CRS Vision
Founded in 2016, within ten years Coast Range Seed will have have seeded sister initiatives in two other regions of the globe. Both the flow of germplasm and the rate of decentralized breeding progress will be seen as the embodiment of professional agroecological breeding work. The quality of the varieties, the rates of gain, and their adaptations to 21st century stress will each rival the best of the centrally-owned international breeders, and our varieties will by far excel in the styles of production agriculture we've helped co-develop.
Young plant breeders will be paired with veteran plant breeders at a ratio of 3:1, including remote relationships, and both parties are un-stressed about their year-to-year finances. The young cohort are
empowered and motivated to become the next Carol Deppe or Michael Mazourek, and their vision includes building long-term equity in their varieties to give them positive cash flow for having a family and for keeping their operation running. CRS's financial assistance helps ease their debt load and increases their efficiency and access to resources and markets.
The veterans have -- like it or not -- become as famous in the West Coast region as successful local authors are. The products they were responsible for breeding are used "shorthand," without explanation, throughout the produce industry and among farmers. At conferences other seed company breeders admire that they distilled so much of their passion into their varieties, and that they had had the freedom and the long-term resources to do so. Our breeders each have dynamics personal brands that are no longer hidden, but rather give them credit (and large rewards) for the sweat and courage invested over their careers. They now attract long lines of well-qualified students from whom they may choose their proteges and successors. They get to continue the hands-on work that they enjoy, but meanwhile count on sizeable physical resources now available to them. Some of our breeders use their money to travel substantially more in their older age. Others are notable donors to West Coast non-profits and political campaigns. Another two breeders paid their own PhD program costs, out of interest and for fun, eventually gaining their doctorates at age 48 and 64.
By 2030, CRS and its parent company will be providing respected leadership in directing the national research agenda for functional foods breeding, for and soils plant physiology research. Our platform for crop launch and branding will be well known to every aspiring breeder working in our crops set, and there will be other great upstart options for them too, patterned off of our model yet innovating and incorporating their own gifts and new dimensions of work.
The CRS and parent company's marketing umbrella will be a useful "mothership" and incubator do dozens of small-farms with close personal relationship. The farms will enjoy sheltered, profitable production through CRS, and CRS will take joy and pride in those farms developing their own autonomy and relationships of ownership. Half of the farms may be from former in-house CRS teammates, and the other half will be new growers entering directly, often from farmer training programs or after working on other farms first. These growers are using the CRS platform as a way to get started, retain profits in the wild markets and weather of the future, and to stay on the cutting edge of nutritional and agroecological progress. Because we build pathways for employees' to create their own autonomy, every team members who stays enjoys a company culture of collectively very high buy-in for being there and giving their best.
We offer our in-house employees public speaking classes and regular opportunities to present to each other; mentor pairing and leadership development frameworks; soil fertility, nutrition, and human health training; and meditation breaks during work time.
Our peer relationships with our international sister region companies create exciting opportunities for young people to live abroad, fostering cross-cultural exchange and cross-pollination of new ideas and innovation axes. By 2030, we will have had our first 10 people from abroad come train with us, and we will facilitated foreign work and company building experiences for 5 young people from here.
By 2050, the style of agriculture we most support and invest in will have helped our society to finally lower the worsening trend of public health, chronic disease, and inflammation in the US (the goal, effectively, of Aliment Ag). Alzheimer's, digestive diseases, and infertility are all down to pre-1920's levels. Thanks to very high sugar and processed food taxes, consumption of inflammatory foods is down across the world, and vegetables consumption is up 400% from 2016 levels. Most consumers look at their health budgets and their food budgets as a holistic unit, and household spending on foods and herbs has increased to 20% of family income, even while household median income has risen to $80,000, inflation adjusted for 2020 dollars.
Climate change's rate of change has leveled off to zero (by 2050), and the new agriculture has played a clear and defining role. Disruption to weather and earth's life systems still continues, but it has stopped getting worse. The underlying condition -- unsustainable growth and human metabolism of the Earth -- hasn't been solved, but there are now many, many companies like CRS and its parent company that model sustainable growth patterns. Debates of which sectors to "rein in" and reduce growth are one part of some scary and chaotic times across the societies of the world living beyond their footprint. However, agriculture and health are not on the table for downsizing. Instead, our sustenance and health industries are a beacon of "good jobs" that solve simultaneously for a number of societal issues and are rewarded for it.