BRINGING FISH TO MARKET: A CASE

STUDY OF SWEET WATER ORGANICS

INTRODUCTION

Background and History of Sweet Water Organics

Position of the Observer: Insider Status

Data Collection and Interviews

Filtering Community Interaction through Procedures and Barriers

The Creation of Sweet Water Foundation

Role of Executive Director: Howard Hintertheur

Patterns, Codes, and Themes: Task-Oriented Decision Making, Technological Communication Improvements, and Interconnected Community Relationships.

Base camping in Sweet Waters

STRUCTURE AND LOCATION

Located at 2151 Robinson Avenue, the rusted and corrugated roof espouses a visual of the industrial boon so familiar with the history of Milwaukee from the 1960’s and 1970’s.

Formally Harnischfeger Industries, one of the foremost leaders in the Midwest for building mining cranes, then bulb storage site for Tulip, Inc.

6.5 acres, containing three industrial warehouses, two storage facilities, a 3 story office unit and loading dock.

HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT

Extension of three tier aqua-ponics set-up designed by Will Allen, CEO of Growing Power.

Owner of propriety, Steve Lindher collaborated with James Godsil and Josh Fraundorf to raise start-up capital

Godsil served on the board of Growing Power, and Lindher co-owns Community Roofing with Fraundorf and Godsil

Groundbreaking took place 2009, with over a million dollars in funding for construction and production

PHASES OF CONSTRUCTION

SOURCES OF REVENUE

Sweet Water Organics is a non-certified organic urban farm.

Current vegetation includes various lettuce and basil, watercress, tomatoes, peppers, chard, and spinach. Fish production of tilapia and yellow perch.

Local businesses, such as Beans and Barley, La Merenda and Outpost Natural foods have already started purchasing these products, selling them as “local” foodstuffs

THE POSITION OF THE

OBSERVER

Data Collection and Interviews

•January 28th, 2010 – Tour and Field Notes

•February 25th, 2010- Last Fish Auction

•March 10, 2010- Field Notes, Interview with James Godsil

March 19th, 2010- Interview with Howard Hintertheur

March 23rd, 2010- Email Correspondence with Howard

April 23rd, 2010- Informal Interview with Howard

Filtering Community Interaction through Procedures and Barriers

Feb. 25th-Establishment of procedures for community involvement include:1.Do not touch any of the plants or fish2.Do not touch equipment, valves, or any mechanized tools3.Do not put anything, including hands and feet, into waterways4.Do not take pictures or record information once you enter the facility5.All persons must be escorted by a staff member

March 10th- Federal Regulations mandated for food production:1.All doors must be locked; personnel access only2.No guided tours3.No pictures or recorded documents of any kind4.All personnel must meet sanitary and health code guidelines before entering the production site. 5.All food must be grown and processed according to USDA guidelines, either on-site or at a processing facility6. Distribution must be conducted using FDA procedures for marketing

SWEET WATER FOUNDATION:

TURNING WASTE INTO A

COMMUNITY RESOURCE

The Sweet Water Foundation, a 501(c)(3) corporation, trains children, adults, families and organizations to:

•Grow nutritious food utilizing waste food and other repurposed materials•Develop and service sources of waste food and other compost components•Generate compost and build soil quality•Activate the general community to support the above listed activities

Incorporated March, 2010, Sweet Water Foundation strives to engage people in growing their own food and supplying healthy food to their neighborhoods in urban “food deserts” and in nutritionally challenged areas across the globe.

Works closely with Sweet Water Organics, our “for profit”, partner to develop aquaponic systems plus the related science and technology necessary to create profitable and sustainable systems in any environment.

ROLE OF EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR:

HOWARD HINTERTHEUR

But honestly I spend most of everyday, sending email back and forth to people; reading materials that Godsil has collected from the Internet about people who are doing aquaponics all over the world. Um, talking with people who are involved with these projects that were working on, coaching them sometimes, and setting meetings, and when I start to worry about that there things that I don't have any knowledge or control over, I think well you know, it's gonna happen. And if I fail to do it, and it should have been done, well they will find someone else to do it you know.

I'm kind of the old guy who's been through this before, because I've been on quite a good number of boards, in fact I was on the Cedarburg School Board for nine years, and I was the president for the past five. So we had annual school budget of 28 million dollars. So I know the drill, you know.

TASK-ORIENTED DECISION

MAKING

Godsil uses a term chaordic, meaning chaos and order, and it was more chaos in the beginning and now order is being established. In terms of decision making, it seems as if everybody that understands the concept of leadership should be task oriented, so people who are expertise in there particular area, and not ruling but doing; and everybody acquiesces to that. Like, the attorney says we have to do something, there's not much we can do. Even though it may seem really anal. And some people would want to run away from this kicking and screaming, but they know that this kind of thing has to happen.

