Martha’s Apple Tree
The project was to read Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System By Donella Meadows and explain the 12 leverage points as creatively as possible with emphasis on clarity and cohesion. Working in a team of five including myself, we spent a lot of time reading and discussing the article. Once we got the hang of the concepts, we started analyzing various systems and identifying leverage points. Finally we decided to illustrate the first 6 and last 6 leverage points through a narrative about human interaction with nature. We created a fictional story to do so.
First 6 Leverage Points 12-7: Part I
My Role:
Creative Direction, Concept/Story, Illustration ( assistanted and added finishing touches)
Explaining the First 6 Leverage Points:
Martha is a passionate young apple harvester. Her goal is to make sure that her apple tree produces a constant number of apples every year. She achieves her goals almost always by the smart use of leverage points.
12. Constants, Parameters, Numbers
She ensures that she is on the top of her game by constantly measuring! She measures nutrients in the soil, rainfall, humidity, temperature. Her belief is that she can potentially affect the outcome of her system by adjusting some of the constants and parameters in her system. Even if Martha monitors her parameters the change may still not amount to much.
11. Buffers
Lucky for Martha, apples have a great shelf life and she uses that as her buffer. She stocks up her apples so that her table at the weekly farmers market is never empty. Her delicious apple sauce is the talk of the town. Increasing the number of apples can often stabilize a system but buffers cost a lot to build or maintain.
10. Structure of material stocks and flows
She is always thinking! There are a few things she wishes she could have more control over like the root system, size and structure of her tree, or the hilly terrain and wonders how might these affect her tree. But she understands that material stocks and flows are difficult points of intervention.
9. Delays
Martha feels frustrated when there is heavy rainfall and she is unable to pick her apples in time. Martha feels very guilty when she procrastinates and delays the spraying of fertilizers and insecticides. She also wonders how long they will take to affect the fruit quality and the bugs, respectively. Last month she planted a new tree but alas! it won’t have apples till the next 5 years. Delay length is a high leverage point, except for the fact that delays are not often easily changeable.
8. Strength of negative feedback loop
Biennial bearing or the natural oscillation of apple tree fruit production is a negative feedback loop where the tree crops heavily in one year and then uses the next year to recover its strength and resources, thereby producing little or no apples. But Martha is smart; she weakens this negative feedback by trimming half the flower buds each spring so that the tree is able to produce a robust and constant amount of fruit every year.
7. Slowing the positive feedback loop
Once an apple is ripe it produces a hormone called ethylene. Ethylene from one ripe apple can ripen more apples, which in turn produce more ethylene which ripens even more apples thus forming a positive feedback loop.
This positive feedback loop can either ripen all her apples on the tree too fast or contaminate her entire batch of stored apples. Martha diligently checks and removes over ripe apples to ensure that her apples are never over ripe or spoilt
Explaining the Last Six Leverage Points 6-1: Part II
My Role:
Creative Direction, Story/Concept, Illustrator ( assistanted and added finishing touches)
Explaining the First 6 Leverage Points:
Martha is a passionate young apple harvester. Her goal is to make sure that her apple tree produces a constant number of apples every year. She achieves her goals almost always by the smart use of leverage points.
6. The Structure of Information Flows
Martha believes that to function seamlessly she needs to have access to information at all times. It’s a NEW LOOP, delivering feedback to a place where it wasn’t going before.
She starts using technology to inform her about the weather, so she can plan her activities accordingly i.e when a storm is coming, she can pick the apples earlier or she may not water her tree if the forecast predicts rain. By constantly noting various parameters and getting constant updates, Martha ends up saving a lot of time, energy and money. Technology can also help her anticipate market price fluctuations. By constantly seeing this information she knows exactly how to position herself in the market. She also starts collecting information from her customers in the form of feedback. This information helps her improve her recipes or try variations that people suggest. Her belief is that she can potentially affect the outcome of her system if she has complete information about her system.
5. The Rules of the System
The rules of the system define its scope, its boundaries, its degrees of freedom. Martha’s system also follows a set of rules. Power over the rules is real power. Martha has little power over the natural rules & government Laws namely gravity, weather cycles or the apple growing cycles. One of the important government rules that affect her working is that she cannot sell apples that have been collected from the ground. This ensures that Martha needs to pick each and every apple if she wants to sell it in the market. Martha has a few of her own rules for her system, she does not spray insecticide because she thinks it’s not ethical. Martha has power over her own rule and has the potential to affect government rules but she cannot change the natural rules.
4. The Power to Add, Change, Evolve, or Self-Organize System Structure
Self-organization means changing any aspect of a system lower on this list — adding completely new physical structures, such as brains or wings or computers — adding new negative or positive loops, or new rules. The ability to self-organize is the strongest form of system resilience. A system that can evolve can survive almost any change, by changing itself. Martha’s apple tree has evolved not to die in extreme weather so it can continue producing apples every year. Martha has evolved her growing practices over time as she learns from techniques employed in other parts of the world for better efficiency.
3. The Goals of the System
A single player can have the power to change the system’s goal. Martha’s goal changes from growing as many apples as possible to sell at market to growing and selling apples as sustainably as possible. This shifts her approach from economic to sustainiac and hence, affects all parts of her system in sustainable growing and living.
2. The Mindset or Paradigm out of which the System arises
By pointing at the anomalies and failures in the old paradigm, Martha believes in inserting people with the new paradigm in places of public visibility and power. She works with active change agents and with the vast middle ground of people who are open-minded. She transforms her apple business into providing apple remedies for patients. She can work with a local doctor to change a popular mindset that apples are nutritious… to the mindset that Martha’s Apple Jam is actually a wondrous cure for indigestion!
There is also a possibility that people might stop feeling that apples have a certain monetary value and stop paying money for apples all together.
1. The Power to transcend Paradigms
It is in this space of mastery over paradigms that people throw off addictions, live in constant joy, bring down empires, get locked up or burned at the stake or crucified or shot, and have impacts that last for millennia.
Martha never gets too attached to her business, she stays flexible because she realizes things can change over time. Someday, she will get too old to run her business, or her tree could die. She sees that there is more to life than her apple business; maybe someday she will fulfill a life long dream to study archaeology. She is a spiritual woman and looks to her faith for purpose, meaning, and direction.