| Can We Harness the Universal Pattern of Change? “Understanding how change unfolds helps us shape what comes next.” Success Without Prosperity By every measure I could see, Biofeed's work seemed to confirm I was on the right path. After years of developing and applying our fruit-fly control technology in Israel, we brought it to smallholder mango farmers in India and later to several African countries. Fruit-fly damage fell sharply, often by 99%; fruit-fly spraying stopped; more fruit became marketable, including export-grade fruit; and farmers earned more from their harvests. These were the results I had spent years working toward, and their success was deeply satisfying. In the orchards, the intervention had achieved what we set out to accomplish. Had the technology failed, I would have known where to look next, but its success exposed a deeper contradiction. Smallholder farmers achieved better technical and economic results while the technology and protocol were provided free of charge or heavily subsidized, yet many could not sustain those gains when expected to bear their full cost. We had solved the biological problem and created real economic value, but the additional income was often insufficient to finance the continued use of the intervention itself. The gap separating these farmers from prosperous commercial farming systems remained enormous, and addressing further constraints seemed likely to require additional investments that farmers might also struggle to afford. As a farmer, I could not accept permanent dependence on subsidies and philanthropy as the foundation of a sustainable agricultural business. There had to be another way. My first response to this contradiction followed the approach that had served me throughout my professional life. If controlling fruit flies increased farmers' incomes but left them far from prosperity, other constraints must still be holding them back. Perhaps irrigation was inadequate, technology and technical knowledge were insufficient, corruption interfered with business, farmers received poor prices for their produce, or access to better markets remained limited. Each of these problems could materially affect their livelihoods, and I knew that overcoming them could make a real difference. The path forward therefore seemed familiar: identify the next constraint, address it, measure the improvement, and continue to the one that followed. For a long time, I followed that path without questioning the assumption beneath it. Because farmers were poor, I naturally searched for what was missing in them or in the conditions surrounding their farms, treating each limitation as another problem to solve on their behalf. This persisted even though I had long recognized, through what I called the Agricultural Package, that successful farming depended on interconnected technologies, services, and commercial relationships. I understood that these elements belonged together, but I still approached them as improvements to provide for individual farmers, one constraint at a time. The farmer remained the center of the problem and the unit around which I organized its solutions. Yet the more constraints I addressed, the harder it became to explain the persistent distance between vulnerable smallholders and prosperous commercial farmers. I knew from my own experience as a farmer that producing excellent fruit was not enough; my results depended on customers, suppliers, financiers, and others whose decisions and performance affected my business. Strangely, although I understood those relationships in my own farming, it took me years to recognize what they might mean for the smallholders I was trying to help. I had treated their dependence on others as a collection of obstacles to overcome for them, rather than questioning whether something was missing in the way those participants worked together. Perhaps the problem was not only what farmers lacked, but where the missing Capability needed to exist. Whose Capability? The question of whose Capability was missing brought me back to the three Types of change we had distinguished in the previous column: improving components or their condition (Type 1), changing relationships among sufficiently capable components (Type 2), and integrating previously more independent units into a new organized whole (Type 3). Yet Biofeed's experience revealed another difficulty. Before determining what kind of change was needed, I had to establish which system I was examining and what I expected it to achieve. Controlling fruit flies in an orchard was one objective; enabling smallholders to achieve sustained prosperity was another. Both concerned the same farmers, but they did not necessarily require Capability at the same Level or the same Type of change. The distinction became clearer when I considered what counted as success. If the objective was to control fruit flies, the orchard was the appropriate place to assess the results: infestation declined, spraying stopped, and more marketable fruit became available. But if the objective was to enable farmers to export reliably and earn enough to sustain their businesses, the orchard could tell only part of the story. The fruit still had to meet buyers' requirements, reach suitable markets, and generate sufficient income after the costs of getting it there. The same farmer and harvest were involved, yet the second objective required me to examine a larger system, with capabilities and relationships extending beyond the farm. The opposite perspective was equally revealing. A country could improve its ports, packinghouses, transportation, and fruit-fly control, yet still lack a reliable agricultural export system. Each improvement could make a component more capable without ensuring that their contributions came together when needed. But what Type of change would overcome that limitation? If the participants already formed an organized system, their existing relationships might need to change. If they remained largely independent, developing the required Capability might involve integrating them into a new organized whole. The