved, Neff’s business is entering the exclusive (and elusive) fourth generation. According to the Family Business Institute, only 12 percent of family businesses are still viable into the third generation, and only about three percent survive into the fourth. “What has allowed it to work for us is the consolidation into one family. You have to have a new entrepreneur in each generation,” says Neff. ◆
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The Old Silk Road Tagging along with Marco Polo Few MEDA staffers have logged more miles serving the poor than Henry Fast. In 23 years with MEDA (1979 to 2002) he made 66 overseas round trips and spent 1,192 days away from home (more than three years). Some of his adventures appear in his soonto-be-published memoir titled Where the Pavement Ends: (Mis)Adventures in International Rural Development. The following excerpt describes a consulting trip to China in March, 1995, one of many he made to that country on MEDA’s behalf. A full review of his book will follow in a future issue.
Organization in Rome.) Our mission is to design a poverty alleviation project for the benefit of women in rural farming areas.
On arrival in Hetian, we are given a royal welcome by a large group of top brass including the mayor, county governor and two television crews, while pretty young girls in ethnic dress give each of us a bouquet of silk flowers. We are then whisked to our hotel This is sheep where we are treated a welcoming bancountry; there are to by Henry Fast quet with more strange foods than you can oh-so-many ways he lumbering Russian‑built Tubolev Tu‑154 jetliner shake your chopsticks slowly lifts off from Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang at. A roasted lamb’s to prepare mutton head with its blank in northwestern China and points its nose in a southwesterly direction bound for Hetian (or stare sits on a platter Hotan in Uyghur). Our flight takes us across the harsh in the center of the table. During this trip we soon learn Taklimakan Desert, the world’s second largest desert with this is sheep country and that there are countless ways of preparing mutton — boiled, roasted, mutton soup, mutactive, shifting sand dunes. Extreme maximum and miniton stew, mutton‑filled buns, lamb pastries, lamb lung, mum temperatures, lack of water, no food sources, and stomach, and lamb‑liver shish kababs. Young waitresses blinding sand storms make overland travel virtually imposwith their cute, white Muslim caps just keep bringing sible. Its name, Taklimakan, has variously been translated more dishes for the tabletop lazy‑Susan until as “he who goes in they are piled on top of each other. will never come out” We spend the next three weeks traveling or “the desert of westward by road visiting oasis communities death.” No wonder along the southern edge of the Taklimakan Marco Polo skirted Desert. At each stop we are treated to a welaround its edges coming lunch or banquet and another before in his 13th century our departure. More mutton dishes, of course, travels. Unfortunately, clouds and haze prebut also plump grapes, sun‑dried raisins, vent us from catching walnuts, apples, pears, apricots, sunflower and an aerial glimpse of watermelon seeds, pomegranates, and sweet the dunes before the honey‑dew melons that have been stored unlate afternoon sun derground for six months. Delicious. sets. Remarkably, this whole region only gets 35 We are a team mm (1.3 inches) of precipitation a year while Henry Fast (left), seated with former MEDA of six rural developthe evaporation rate is at least 10 times that. colleague Calvin Miller, enjoys one of many ment specialists — These oasis communities owe their survival ceremonial meals held in their honor. three Canadians, one to the streams of glacial meltwater from the American and two nearby mighty Kunlun and Karakoram MounChinese — three men and three women. (The American tain ranges to the south extending into Tibet and India. is former MEDA colleague Calvin Miller, who spent many The paved road we are on is the southern leg of the years in microfinance and agricultural work in Bolivia and once‑famous Silk Road connecting China with Europe. now works for the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Marco Polo, the Italian merchant from Venice, passed this
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alleviation project, we want to meet with poor women in their own setting. We enter a village and walk along a dusty winding side road in search of a below‑average household, being careful not to step in deposits of animal dung. One can generally tell from the type and condition of the earthen wall and wooden gate if the family dwelling behind the structure is well‑to‑do or not. We enter a shabby‑looking courtyard and are greeted by a woman who appears much older than her fortyish years. No computer needed: Henry Fast, center, interviews a local credit officer who shows him Quickly straightening out how to make an abacus dance. her hair, white cap and navy way in about 1271. The northern leg goes around the jacket, she invites us into her one‑room, mud‑brick house. other side of the desert. In one corner, an open fireplace along with a couple of The development of the Silk Road spanned many black pots makes up the kitchen. The smoke somehow centuries dating back to the Greek and Roman empires has to find its way up through the blackened roof beams. BCE. Warriors, merchants and traders from both directions In another corner is the brick platform bed supposedly gradually pushed their way over the icy mountain passes big enough to accommodate the whole family. Through carrying with them interesting commodities and works of an opening under one side of the bed can be placed hot art. In addition to silk, caravans heading west carried jade, coals for warmth during the cold winters. There is no elecbronze, lacquer, iron and ceramics. Eastbound traffic carried gold, ivory, glassware, precious stones and metals. Few merchants traversed the full length of the road likely because of the long distance, its arduous nature and the risk of attack by bandits. Most simply covered part of the journey, exchanging or selling their wares and then returning home with the proceeds.