But they have a surprisingly diverse set in terms of skill. There are a lot of skills on the board that are useful for the board. There also seems to be a preponderance of people who are, umm, sort of gifted at that kind of leadership, they tolerate meetings, they show up.

BOARD MEMBERS OF SWEET

WATER FOUNDATION

Josh Fraundorf- Community Roofing

Theresa Kopac- Operations Manager 88NINE

Emmanuel Pratt- Photojournalist/ Social Activist

James Godsil- Growing Power/ Community Roofing/ Milwaukee Renaissance

Art Educator

Communication Director for FoxNews

IT Director for ManPower International

Two attorneys

Certified Public Accountant

TECHNOLOGICAL

COMMUNICATION IMPROVEMENT

Umm, were using a piece of software, a website called Facebook. Are you familiar with it?

So we create these whiteboards, or write boards, and projects; and anybody on the board on there on a daily basis, and they should actually to keep track of what's going on. Daily reminders about tasks that need to be done. Things just keep moving along. There's not a lot of detailed minutes or board minutes, but there's things that need to be on there are on there. There sort of defined in our by-laws. So we have that kind of structure.

We have some innovative tools, like we have an online communication tool called Base Camp, where everyone can get in there can communicate with each other, from home or wherever, it's like a virtual office.

The person from Manpower, Andy, he just did some work on a spreadsheet for me in excel for the project tracking, but I need to tweak it some, do some testing, and make sure it answers all the questions that we need.

INTERCONNECTED COMMUNITY

RELATIONSHIPS: HOWARD

Actually I was at Riveredge, I was asked to start the um, the Great Lakes Earth Institute. There is an organization in Portland, Oregon called the Northwest Earth Institute, and they do courses in voluntary simplicity, sustainable living. They have a course called "Globalization and it's critics," and basically there group study, self directed courses. And I pulled together a consortium of Riveredge, Schlitz Autobahn Nature Center, Urban Ecology Center, Ozaukee Washington Land Trust and um, the University of Wisconsin Field Station.

I had an opportunity to do a fundraiser concert at the Coffee House, 19th and Wisconsin, and I asked Holly Hayzig (spelling) who is should benefit from this concert, and she said why don't you look at Milwaukee Renaissance.

MC: Did you already know Godsil? HLH: No that’s how I meet him, my first contact was Bill Sell and Bill Sell said you need to talk to Godsil, so that’s how I meet him, and then we started coming down here for Blueberry Pancakes. MC: And that is where you meet me.

Yeah, around there. And then uh, they needed development person at Growing Power, and Godsil was on the board at Growing Power, so I uh, was hired as the development person at Growing Power.

I worked for Kubala Washatko, and they were the leaders in this area for green design. They designed the uh, the Urban Ecology Center, and they designed Schlitz Autobahn center.

INTERCONNECTED COMMUNITY

RELATIONSHIPS

MC: And then how did the Board become formed? HLH: Um, I think Godsil and uh, Fraundorf, basically put there heads together, and most of the people on the board, are connected in some way to either one of or both of them.

[Godsil] has been getting waste, fruits and vegetables from a Pick n' Save store in Bay View. 800 pounds a day. Roundy's is so excited about it that they ask if they could help underwrite the cost of expanding and operation to do four more stores, which means that we had to be a, we had to set up a non-profit, in order to accept the largesse. He convinced, Asplundh, the tree service to provide carbon by the ton, which was wood chips.

I just gave a tour to two people who are leaders of Indian Summer, and will probably do something with them. And right now we have our booth out at the Home and Garden show, that’s a ten day thing.

I can't emphasize this enough, the Great Lakes Water Institute. I mean basically having them close by, and having them keep an eye on things, at least in a technical sense has made all this possible.

[Scooter Garden of Hope] there very aggressive, they have a budget, they have an application in with Milwaukee Urban Gardens, there leased on the property, and that would award them insurance for a three year lease. I'm working with them, Gretchen Meade from Milwaukee Urban Gardens, or I mean Victory Gardens Initiative. And uh Todd from Bean's and Barley, he's on our board.

Well were working with the Inland School of Expeditionary Learning in Bayview

BASECAMPING IN SWEET WATERS

POTENTIAL AREAS OF INVESTIGATION

Advocate Position- Volunteer Coordinator for Community Outreach

Qualitative Research- Track network of decision-making through BaseCamp, focusing on informal rules and task-delegation

GIS Research Position- Generate interactive maps which show community sites. Create Excel spreadsheet for data collection and analysis

http://maps.google.com/maps/mm?ie=UTF8&hl=en&ll=37.0625,-95.677068&spn=48.77566,78.837891&z=4