So we need to ask hard questions! Know our strengths and needs, as well as those of our neighbors, communities, the marketplace and our bioregions. As each of us understands the impacts of market choices around us and on each other--what we buy, how we vote, invest, and form businesses; how we talk about our underlying value systems; and how we create cultures that enable us to live increasingly sustainable lifestyles-current and future generations will stand together to acknowledge and act on ever-changing realities to create a sustainable world.

A lofty and long term goal. Lofty, certainly. Long term? Although it's taken us only 30 years to get over accepting "that's the way it is" from producers of pesticides and limited, short sighted oversight rulings, we still haven't become systemic thinkers. But as we build the language and benchmarks to communicate what is acceptable in support of people and places, we're moving in the right direction.

Bob Scowcroft noted that the organic movement-without a name since the 1940s-"began" in 1990, with the milestone passage of the Organic Foods Production Act. With the first legal definitions of 'organic food,' "the organic packaged and processed food industry was in its infancy." Consumers' voices became important in opposing the first draft of the Organic Rules by the USDA in 1998 because supply chain, management, and GMO issues, among other topics were not addressed. Public engagement to develop benchmarks-and vigilantly upgrade them based on new findings in every aspect of the marketplace--is critical to a sustainable future.

Although we now have the 2001 Rules that includes the term 'certified organic,' Scowcroft further mentions that advocates of body care and clothing products espouse their industries should fall under the same rigorous scrutiny. In principle, "rules" must remain living documents in which rigorous scrutiny is applied to all products and services and be reviewed and made relevant again on agreed-upon intervals.

But until we demand true cost pricing--that integrates all environmental, social, and financial factors that impact the price of a product or service-to achieve an integrated bottom line, we will always have another Alar. Procedural oversight failure hits keep coming: e. coli in spinach; the way we measure materials substitutions and compliance such as Melamine in pet food; or the substitution of ethylene glycol-anti-freeze--for glycerin as a mild sweetener which has found its way into cough syrup and toothpaste! Relevant and rigorous true costs pricing criteria include basic understanding of materials allowed, sourcing disclosure standards, and observing and enforcing standard protocols-up and down the entire supply chain.

Actually, after we've evaluated true costs pricing of what we've purchased, we'll want to keep the money in our own communities based on the Local Multiplier Effect. And yes! We'll want to support local stock markets-to network our money AND our values. As Cliff Feigenbaum, Managing Editor of GreenMoney Journal (GMJ) imprints on readers, "Heat up your investments, not GMJ's penguin mascot's home!"

Until each organization achieves an Integrated Bottom Line (IBL) as the outcome of its policies and operations and true cost pricing is the norm in the marketplace, we will not have included critical basic principles to reach performance benchmarks that integrate learnings from living systems in our sustainable strategies.

We have had excellent teachers over the years. Albert Einstein once said, "You cannot solve the problems before you with the same thinking that created them in the first place." Thus, in order for people to exercise their tremendous purchasing power through values-based decision making, we should first focus on developing the language that enables consumers to use systems thinking to participate as stakeholders in this dialogue.

For instance, the 2006 "Our Daily Bread, What Does It REALLY Cost?" Prize was launched to recognize the author(s) of a professional paper that presented a systemic analytical framework that measured or related integrated environmental, social, and financial factors that impact the true costs of a product-a loaf of bread.

Following the announcement of the 2006 Our Daily Bread Prize winner, an executive team was formed which included the Jurors and Finalists of the 2006 ODB Prize-the Our Daily Bread Leadership Team (ODBLT). The ODBLT's strategy is to support Sustainability Market Leaders (SMLs) -- those market professionals responsible for raising sustainable benchmarks within their organizations and communicating true cost pricing in accessible and useable ways into the marketplace. SMLs from nine market sectors are critical to this dialogue as they are the professionals who must expand the dialogue into all market sectors. Thus the ODBLT chose to support SMLs in two ways:

Strategy 1: Qualifying and supporting SMLs from nine market sectors to participate as a body in sharing their strategies and experiences to integrate and manage all their organizational risks and build on principles of vitality and celebration.