distinction depended not simply on the desired outcome or the scale of the problem, but on the Structure from which we were starting. The distinction between Types of change and Levels of Capability raised another question. Farmers, exporters, packinghouses, and transporters might all be good at what they do, yet together they might fail to deliver reliably to international markets. Each participant could improve its performance, but that would not necessarily solve the problem. The question remained: what was missing in the way they worked together, and what would it take for these separate participants to become a system capable of achieving what none could accomplish alone? Becoming a System To investigate that question, I turned to the evolution of multicellular life. For billions of years, living organisms existed as individual cells, capable of surviving and reproducing independently. Over time, some evolved into organisms made of many cells, each contributing to the functioning of the larger whole. This transformation raised an interesting question: what had changed between cells living independently and cells functioning together as a single organism? Simply bringing cells together was not enough. Single-celled organisms can live alongside one another, exchange resources, and even cooperate while remaining independent. The deeper transformation came as cells formed lasting relationships, developed specialized roles, and became increasingly dependent on one another. Together, they formed an organism whose survival depended on their combined activities. Becoming parts of a larger organism changed what the cells could accomplish together. A muscle cell can contract, a neuron can transmit signals, and a red blood cell can carry oxygen. Yet none of these cells can walk, read a book, or drive a car, and no single cell is responsible for any of these activities. Each requires the combined work of many specialized cells, organized to function together. The Capability therefore belongs to the organism as a whole, rather than to any one of its cells. This is what we mean when we say that Capability can exist at different Levels of a system. For a multicellular organism to survive, its cells must continue working together, and their individual activities must not endanger the whole. Cancer illustrates what happens when this relationship breaks down and some cells multiply uncontrollably, damaging the very organism on which they depend. The organism must therefore do more than coordinate the work of its cells. It must also regulate their behavior so that the activities of individual cells remain compatible with the survival of the whole. The biological example also helps explain why bringing farmers, packhouses, transporters, and buyers together for one successful shipment does not necessarily create a lasting agricultural export system. In a multicellular organism, specialized cells depend on one another, receiving nutrients and other resources while performing functions that support the whole. Their relationships must continue functioning for the organism to survive. An agricultural system also depends on different participants performing complementary functions, but what ensures that they will continue working together after the intervention that brought them together has ended? Beyond the Intervention Scaffolding allows workers to construct a building before the building can support itself. Once the structure is complete, the scaffolding can be removed without bringing the building down. Evolutionary researchers have identified a similar process in biology. Under certain environmental conditions, organisms that normally live independently may begin cooperating and developing new relationships. These conditions can help them form a more organized group, even before they have developed the ability to maintain that organization themselves. Researchers call this ecological scaffolding. External conditions can therefore help a new organization emerge, even before it can maintain itself. But what allows the scaffolding to be removed? In a building, the answer is straightforward: its structure must become strong enough to support itself. Something similar can happen in biology. Cooperation that initially depended on favorable environmental conditions can become more lasting as the organisms develop ways to maintain their relationships themselves. Evolutionary researchers call this process endogenization. The important change is not that the organisms become independent of their environment, but that they become less dependent on particular external conditions to keep their collective organization functioning. A similar distinction between external support and internal responsibility appeared in the early history of the kibbutz. In 1908, Kinneret Farm brought together motivated pioneers, agricultural knowledge, equipment, financing, and professional management. Yet the farm struggled economically, and tensions developed between workers and management. In 1909, seven pioneers from Kinneret, six men and one woman, moved to nearby Umm Juni to work under a different arrangement. They did not receive better land, superior technology, or more experienced managers. They still depended on outside support for land, equipment, work animals, and financing. What changed was who organized the work. Instead of following an external manager, the pioneers chose their leadership, divided tasks, and managed the work themselves, sharing in the profits. The resources remained largely familiar, but responsibility for organizing collective work had moved to the people doing it. The first season at Umm Juni covered its costs and ended with a profit. The original group later dispersed, but another group adopted the same approach and established the permanent community that became Degania, the first kibbutz. The significance went beyond the initial economic success. The pioneers had demonstrated that collective work could be organized by the people doing it, and that this approach could continue with a different group of participants. They still needed