A New Food As Medicine Conversation Is Happening in Rochester, MN.

We have been taking notes from the community for two years. There is a lot here in Rochester, clarification is needed. That is what this civil conversation is about. While we wait for your voice to be heard, here is what we heard so far:

Who: #AllWhoEat are invited in, both those who are comfortable with going to know and those who insist they know before they go, and there is still more…[1].

What: Transforming the role of food in people’s and the planet’s health. AI’s multi-purposes provide an opportunity to 1) Stop the waste, fraud and abuse (The Triage Phase); 2) Address critical governance and other human ~ nature relationship issues (The Resolve Phase); 3) Regrow new human ~ nature healing and healthy relationships via First Principles , The New Literacy[2], and more… (The Grow Out Phase). All phases work in parallel, in an ongoing reciprocal loop manner and other polyintelligent style*.

            *polyintelligent style: Human Intelligence, Machine/AI Intelligence and Nature-based intelligence.

               ~ All present, all-the-time, separate, yet reciprocal, interactive and interconnected. 

When: Whenever it works for you. You can join in by dropping us an email (conversations@agnetic.com). We will set up a time to listen to you: In terms of #FoodAsMedicine: What works?  What doesn’t work?  What stands in the way?  What do you need now?

More broadly, this conversation started in the 1st Quarter 2025. It is and will remain an ongoing legacy conversation designed to accommodate today’s fast-changing Planet & People healthcare setting(s), and more…

Why Now?

The communities of Rochester are recognizing all they know is not all there is to know, they are becoming more receptive to out-of-the-box alternatives…

Where: Originating in Rochester, MN USA. Anticipated, not expected, to grow to include connected Olmsted County and its adjacent counties, the greater Driftless Region, the Upper Mississippi River Valley, and other places known to be small enough to test ideas, yet big enough to matter, and more…

Why Rochester, MN? Two reasons:

• Small enough to test big ideas, big enough to matter.
  • It is understood to win, one must be able to play to where the hockey puck is headed.

Why: There is a growing recognition an alignment is happening between necessity and innovation. Once again, as throughout human history, the intertwining of societal needs, invention and a reshaping of infrastructure are repeating a known nature-based pattern[3a]. A pattern known to improve living standards and more. Also, as we Rochesterians negotiate how to better relate to how human, machine/AI and nature-based intelligence interconnect and interact, we form an ongoing series of simulation events for the rest of the world to recognize, respect and repeat. 

Why Rochester, MN?

Like so many other places around the world Rochester, MN is small enough to test ideas, yet big enough to matter.  Unique to Rochester, MN is an intertwining of all three polyintelligence actors living in close proximity. This can help our hometown grow into being synonymous with a polyintelligent way station many from around the world will want to visit, to experience, to learn from and more… Hence, generating for ourselves and others an ongoing series of environmental, economic and social value captures, exchanges and creations. Or as it is said in Minnesota: “A nice place to visit.” 

How: It starts with a conversation. A proactive, reciprocal, free exchange of environmental, economic and social credits is anticipated.[4+].

There are logical steps humans have used for centuries to make meaningful change happen and stick around a good long while:

• Conversations: Among the interested, disinterested and those seeking to stop change from happening.
• Connections: Written agreements between or among any of the above groups for coordinated actions—including truces among competitors and adversaries. 
• Collaborations: Negotiated, cross-section action-taking(s) in the real-world agriculture, food and healthcare sectors focused on collecting data, decision-making and making course corrections
• and more…[4+]

Confluence: In our view, #FoodAsMedicine is where the repeating cycle of necessity sparking invention converges to reshape agriculture, food, Planet and People’s health and more… The complexities of a polyintelligent project moves us all out of a linear, first-this-then processing mode and quickly overwhelm associated piecemeal technologies like white papers, slide decks and old digital models. AI’s unfolding trifold purposes (triage, resolve and regrow) generate a #FoodAsMedicine conversation we want in on. How about you?

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

hat tips(s) and more…  

[1]: We are grateful for the culture the people of Rochester, MN have curated. Like so many other gatherings around this town, no dues, ticket purchases or other financial commitments are needed to get in on this conversation.