Our team is afforded remarkable freedom to visit wherever and whomever we like. In this kind of work, we get to go places where no tourists ever go or perhaps would not even wish to go. Since our goal is to design a rural poverty
Small-scale entrepreneurs, like this flat bread vendor, abound in China, but many have difficulty obtaining small business loans.
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tricity or running water. A chest of drawers, one wooden chair, an oil lamp, a small mirror and a calendar picture of a tropical waterfall pretty well completes the decor. We ask about her family and how she makes her living. Turns out she’s a widow with three children, a daughter aged 23 and two younger sons. We also learn she suffers from a heart condition. “It’s not quite the She cultivates four mu of land (2/3 of edge of the world an acre); three mu of wheat and one of cotbut one can almost ton. After wheat harvest, she plants 2.5 mu see it from here” of maize and half a mu of vegetables, most of which she sells in the local market. Cotton is a cash crop and is sold as well. Her wheat and maize production is for home consumption but only lasts about 10 months of the year. In the remaining two months, she has to come up with cash to purchase additional food. Does she have any livestock, we ask. Yes, a donkey, a milk cow and one chicken. With a small bank loan of 500 Yuan ($85 Cdn) she purchased two young sheep that she fattened for three months just prior to the last Muslim festival and was able to earn a small profit of about $10. To augment her meager income, she spins a bit of wool each week and does some carpet weaving. Later we estimate that this family of four earns less than a dollar per person a day, well below the United
Nations poverty benchmark of two dollars a day. What kind of program can we design that would best help this family and others like it? (See below)
One morning we climb aboard our minibus to
continue our journey westward. The wind has picked up and the sand storm is so bad that at times the driver can hardly see the road. Ribbons of loose sand form across the road. Even with the windows tightly shut, you can feel the grit between your teeth. Finally we reach Kashgar (Kashi in Chinese), an ancient city at the western tip of the Taklimakan. A short distance farther west, the Karakorum Mountains rise to over 7,000 meters bordering Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan. I think to myself, it’s not quite the edge of the world but one can almost see it from here. This is where the northern and southern branches of the Silk Road converge before continuing on up into the mountains. Kashgar’s Old City has long been at the crossroads of traders and has been called the best‑preserved example of a traditional Islamic city to be found anywhere in Central Asia. On Sunday, we visit what is said to be the largest weekly market in Central Asia — thousands of farmers, vendors, housewives and artisans congregate in this huge, mostly open‑air market selling everything from ground spices and powdered scorpions to live sheep, donkeys and camels. We see silk and wool carpets, copper teapots and wooden jewelry boxes. If you need your beard trimmed or head shaved, that’s available as well. We push our way through the chaotic crowds of people dressed in a colorful mixture of ethnic dress including tall bushy fur hats, white Muslim caps, felt skirts, colorful scarves, and thin brown hijabs. A signboard above the entrance ew of