land, financing, equipment, and other outside resources, but they no longer depended on an external manager to organize their daily work. The example illustrates an important distinction: a group can remain dependent on outside support while developing the Capability to organize itself. AGRA's 2026 review of twenty years of agricultural development in Africa offers another example of this distinction. Despite substantial improvements in agricultural knowledge, technologies, and production, farmer prosperity remained far behind expectations. More importantly for our investigation, AGRA found that achievements often weakened when they depended on temporary grants, its own coordination, or individual champions. Progress was more likely to last when local institutions, commercial incentives, and clear responsibilities supported continued activity. What matters is not only what an intervention accomplishes, but what remains capable of functioning after it ends. A lasting agricultural system does not require all its participants to belong to the same organization. Farmers, banks, packinghouses, transporters, and buyers can remain independent businesses, each responsible for its own activities. Yet for the system to function reliably, their work must be connected. Farmers need packinghouses ready to receive their harvests, transporters need shipments prepared on time, and buyers need confidence that the agreed produce will arrive as promised. These relationships cannot depend on someone bringing the participants together anew for every shipment. The important insight is that a larger system can develop lasting Capability through dependable relationships among independent participants, without requiring them to become a single organization. This brings us to another essential part of development: Retention. Consider an agricultural export program. Once a shipment has been delivered and sold, that particular achievement is over. Yet the knowledge gained, relationships established, and working arrangements developed can remain, making the next shipment easier and more reliable. Retention allows a system to build upon what it has already achieved, rather than continually starting over. This does not mean preserving every existing arrangement. Some must change as the system develops, while the knowledge and capabilities gained through earlier experience provide a foundation for what comes next. Returning to my experience with Biofeed, I increasingly understood that controlling fruit flies and improving production would not be enough to bring smallholders sustained prosperity. Exports to premium markets offered a path toward higher and more reliable incomes, but required growers, packhouses, transporters, financiers, and buyers to work together through continuing relationships. They were already interdependent, but their separate commercial interests were not necessarily aligned. Recognizing that misalignment did not tell me how to resolve it. Who would connect these participants and maintain the relationships that enabled them to function as a system? And what would motivate independent businesses to change their familiar ways of working and invest in the success of a larger system whose benefits they might not yet recognize? The Missing Function Consider a supermarket ordering a container of mangoes, specifying the variety, quality, quantity, price, and delivery date. Fulfilling that order requires preparations long before harvest, including the technologies, certifications, and services needed to produce fruit that meets the buyer's requirements. Harvesting, packing, financing, refrigerated transport, and shipping must then be organized to deliver the fruit as promised. Since the supermarket's payment ultimately provides the revenue supporting the entire value chain, its requirements should, in principle, guide the decisions of everyone involved, from preparations in the orchard to delivery at the supermarket. Yet this is often not how agricultural value chains operate. An agrochemical supplier may receive payment from the farmer months before harvest, regardless of whether the fruit eventually meets the buyer's requirements. The farmer may then sell the harvest to an exporter, receiving payment regardless of what happens to the fruit afterward, while the exporter remains responsible for fulfilling the supermarket's order. The supplier and farmer can be paid even if the shipment is rejected. These agreements can create conflicting interests, even though the entire value chain ultimately depends on successful sales to the supermarket. The question, then, was how to make the final sale matter to the businesses whose decisions determined whether it succeeded. They would still have different roles, payments, and risks, but commercial agreements could give each of the principal participants a meaningful stake in the supermarket receiving what it ordered. Each business would then have a reason to consider how its decisions affected the others, because helping the value chain succeed would also serve its own interests. That would be more than coordinating their work; it would begin to align the interests behind it. But how could we create those agreements and keep them working? Someone would have to bring the businesses together, establish what each promised to deliver, and manage the points where their responsibilities met. That did not mean running the farms, packhouses, or export businesses. It meant taking responsibility for the commercial relationships between them, so the entire chain could deliver reliably. This was the missing integrating function. Creating that integrating function was a different challenge from improving production on individual farms. The earlier biological examples gave us a way to recognize three different changes: improving an individual cell (Type 1), changing how cells work together within an existing organism (Type 2), and the emergence of multicellular organisms from ancestors that lived as independent cells (Type 3). The same distinction appears when Biofeed's fruit-fly control protocol is applied at