[2]: We have created the #LeadWithUnlearning hashtag to capture Alvin Toffler’s: 

“The illiterate of the 21st century, will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.” 

                   ~  [More available in footnote [4di.]

[3]: metamorphic in nature and form. Not to be confused with metastasis

• • metamorphosis: “the process of transformation from an immature form to an adult form in two or more distinct stages”
  • metastasis: “the development of secondary malignant growths at a distance from a primary site of cancer:
    • Both from – New Oxford American Dictionary, Copyright © 2005 – 2023 by Oxford University Press, Inc. All rights reserved.

[3a]: ref: How? By way of a recursive pattern capable of converting chaos into order modeled after how Nature starts broadly, oscillates between seemingly polar opposites until a natural no brainer expresses itself: word of mouth.

[4]: Here is some additional deep dive material for those interested in how others have done something similar. It starts with a cultural conversations robust enough to naturally root out #Jackasses[4a]. It grows out into a Team of Teams-esque project[4b] acting as an ongoing base of operations. Gains are solidified and grow into a new design of learning administrative alternative(s)[4c].

[4a]: The Ideal Team Player: How to Recognize and Cultivate The Three Essential Virtues

• • “In his classic book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Patrick Lencioni laid out a groundbreaking approach for tackling the perilous group behaviors that destroy teamwork. Here he turns his focus to the individual, revealing the three indispensable virtues of an ideal team player.”
    • An agnetic aside: Those virtues are:
      • Be Humble
      • Be Hungry
      • Be Socially Smart
  • “In The Ideal Team Player, Lencioni tells the story of Jeff Shanley, a leader desperate to save his uncle’s company by restoring its cultural commitment to teamwork. Jeff must crack the code on the virtues that real team players possess, and then build a culture of hiring and development around those virtues.”

• • “Beyond the fable, Lencioni presents a practical framework and actionable tools for identifying, hiring, and developing ideal team players. Whether you’re a leader trying to create a culture around teamwork, a staffing professional looking to hire real team players, or a team player wanting to improve yourself, this book will prove to be as useful as it is compelling.”

[4b]: The Team of Teams by General Stanley McChrystal: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World

• “When General Stanley McChrystal took command of the Joint Special Operations Task Force in 2004, he quickly realized that conventional military tactics were failing. Al Qaeda in Iraq was a decentralized network that could move quickly, strike ruthlessly, then seemingly vanish into the local population. The allied forces had a huge advantage in numbers, equipment, and training—but none of that seemed to matter. To defeat Al Qaeda, they would have to combine the power of the world’s mightiest military with the agility of the world’s most fearsome terrorist network. They would have to become a “team of teams”—faster, flatter, and more flexible than ever.”

• “In Team of Teams, McChrystal and his colleagues show how the challenges they faced in Iraq can be rel­evant to countless businesses, nonprofits, and or­ganizations today. In periods of unprecedented crisis, leaders need practical management practices that can scale to thousands of people—and fast. By giving small groups the freedom to experiment and share what they learn across the entire organiza­tion, teams can respond more quickly, communicate more freely, and make better and faster decisions. “Drawing on compelling examples—from NASA to hospital emergency rooms—Team of Teams makes the case for merging the power of a large corporation with the agility of a small team to transform any organization.”

[4c]: The Design of Design by Fredrick Brooks, Jr.

• “The author tracks the evolution of the design process, treats collaborative and distributed design, and illuminates what makes a truly great designer. He examines the nuts and bolts of design processes, including budget constraints of many kinds, aesthetics, design empiricism, and tools, and grounds this discussion in his own real-world examples—case studies ranging from home construction to IBM’s Operating System/360. Throughout, Brooks reveals keys to success that every designer, design project manager, and design researcher should know.”
  • Fred Brooks on The Design of Design: Interview and Excerpt

[4d]: Additional general background material:

• • The Collapse of Traditional Structures: An Ecosystem Evolution
  • Unlearning May be our Biggest Challenge
  • From Vertical Integration To Horizontal Collaboration