the women Fast’s team visited had ever taken out a bank loan of what looks like a government to finance business activities. Some had tried (if there was a bank building has its name in three lannearby) but were refused because they had no collateral or the loan guages: Chinese, Uyghur and Russian. requests were too small. All said they would gladly pay even 12% annual At the start of a mission, I someinterest (six times the official bank rate), as their profits would more than times tell my team members to be cover the cost. prepared to spend many long hours The team designed a program in which women could borrow $100 for together, uncomfortable travels, six months at 1% interest per month. If repaid on time, they would qualify strange foods and a different bed evfor larger loans. And they could decide themselves how to use the money, ery few nights, so that by the end of rather than being told what to do by bureaucrats. the mission we will either be the best Soon there was a waiting list. Some women wanted to raise small liveof friends or no longer be on speakstock while others wanted to open a small retail shop, grow vegetables or ing terms. Clearly, this time we have provide transportation services. developed close friendships. Back Not every business was successful but loan repayment rates exceeded in Beijing, we choose a small simple 90%. Chinese restaurant down the back Within two or three loan cycles it was clear the scheme had boosted alley from the hotel for our farewell the women’s self‑confidence. They also grew to like the requirement that dinner. 10% of each loan went into a savings account for future growth. It was Not one of us orders a mutton the first time they’d ever had a bank account of their own. ◆ dish. ◆
Let the women choose
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© Peter Menzel/menzelphoto.com
One week’s food for the Aboubaker family (Sudan), who live in a refugee camp in Chad: sorghum, cornsoy, legumes, a bit of goat meat, limes and some dried veggies. © Peter Menzel/menzelphoto.com
Diet for a hungry world
A photographer tracks a week’s worth of food
One week’s food for the Mustapha family in Dar es Salaam village, Chad: millet, sorghum, milk, chicken and goat meat, melons, dates, dried veggies, peanuts. The Marketplace September October 2013
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© Peter Menzel/menzelphoto.com
One week’s food for the Ayme family, shown at home in Tingo, Ecuador in the central Andes: potatoes, rice, corn and wheat flour, milk, plantains, bananas, citrus, veggies. © Peter Menzel/menzelphoto.com
Peter Menzel embarked on an unusual project — photograph people around the world and show what they eat in a week. He and writer Faith D’Aluisio followed 30 families in 24 countries as they farmed, shopped, cooked and ate. The resulting “culinary atlas” was published as Hungry Planet: What the World Eats. Menzel graciously gave us permission to reproduce four of the photos.
One week’s food for the Caven family, at home in American Canyon, California: bread, bagels, pasta, dairy, meat, fruit, veggies, cereal, pizza, snacks. 17
The Marketplace September October 2013
Reviews
“Lived religion” on the factory floor Manitoba companies as seen through a labour lens Manufacturing Mennonites: Work and Religion in Post‑War Manitoba. By Janis Thiessen (University of Toronto Press, 2013, 249 pp. $27.95 Cdn.)
and religious humility, made virtues in the advertising campaign, are here presented as liabilities.”
