Newsletter #2: The System Works

-Just not the way we intended.

“The system is broken,” is a misunderstanding. It may not be creating the outcomes we intended but if it’s creating outcomes, then the system is functioning. Forget the intentions for the moment. Getting hung up in “should” blinds us to what is.

Rule number one of systems thinking: The results tell you what the system actually does.

Take a snapshot of the current results of Wisconsin’s food and agricultural system for a moment:

-Wisconsin exported $406 million worth of dairy products in 2024.

-It exported even more ($484 million) “Sauces and Yeasts” that year.

-In 2022, Wisconsin had almost 8% of its cropland in cover crops -the highest percentage in the nation. The national percentage was 4.7%.

-Wisconsin has reduced phosphorus contamination but nitrate contamination in surface and ground water has increased.

-Wisconsin Farm bankruptcy rose 46% in 2025

-Wisconsin Lost 10% of its farms and 30% of its dairies from 2017 to 2022.

Those stats reflect a tiny sample of results of our food and agricultural system.

(If you know where to find more updated statistics, let me know)

Seeing systems also works at much smaller scales. My farm is organic in practices, though not certified. In some fields, in some years, Canada Thistle shows up. I used to fight the thistle –weed-hooking individual plants out of fields, timed mowing, and even disking under field peas infested with thistle and drilling sorghum-sudangrass instead. But the thistle wasn’t the problem. Thistle was a result of my system. The real problem was that I inadvertently created the conditions for thistle to thrive in the first place. Understanding that helped me decouple from fighting thistle -a symptom- to examining the conditions my management created for it to thrive in the first place.

Why is seeing the system through its results so critical?

It shifts us from trying to solve problems we thought were side effects to seeing -and admitting that we may be causing- the conditions that fostered the problems we see. None of us is outside of systems. We are all active participants, whether we intend to be or not.

Take a moment to note the results of the larger system you work in as well as the results in a much smaller system in your life.

What are all the results you see? What does the system do?

Let me know what you find.

Find a Way,

Ryan