Cleveland takes a closer look at its food industry cluster

Food Cluster Cover - 2014-09-25What can we do to help regional food businesses become more competitive? In Cleveland, we start by engaging in collaborative applied research.

There has been tremendous growth and interest in local foods in communities across Ohio, and Cleveland has become an epicenter of innovation. Cleveland is now known for its local policies in support of urban agriculture and local purchasing, the high percentage of farmers’ markets in the city that accept SNAP benefits, its dynamic restaurant and culinary scene, and a growing network of hundreds of community gardens and urban farms. With all of this interest and support of local food in Cleveland, community leaders and stakeholders wanted to have a better understanding of the food industry in Cuyahoga County and Northeast Ohio and identify specific ways public and private partners could support new and existing food businesses and job growth.

The City of Cleveland and the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Food Policy Coalition (FPC), a collaborative initiative coordinated by Extension professionals in Cuyahoga County, decided to look at its food businesses as an industry cluster. According to the Brookings Institution, an industry cluster is ‘a geographic concentration of interconnected businesses, suppliers, service providers and associated institutions.’ Local economic development organizations in Northeast Ohio, including The Fund for Our Economic Future and NorTech, have been focusing their work on industry clusters in AgBio, Advanced Energy, Flexible Electronics and Water Technology.

FPC and the City of Cleveland partnered with a local consulting firm and used a combination of financial analysis and guidance from regional experts and industry leaders to identify what the region’s food businesses need to be more competitive. A broad group of stakeholders from the economic development community participated in the process including financial institutions, food service companies, grocery stores, farmers, food entrepreneurs, regulatory agencies, local foundations and food manufacturers. These working groups identified the regional food assets and developed a series of interventions to support the growth of food and beverage companies by replacing imported products with local food and beverage sources, expanding markets for exported products outside the region and improving operational costs and the region’s attractiveness to new businesses through sustainability initiatives.

More details are available in a new report, A Recipe for Success: Developing a Sustainable Foods Business Roadmap for Cuyahoga County which outlines the process, findings, and strategic interventions. This report is now available on the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Food Policy Coalition website both as an executive summary and a full report.

(Submitted by Morgan Taggart, County Extension Educator, Cuyahoga County & Western Reserve EERA.)

Demonstrate solar energy technology at your next event!

Who doesn’t enjoy the warmth of the sun on a brisk fall day? That warming energy is free, so how do we put it to work for us? To demonstrate solar energy technology, a team of OSU Extension professionals has recently designed and built a Mobile Solar Unit. The unit consists of a 140 watt Photovoltaic (PV) solar panel, charge controller, battery back-up system, 2000 watt inverter and safety disconnects. All of the components are built into a four-wheeled cart (about the size of a grocery cart) that can be transported to events throughout Ohio in the back of a pickup truck.

Mobile Solar UnitAt most any Extension event throughout Ohio, the unit can serve as a teaching tool to demonstrate how PV solar technology works, assist in disseminating renewable energy materials and videos, as well as communicate Extension impacts via short videos. Think about how you might use this demonstration unit at your remote outdoor events, field days, county fairs and 4-H camps where it can power a projector, TV, computer or microphone. As a ready-made charging station for visitors’ cell phones and laptops, the Mobile Solar Unit serves as a great teaching tool at indoor events too.

Although the primary goal was to design a teaching tool that could help demonstrate solar technology, this unit also doubles as a promotional resource that will attract an audience to stop and watch short videos of Extension programs taking place throughout the state. In the absence of sunlight, the unit has a battery backup system designed to run a 32” TV (provided with Mobile Solar Unit) for a minimum of 8 hours.

To reserve the Mobile Solar Unit for one of your events, please fill out the application form on page 2 of this document and email a copy to romich.2@osu.edu.

(Submitted by Eric Romich, Assistant Professor and Extension Field Specialist for Energy Development.)

Teamwork, it’s not rocket science…or is it?