Manufacturing Mennonites begins with a
by Harold Jantz
discussion of three themes that grew out of the work of several people the author calls the “Mennonite intellechis is a curious book. On the one hand, it tackles a tual elite,” Harold S. Bender, Guy Hershberger and John subject that deserves treatment. It plunges gamely Howard Yoder, especially Bender and Yoder. The themes into the life of three of Manitoba’s premier Menare “yieldedness, non‑resistance and neighbourly love.” nonite‑run enterprises, Loewen Windows, Friesen They represented the “lived religion” that influenced Printers and Palliser Furniture, and specifically into what it Mennonite employers and workers in the workplace. They was like for workers in these industries. supported both the paternalism of employers and the defOn the other, it has chosen to embrace a template erence of the workers, though Thiessen makes a point of through which to examine these industries that becomes saying the “Mennonite employers in particular did not acquite problematic and, I would argue, seriously misleadcept this ideological construction of their identity without ing. The template is essentially a Marxist one, a lens that reservation.” But did Mennonite employees embrace it? views management and labour as belonging to two The book seems to be saying yes and no, but in the end classes, whose interests must necessarily be workarguing that it didn’t make much ing in opposition to one another. Mennonite themes of a difference except to encourage deference to the employers. In a number of ways the book is informative Early in the book, author and helpful. We learn a good deal about the hishad an influence, Thiessen refers to the two kinds tory of the three industries. Of the three, the oldest, Loewen Windows, was bought by a Danish of history, a “top down” or a supporting both holding company in 2010. All three began small, “from the ground up” history. However, for the writer to emfaced critical junctures that led to major growth the paternalism brace so closely the class‑based arcs and all have tried to reconcile the values that lens makes a “ground up” hisgrew out of their founders’ faith with the economic forces of the world around them. All clearly of employers and tory problematic. Thus at several struggled. All are willing to say so, perhaps no points she cites what employees the deference of one more than Palliser’s Art DeFehr, who is nothare saying, then imposes on their ing if not highly articulate and has spoken openly statements what she or other about his ethical dilemmas as a business owner. commentators believe they really workers Author Janis Thiessen, an assistant profesmean. sor in the department of history at the University of To illustrate: she can say, “Though workers may not Winnipeg, provides important insights into the three have expressed their views in class‑conscious language, companies. Each of the companies developed their own the content and narrative form of their remarks, particustory (“mythology”) about their origins and sought to larly with respect to the labour process and their autonoarticulate the founders’ values they wanted to pass on my, points to the existence of the class division.” to their employees. A most intriguing section describes a She draws on the late University of Manitoba econoLoewen Windows advertising campaign that employed mist Roy Vogt to suggest that white collar work has been strong Mennonite images. It doesn’t appear to have been attractive to Mennonites because it allowed them to be very successful. However it was Charles Loewen who told “commentators on, but not participants in class struggle.” the story of an American customer who told him, “You On the other hand, the Mennonite worker couldn’t people are so nice.” He took it as a compliment until the “withdraw from class struggle,” so he chose instead to customer added, “When our people tell you a hard truth, “become conservative and inner directed in his religion by the time it hits the shop floor, it’s been ‘niceified’ down and selectively used Anabaptist principles to thwart those to inaction.” Thiessen comments: “Peaceful tranquility forces in his immediate environment which most threat-
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ened him.” This surely is a curious interpretation of Mennonite worker belief and practice.
ventions of Mennonite business owners. She does not appear to credit Mennonite workers with a mind of their own and so, in the end, she concludes that “MennoA critical juncture in nite religious understandings in twentieth labour-management relations century Manitoba served to reify [make for Mennonites in Manitoba real] capitalist economic and social relaoccurred during the 1970s. It tions.” was the time of the Ed Schreyer An underlying principle of Gerald labour-oriented government and Vandezande’s CLAC was that both increasing numbers of Mennonites management and labour are accountwere dealing with union issues. able to the one God, both are servants Mennonite conferences had stated of God and must find ways of acting their openness to union memberthat out. Thiessen’s study could easily ship but were concerned about have explored whether that principle