different Levels. In a single orchard, it improves production Capability (Type 1); when applied across orchards whose farmers already operate as an organized production system, it can improve how they control fruit flies together (Type 2). When the protocol becomes part of integrating previously separate businesses into an export value chain, it contributes to a Type 3 transformation. The protocol remains the same; what changes is the Structure and the Capability being developed. The next question was how these independent businesses should work together. Consider three ways to organize the same growers, packhouses, and exporters. In a conventional value chain, each follows its own commercial agreements, and no one necessarily takes responsibility for the whole. In a second arrangement, an NGO or government program coordinates their work, but if their contracts remain unchanged, so do their conflicting incentives. If the coordinator is funded regardless of the outcome, its financial interests may also remain separate from the success of the final sale. In a third arrangement, independent businesses make continuing commitments that connect their interests, including those of the integrating organization, to the final sale. Their responsibilities, risks, and rewards may differ, but each has an economic reason to help the whole succeed. As we saw in the transition from Kinneret to Umm Juni, the difference lies in how responsibility and economic consequences are connected. Consider how this third arrangement would affect fruit-fly control. An exporter could help finance growers' protection with greater confidence when supply agreements secured access to the resulting harvest. Growers could also share in the additional value created by successful sales, giving them a financial reason to protect fruit quality beyond the farm gate. The organization maintaining these agreements would need to earn income from its work and participate in the additional value created, giving the integrating function an economic foundation. Over time, the program could preserve knowledge and Capability even as participants changed. At Biofeed, we assumed that others would integrate the commercial value chain needed to turn better harvests into sustained prosperity, but I noticed that in many developing economies this did not happen. Consequently, I established Dream Valley to develop that missing Capability across the value chain. The experience revealed a broader limit: even a highly effective technology cannot, on its own, achieve a goal that depends on the Capability of a larger system. Biofeed's fruit-fly protocol could protect mangoes and help farmers harvest more export-quality fruit, but it could not guarantee a good price, a buyer, or the opportunity to repeat those results the following year. Achieving those outcomes consistently required growers, packhouses, exporters, and buyers to work through long-term agreements that aligned their interests around successful sales. Fruit-fly control improved production on the farm (Type 1), while developing an integrated value chain where none existed required Type 3 change. Our Direction remained sustained farmer prosperity. What changed was our understanding of how to achieve it: we needed to transform the larger system, not only improve production on the farm. Directed Development Looking back, I wondered whether we could have recognized earlier that improving production alone would not bring farmers sustained prosperity. Our investigation of matter, living organisms, and human organizations suggested a way to make that judgment before choosing an intervention. In each case, what a system could achieve depended on how its parts were organized and the conditions under which they operated, while what remained from earlier changes shaped the possibilities for further development. We had used these relationships to understand transformations after they occurred. Could we also use them to identify the Capability required for a chosen Direction, determine what must change, and create more favorable conditions for that change to occur? This understanding changes where we begin. When farmers struggle to earn a reliable income, the first question is not which technology or service to provide, but what prevents them from selling their harvests profitably year after year. If the problem lies on the farm, improving production may be enough. If it lies in the commercial system, we must determine whether existing relationships need to change or independent businesses need to form a new integrated system. The appropriate Type of change depends on the starting Structure and the Level at which the missing Capability must develop. Once we know what needs to change, we must still understand what would make that change possible. For a mango export program to succeed, growers must know the buyer's requirements early enough to plan production and harvesting. Agreements must establish what each participant will deliver, while financing and refrigerated transport must be ready when needed. If fruit-fly control begins too late, the mangoes may not meet export standards; if transport is delayed, their quality may deteriorate. But even a successful shipment is not enough if every new shipment must be organized from scratch. The agreements, knowledge, and working relationships that made the shipment possible must be preserved and improved. This is how we put Directed Development into practice: creating the right conditions, in the right sequence and at the right time, so the system can develop and sustain a new Capability. Before deciding what to change, we must ask what we want to achieve. That Direction helps us identify the Capability required and the Level at which it must develop. By examining the existing Structure, we can then determine where to intervene and which Type of change is needed. Although success is never guaranteed, we now have a better basis for choosing our interventions and evaluating their results. A lasting advance changes not only what a system achieves, but what it becomes capable of achieving next. |
