Mark Ritchie, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy

Mark Ritchie is president of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, based in Minneapolis, Minn., which works to keep family farmers on the land. He also serves as national co-chair of Sustainable America and director of the International Forum on Food and Agriculture, and is on the boards of Mothers and Others, Libraries for the Future, Organic Growers and Buyers Association, and the Minnesota Institute for Sustainable Agriculture.

Yesterday turned out quite differently than I was expecting. I was scheduled to have an all-day meeting with a colleague working on factory farm livestock issues at the Center for Livable Futures at Johns Hopkins University. His flight got cancelled the night before, so he wasn't able to get out to Minnesota. It was a disappointment for sure, but what a gift -- a whole day suddenly opened up that I had not been planning for.

First, I had to tackle the piles of paper and mail that had backed up while I was gone. Luckily it was Columbus Day, so there was no delivery of new mail. Then there were the couple hundred emails that had drifted in over the course of the weekend that needed to be put somewhere. Once I got these daily chores out of the way, I was able to feel the luxury of having time to do what I wanted. What I wanted was to reconnect with some of my colleagues here at the Institute.

One of the disadvantages of being centered in Minnesota is that I have to travel more than I would like. Being gone from both my family and my friends at work is a drag, but it seems like a necessary evil. With a staff of more than 30 here at IATP, it is hard enough to keep up with what is going on when I am here most of the time. When I am traveling, it feels impossible.

I took the time on Monday to talk to a number of folks that I had not seen in a while and to meet with a couple of new staff members and interns. One aspect of my job that I do not like is the schizophrenia of the different hats that I have to wear -- fundraiser, program director, staff leader, strategic planner, financial manager, and mentor. Some days I just want to bite into program work and not have to worry about everything else, but that is not possible during this period of time.

What comforts me somewhat in this dilemma is that we are three years into a 10-year plan to replace the first generation of leadership at IATP, starting with me, with the next generation. During this next seven years, we will continue to hire younger people into key leadership positions and prepare for the transition. In this time we will also be conducting a capital campaign to buy a second building and creating an endowment fund for program innovation.

Toward the end of the day, I had the delight of meeting someone that a mutual friend, Carolyn Raffensperger from the Science and Environmental Health Network, had connected me to, David Wallinga of the Natural Resources Defense Council's Public Health Program. David is a doctor working on key pesticide issues for NRDC, and is a Minnesota native now living in Washington. It was a wonderful meeting, and opened up a lot of new directions for work, potential collaboration, and some new ways of thinking about the world for me. These gifts of connection are perhaps life's most precious.

Today I fly down to St. Louis for two days of meeting with grassroots groups working to protect the Mississippi while boosting hard-hit rural economies. I have been part of a small group that has put together a project call Headwaters to Backwaters designed to both highlight the spectacular biological diversity and beauty of the entire Mississippi River corridor and promote the incredible work of all the groups up and down the river working to protect this natural heritage. One of the target audiences of this project is opinion-leaders on both coast, like members of Congress and foundation staff, who tend to think of the Midwest region as a corn and soybean desert. I will be visiting some of the key groups working to protect the confluence region where the Missouri River flows into the mighty Mississippi.