Strategy 2: In their collaborative efforts, SMLs will spearhead the implementation of true cost pricing in the marketplace by framing key areas of inquiry into Calls for Papers, Action Plans, and Case Studies for the 2007-2008 Our Daily Bread Prizes. The outcomes of these Prizes will allow them stimulate understanding about true cost pricing and communicate to their managers as well as the public.

To reiterate: each and every intension, consideration, and action counts. For example-know your supply chain! A 2006 ODB Prize finalist, the Integrative Sustainability Analysis (ISA) Project , uses organizational financial data as input from which it calculates the organization's entire supply chain. Dr. Joy Murray of ISA noted that when producing a Sustainability Report, it is common in GRI-type audit approaches to put boundaries around the first level of suppliers plus some exemplar second level suppliers in the supply chain rather than tracking all the supply chain impacts in production and operations of products or services.

Coalitions of academics, research groups, and governmental organizations are conducting even more rigorous reporting to track upstream and downstream impacts. Dr. Richard Smardon, of SUNY-ESF and Dr. Joy Murray both participate in these multi-sector consortia. We want this kind of engagement in every aspect of the marketplace to vigilantly upgrade our dialogue and benchmarks based on new findings.

Bob Scowcroft points out that the role of a multi-sector Advisory Board ensures that a broad range of environmental and consumer-based perspectives provided excellent checks and balances on both the language and scope of "organic production." Networks of multi-sector talent in advisory boards, multi-sector consortia, agencies-such as state or federal versions of the former Office of Technology Assistance (OTA)-are critical. We need to know where we think we want to go by sustaining a pool of expertise to re-evaluate benchmarks to course correct based on new information.

For instance, one of the Calls for Papers, Action Plans, and Case Studies among the ten 2007-2008 Our Daily Bread Prizes framed by Sustainability Market Leaders at Implementation Forum 1 is "How can technology assessment agencies and processes which employ sustainability criteria be reintroduced and/or created at the Federal and State levels?" The SMLs want an action plan as a response. The reward of seed money will make the plan live.

In addition to drawing on the talent and experience of the best and the brightest among us to advise an oversight or regulatory body that frames and monitors our learning, we must integrate these functions into places and natural resource systems. Spencer B. Beebe, President of EcoTrust, asserts that however the human family organizes itself, when it comes to resource management, the natural political, economic, and cultural entity is the bioregion. In his well-crafted article, Natural Competitive Advantage of Bioregions, Beebe shares four competitive advantages of bioregions over nation-states. He notes further, "The only truly unlimited and untapped resource left in a world of increasing scarcity is the infinite creativity of the human imagination….That imagination is the catalytic, the metabolic process that will underlie a new economy of place."

Benchmarks, like money, are tools of human dialogue. We can get on with developing ways to think and behave that are based on the ways that nature and human nature works. We need to sustain our investigations of these relationships over the range of human intercourse--through our art, education, business practices, legislation, and regulation--and learn to course correct in all these domains.

Again, Spencer Beebe connects the dots: "Imagine the power when all these movements begin to connect! Networks of networks of local initiative, jujitsuing the power of the underlying forces of globalization to the advantage of the local, the true democratization of money, technology, and information; this is the core of a development model for reliable prosperity."

An excellent example of applying existing human and natural patterns to a current issue is James E. McWilliams' article in The New York Times, Food that Travels Well in which he draws the food miles debate into hub-and-spoke systems of food production and distribution. He compares New Zealand and British lamb production as a solid example of some the true cost factors on which we can engage multi-sector dialogues in every aspect of the marketplace. Our lives and the health of our bioregions depend on it.

In every domain of action-cultural, political, environmental, economic, citizen advocacy is the very core of democratizing decision-making in the marketplace through true cost pricing. While the magnitude of the task before our generation must motivate collaborative action, we should not forget Senator Wayne Morris' evocation of the clear and direct words from our Constitution: "The president serves at the discretion of the people." May we be the people we have been waiting for--to exercise and enable each other to live fully consciously, and know that it is within our power to create the world that supports all children and all species for all time.

Article by Theodosia H. Ferguson is the Executive Director of Sustainable Ventures, a non-profit citizen advocacy education organization dedicated to democratizing decision-making in the marketplace.