|
Shared leadership toward solutions is the key to addressing complex issues in the realm of animal and plant health, GIFSL Executive Director Will Hueston told participants at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Outlook 2010 conference in Arlington, Virginia, in February.
The annual conference highlights issues, challenges and points of progress related to agriculture not only in the United States, but also across the world.
The theme for this year’s event was “Sustainable Agriculture: The Key to Health and Prosperity.”
Hueston used the examples of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), foot and mouth disease and H5N1 avian influenza to illustrate the complexities of animal and plant health issues. He noted that, depending on an individual’s perspective, such issues could be seen as animal health, economic, public health or international trade issues. Such multidimensional problems, he said, demand multidimensional solutions—in other words, shared leadership.
“We need to look not only at animal and plant health issues, but also environmental issues, human health issues. That requires we have new types of partnerships,” he noted after the talk. “These problems are too big for one group to solve alone.”
Hueston called on audience members to change their mindset from “solving the problem to improving the situation.” He also encouraged animal and plant health leaders to form strategic partnerships, operating under a shared leadership paradigm, to address all of the dimensions simultaneously and synergistically. By doing so, he said, they can make the most of each other’s strengths and take advantage of the power of systems thinking to make real change that results in better health for animals and humans alike.
|