union militancy and membership rewasn’t in fact what Mennonite workquirements. MCC’s Peace and Social ers in the last third of the twentieth Concerns Committee (of which this century were trying to realize, at times writer was a part) decided to sponthrough the CLAC. The employee sor a series of meetings to address share plans begun by all three of the labour-management issues. businesses described in this study, too could Thiessen says the speakers chosen be seen as carrying some of that notion. Since the 1976 for those meetings appeared not to meet “criteria” the meetings, the CLAC has organized many thousands of committee itself had set. In my view this was not the case. Canadian workers across Canada. Back in 1976, only one Gerald Vandezande was the head of a union explicitly Manitoba company, Penner Builders of Blumenort, had rooted in a Christian worldview, the Christian Labour workers on sites in northwestern Ontario who had been Association of Canada (CLAC), and political sciorganized by the CLAC. In entist John Redekop had recently edited a book All three companies 2013, two Mennonite Brethentitled Labour Problems in Christian Perspective. ren, Geoff Dueck Thiessen and The book had several dozen essays by a number Nathan Koslowsky formed the made attempts of prominent leaders in the Canadian and U.S. CLAC’s staff in Manitoba, and labour movement, including Ben Baerg, an active most of their organizing has to reconcile their Mennonite Brethren churchman who had been happened in communities president of both the Manitoba Telephone Systems with strong Mennonite confounders’ values Employees Association as well as the Manitoba stituencies. Government Employees Association; the redoubtwith the economic More questions niggle able Tommy (T.C.) Douglas, at that time the CCF at this writer. Did the large Member of Parliament, as well as Vandezande, numbers of Mennonites who Redekop and others like Murray Cotterill and Sam forces swirling began teaching during the Jenkins, both well-known labour leaders. While 1940s to ‘60s have a role in the viewpoints were quite diverse, the book clearly around them the teachers’ society decision was not anti-union. Strangely, Thiessen makes no to give up the right to strike? What sort of relations did mention of it. exist between business owners and employees in churches After describing the presentations Redekop gave at where the two sat side by side? the MCC-sponsored meetings, Thiessen concludes, “On As John Redekop says in his on-line Mennonite Encybalance, for all his qualifications and evasions, Redekop’s clopedia article about Labor Unions, this will continue to presentation was decidedly anti-union.” This is similar be “one of the most important practical testing grounds to the conclusion that Thiessen arrives at about Menof Christians committed to the way of peace and reconcilnonite workers, namely, that “unlike 18th century British iation.” Manufacturing Mennonites demonstrates that it religious dissenters, [they] have largely chosen not to use is also likely to be a controversial setting, with Mennonites their religious tradition to either question or develop alterviewing it from quite diverse perspectives. ◆ natives to the existing economic order.” It appears that Thiessen bases her assessment of the situation largely on the strong anti-union feeling among Harold Jantz is the former editor of the Mennonite Brethren Herald and Mennonite workers which, in turn, she largely attributes founding editor of ChristianWeek, a Canadian evangelical news publication. to the influence of Mennonite theologians and the inter19
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Soundbites
Empowered and energized
Some Africa watchers and Western economists have observed that the Chinese presence in Africa — a sudden intrusion — is salutary and will result in greater development and more opportunities for Africans. Seeing Chinese digging into Africa, isolated in their enterprises, offhand with Africans to the point of rudeness, and deaf to any suggestion that they moderate their selfserving ways, I tend to regard this positive view as a crock.
invested, and for them there is no going back and no surrender. As they walked into Tibet and took over (with not a voice of protest raised by anyone in the West), they are walking into the continent and, outspending any other adventurer, subverting Africans, with a mission to plunder. — Travel writer Paul Theroux in The Last Train to Zona Verde: My Ultimate African Safari
My own feeling is that like the other adventurers in Africa, the Chinese are exploiters. They have no compact or agreement or involvement with the African people; theirs is an alliance with the dictators and bureaucrats whom they pay off and allow to govern abusively — a conspiracy. Theirs is a racket like those of all the previous colonizers, and it will end badly — maybe worse, because the Chinese are tenacious, richer, and heavily
Same old rakes Alas, the invention of the telegraph, radio, and television ... raised hopes that they would, by bridging the communications gap among peoples and among nations, usher in the New Jerusalem. But, as John Adams famously pointed out, political wisdom has not improved over the ages; even as technology has advanced,