Have you ever noticed that when we want to illustrate how easy something is, we compare it to rocket science or brain surgery? Ok, it requires years of advanced educational study and hundreds of hours of technical experience to master aerospace engineering or neurological surgery. But, truthfully, the average person will never need to become adept at either of these disciplines. Effectively working on a team and getting along with others – those are skills that are necessary for everyone.  Unfortunately, embracing the abilities needed to be a good team member and build relationships with others is not always easy. In fact, it can be downright difficult – kind of like rocket science…or brain surgery.

Emotional 3In a 2004 article in the journal Psychological Science, J. Richard Hackman contends that effective team members are people who possess the emotional maturity needed for their roles with their teammates. His research shows that fostering emotional maturity is essential; however, it is a trait that tends to be developmental in nature and cannot be readily taught. Well, you’ll get no argument here. In fact, while many institutions of higher learning offer degrees in neurology or engineering, we’ve yet to see a university that offers a degree in emotional maturity.

So what are those elusive (for some folks, anyway) skills that demonstrate emotional maturity, thus enabling a person to be a good team member? Here’s a list of our top three essential teammate traits:

  • Trust – Let’s face it, trust is the foundation of all relationships.  Whether it’s with your spouse, your friends, your coworkers or your hair stylist, if you don’t trust the person, you’re not going to be willing to take the risk of being open, honest, and well, trusting.  For a good team to work, we need to be able to count on each other.  Building trust takes time – and dare we say, it also helps to have face-to-face interactions now and then.  Social media and Skype are wonderful tools to keep in touch, but there’s just something about breathing the same air as someone else, and actually spending time interacting together at the very same GPS coordinate that helps to build a strong, reality-based relationship that goes beyond cute photos and 140 characters of type.
  • Open Communication – Ok, this seems like a no-brainer.  But trying to build a team with a poor communicator can seem like working with a person with no brain.  Good communication skills include the ability to effectively and diplomatically express yourself, while quieting your inner voice (and the one resonating from your face) long enough to listen to and understand another person.  Honesty, tempered with genuine and sincere kindness, help grease the communication gears, preventing resentment and allowing a shared sense of responsibility to grow.
  • Flexibility – Guess what…things don’t always go your way.  Good team members know that compromise and a willingness to adapt to change are essential when working with others.  And honestly, it’s that combination of ideas – that diversity of thought and experience – that really contributes to building a strong product – and a strong team.

So, creating a good, effective and enjoyable team really isn’t rocket science. It’s actually a lot more complicated than that.

If you want to learn more about how we’ve worked to make our team more successful, check out our June 2014 article in the Journal of Extension, joe.org/joe/2014june/iw4.php.

Becky Nesbitt and Rose Fisher Merkowitz, OSU Extension Educators for Community Development, have worked together for many years, building a strong and effective team focused on providing educational materials related to leadership and organizational development. Take a look at the educational programs that Becky and Rose offer at go.osu.edu/seekexcellence.

(Submitted by Becky Nesbitt, Assistant Professor and Extension Educator, Ohio Valley EERA, and Rose Fisher Merkowitz, Associate Professor and Extension Educator, Miami Valley EERA.)

Environmental economics? What is that?

I am an environmental economist – but what does that mean? When people ask me what I do for a living I tell them I am an environmental economist with Ohio State University Extension. In response, I get a lot of intense reactions generally involving a combination of: (a) that sounds impressive! and (b) what does an environmental economist do? Whether it is impressive is a matter of one’s perspective and is subject to debate at another time and place, so let’s instead go over what environmental economics is all about.

Lake Erie Shoreline AnglersName any environmental topic you have ever thought of or read about. There’s recycling, global climate change, pollution, preservation of sensitive lands, fracking, water quality, endangered species; the list goes on and on. Now consider that any time you discuss one of these topics or read about any of them, you might initially focus on some of the technical, physical or biological issues at the center, but it will not take very long before you begin to address the economic dimension. It is simply unavoidable. Try it and see.

Take the issue of climate change . . .  read complete article.

(Submitted by Tom Blaine, Associate Professor)