Through the MESA Project, team member Pat DeSimio completed his master’s thesis on communication patterns between farmers/ranchers and agricultural scientists--groups that often don’t work that well together, at least on average. Pat’s research, though, conducted through surveys and discourse analyses at MESA events, found that many producers and agricultural scientists involved in the MESA Project shared goals, values, and even communication patterns. This finding indicated that it would be possible to arrange cooperative networks of producers and agricultural scientists who could work together to exemplify sustainable practices, which could then spread to other producers once the viability of the practices was demonstrated. In turn, this realization led to a spinoff of the MESA Project--the Seeding Regenerative Agriculture Project--that’s currently supported by $210,000 in funding from the Sante Fe Community Foundation. You can read more about the Seeding Regenerative Agriculture Project here: https://crucescreatives.org/sys/website/system-pages/?pageId=18010.