mankind steps on the same rakes, and the new inventions often magnify the damage. — William J. Bernstein in Masters of the Word: How Media Shaped History from the Alphabet to the Internet
Out of whack A world where more than one billion people suffer from hunger is not a strong or stable world. A world where more than two billion people in rural areas struggle to secure a livelihood is not a balanced one. — Former U.S. treasury secretary Timothy Geithner
Handouts are forever The minute you feed one person, another one hundred are lined up with their hands outstretched. You realize that handouts won’t solve a thing, unless you’re ready to feed millions of people every year, forever. The only way to make a real difference is to somehow empower the poor to solve their own problems. — One Acre Fund founder Andrew Youn
What’s “success”? Across the board there is this enormous positive feeling that there is a need for a “new” definition of success. People are fed up with the greed and workaholic lifestyles that support today’s success models. They see the personal stress and organizational dysfunction that has come with the celebrity culture. They’re looking for something more lasting that will help them sustain multiple goals in their lives and their work. — Corporate ethics specialist Laura Nash, quoted by Richard J. Goossen and R. Paul Stevens in Entrepreneurial The Marketplace September October 2013
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Leadership: Finding Your Calling, Making a Difference
Wasteful appraisal A particularly vexing and unproductive bureaucratic practice is the writing of performance appraisals and reviews. It’s important to give feedback to employees about their work: what’s working, what needs to be improved, and so on. However, the yearly or semi-annual exercise of writing these reports has been shown, in some research, as not only wasteful of time but actually counterproductive in terms of the dialogue between employees and their bosses. Feedback should be timely and continuous, not infrequent, judgmental, and tied to compensa-
tion, which makes it stressful instead of instructive. — David Posen in Is Work Killing You? A Doctor’s Prescription for Treating Workplace Stress
by applying technologies and infrastructure and financial incentives that are common most everywhere else. Africa, where the hybrid seeds that revolutionized American agriculture in the 1930s are only now beginning to spread, is the one continent where yields of maize, wheat, rice, beans, and an array of local crops, have yet to have their growth spurts, and lag as much as
Africa’s promise Because it is so far behind the rest of the world agriculturally, Africa now has the potential to record the biggest jump in food production of any region
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90 percent behind the yields of farmers elsewhere. With only 4 percent of its farmland irrigated, Africa has water resources that are underutilized. With one-third to one-half of its harvests routinely going to waste, Africa could give an immediate boost to the world’s food supplies with improved storage facilities and more efficient markets. — Roger Thurow in The Last Hunger Season: A Year in an African Farm Community on the Brink of Change
Why work? Working is so satisfying that if we didn’t have to work to eat, we’d have to invent some other reason for doing it. — Andy Rooney
The Marketplace September October 2013
News
MEDA to mark 60 years at Wichita convention MEDA’s 60-year history of tackling poverty through business will be celebrated at the organization’s annual convention, Nov. 7-10 in Wichita, Kansas. The agency was established in 1953 to provide assistance and investment capital so Mennonite refugees in Paraguay could start businesses. The idea caught on and soon MEDA was assisting the poor around the world. Today it works with 227 partners in 56 countries to improve the lives of 18 million families. Some of that history will be reviewed during an evening of storytelling led by Tim Penner, a MEDA board member from Kansas, Kim Pityn, MEDA’s chief operations officer, and Wally Kroeker, director of publications. A live auction of unique items will cap the evening, with proceeds going to MEDA’s GROW project (Greater Rural Opportunities for Women) in Ghana. The convention’s plenary topics include: • “Global Food Production and Security: Solutions Creating Hope for the Planet” with Robert Thompson, visiting global food scholar at Johns Hopkins University and former World Bank director of agriculture and rural development. He will address challenges facing smallholder producers in the developing world and farmers in North America. • “Dreaming of Synergy: Leverage for Impact Beyond Our Success” with David Haskell, co-founder of Dreams InDeed, which seeks
Timothy Moll will address succession, balance, legacies and working through conflict to bring about healthy change. More than 30 seminars will explore professional development, business and MEDArelated topics. Such as: • What Matters to Your Employees • Building Leadership Opportunities for Women • The Keys to Sales Success • What Boards and Board Members Need to Know • Whole-Hearted Leadership in a Noisy World • The Entrepreneurial Spirit
