Charlotte Pollard, New Mexico First deputy director, served as moderator for the Resiliency in Agriculture input gathering session.

By Mary Alice Murphy

At the Silver City meeting of the New Mexico State University County Cooperative Extension Service Agriculture Resiliency, New Mexico First joined with the extension service to seek input on a robust food and agriculture system.

Charlotte Pollard, New Mexico First deputy director, explained the catalyst for the meeting. "Thornburg Investment Management relocated to New Mexico. The company's foundation is most interested in a robust food and agricultural system, because it is important to the health and well being of residents of the state."

She said other partners working in the effort include the Cooperative Extension Service and New Mexico First, which convened the session, and the funders are the Thornburg Foundation, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, McCune Charitable Foundation, New Mexico Department of Agriculture, New Mexico Community Foundation and Presbyterian Healthcare.

"We, at New Mexico First, hold forums," Pollard said. "We write research reports and convene town halls. We work to advocate the recommendations and ideas we hear."

The common goals for a statewide agricultural resiliency plan include creating common ground regarding food and agriculture policies; generating ideas for more economic valuation for producers and economic vitality for communities; developing strategies to support young people to stay with or get back into agriculture; address water, land-use, climate and economic challenges facing the industry; support agriculture's contributions to health-related solutions for consumers and communities; and contribute to work, consumer and community welfare.

She said other states have developed similar programs. "In Vermont, the schools buy local foods. In Michigan, the goal is for 20 percent of all state agencies to be local buyers. In Illinois, a business climate task force has the goal to make the regulatory process a more favorable business climate. In Iowa, they are concerned about producers. They have put together a program making agricultural careers attractive to young people. Texas has a rigorous water planning process, in which agriculture is supported."

"We need a big tent of stakeholders for this process, including industry sectors, farmers, ranchers, commercial producers, farmers' markets, education, research, government employees, financial lenders and grant makers, industry associations, advocates, policymakers and consumers," Pollard said.

The Silver City meeting is the fifth of 11 meetings throughout the state. "We want stakeholder input and we want to get people engaged."

"All the information we get from the surveys will be fed into a background report," Pollard said. "We will write it up, showing the state of the agricultural industry in New Mexico. Then we will form a task force. We will learn what it should be through these meetings. Over a year, we will work on a plan, and will shop it around and get feedback. Then we will refine the plan, publicize it, get funding to implement it, establish working groups, measure the progress and adopt the plan strategies.

"We want the four H's of 4-H, head, heart, hands and health," she said.

The first exercise was to determine from those at each table the trends in the industryG