of Orie O. Miller • Making the Internet Work for You Local tours will visit businesses like Excel Industries, Learjet, Harper Industries, Belite Aircraft, Jako Farm, Mennonite Press and Flint Hills Design, and attractions such as an underground salt museum, historic Wichita, Cosmosphere and Space Center and Kauffman Museum. Sessions will be held at the Hyatt Regency Wichita. For more information go to www. medaconvention.org or call (800) 665-7026. ◆
Merle Good drama set for Off-Broadway Merle Good is a rarity among Mennonite entrepreneurs — a businessperson who is also a playwright. His long record as an artistic entrepreneur includes summer theatre, a movie (Hazel’s People) based on one of his books, magazine publishing and the founding of Good Books and Good Enterprises Inc. Now his newest play is opening Off-Broadway. The Preacher and the Shrink runs Nov. 2 to Jan. 5 at the Beckett Theatre, two blocks west of New York City’s Times Square. Good has described the play as a story of alienation between a father and a daughter and the people who try to help. It includes pastors, mental health professionals and sexual harassment in the church. He told the Mennonite World Review that the story idea grew out of his observation that mental health professionals were taking “listening
to strengthen social entrepreneurs in difficult regions. He will illustrate principles that unlock the power of networks to dramatically improve transformational outcomes. • “Overcoming Obstacles on the Path of Hope” with Marion Good, entrepreneur, former credit union executive and now development officer with MEDA. She will share stories from around the globe of overcoming barriers to achieve success. A pre-convention seminar on “Sustaining Your Family Business” will be held the afternoon of Thursday, Nov. 7. Family business specialist Lance Woodbury and attorney
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 wkroeker@meda.org
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Merle Good roles” previously filled by ministers. His play explores the impact of that shift on human communication, asking “Are the listening professions doing it better or differently?” The seven weekly performances will be at 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays, with afternoon matinees on Saturdays and Sundays. Tickets are available online at www. Telecharge.com or by calling 1-800-432-7250. ◆
Cooking entrepreneur launches weekly show Her cookbooks have sold more than 11 million copies. She has more than 600,000 Facebook fans. And now, Phyllis Good has launched a weekly cooking show, “Cooking with Phyllis.” “My goal has always been to enable persons who may lack the experience and confidence to cook for their families and friends,” says Good, a cooking entrepreneur who with her husband Merle owns stores and a publishing enterprise. “My other goal is to encourage families to sit down and eat together as often as possible.” “Cooking with Phyllis,” a weekly 2‑5 minute web show featuring Good, debuted on July 17 on www.fix‑itandforget‑it.com. It also debuted on YouTube that same day. In each weekly show, Good, from Lancaster, Pa., will make one recipe from start to finish. Many of these recipes originate in one of the books in her bestselling Fix‑It and Forget‑It Cookbook series. She will also demonstrate stove‑top and oven recipes on the show from
some of her other cookbooks. Good will provide not only instruction, but also hints about the food, equipment and preparation so viewers can prepare each dish on their own. The show’s companion website, www.fix‑itandforget‑it.com, will include the full recipe and grocery list, as well as cooking tips. Good hopes also to host other cookbook authors, chefs and bloggers, from time to time. Good is a home cook, former teacher and author of the entire Fix‑It‑ and Forget‑It Cookbook series (and member of the MEDA board of directors). In every episode, she aims to make sure viewers get the information they need in a concise, straightforward and inviting way. “Various bloggers and e‑tailers are interested in featuring ‘Cooking with Phyllis’ each week,” says Kate Good, assistant publisher at Good Books. “Our hope is to attract as many as a million viewers weekly.” ◆
Phyllis Good demonstrates a dish during her new weekly cooking show, “Cooking with Phyllis.” The five‑crew, three‑camera team from New York also does the cooking segments for the Bon Appetit site.
Letters
Business with an energizing pulse For some time now I’ve meant to write you about the pleasure Marketplace gives me. The upgrade in paper and layout has added to its quality, sense and feel. The issues are a veritable story telling, a focus of what it means — the very spiritual feel of it — to be in business with a central, energizing pulse. Thanks for compiling and editing each issue. I’ve had the pleasure of sharing my copies with others not acquainted with our background and orientation; said one “what a delight it must be, and is, to do business in and with a purpose.” Don’t become weary in doing this good! — Jack Dueck, Waterloo, Ontario 23
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