This is the continuation of the story – a parable – that involves farmer Joe.
Things were not going real well on Joe’s farm. The markets were in a slump, and crop yields were down over successive years. Joe felt that the work seemed to begetting harder, he was tired, and the results of his hard work were not providing any satisfaction. When he compared himself to neighbouring farms, they all seemed to be in much the same condition as himself. There was something going on here that was not just about Joe’s farm management. The confusing thing however were the stories of some farms that appeared to be doing great things. They had changed their methods, and were getting good results, or so it seemed. Increasingly other farmers were starting to adopt the same methods and, though they didn’t all grow,there did seem to be new life and enthusiasm in those farmers.
Over the years, Joe had kept a good contact with his training college. The staff had changed from when he was there, but he respected the experience and learning of the lecturers. At one point, he was challenged by one of the staff of his old college.He liked to be challenged. It tested him and helped him confirm his own thinking and sometimes opened his eyes to see things he hadn’t considered before. This time however, the challenge got to him. It troubled him, and at first he couldn’t figure out why, but gradually he realised the challenge had been delivered without any basis in solid farming practice. It was just a saying, which many were repeating and using to rationalise changing farming methods.
The challenge had gone like this. If you find yourself doing something, and you don’t gain any result from that action, it would be silly to keep on doing the same thing over and over. What we need to do is change our method, or procedure, or the system that underlies that action, so that we will gain a better outcome. The challenge was put to him with a penetrating glare that said, if you argue against this,you are crazy and no one will respect you anymore. Joe realised that the challenge could actually be true, but as I said, it troubled him. He began to think about those whose work was cutting and shaping rocks. Their work was slow and hard. They had to go through the same motion and procedure endless times before they would see any appreciable results. That is especially true of particularly hard rocks like diamond. These people might employ new machinery to do the work for them,but the method the machines use merely mimic the workers methods. Changing the method simply won’t work. Still, there were those apparently successful farms which seemed to suggest that changing the method, when it came to farming, might actually work.
Something in Joe though made him resist the pressure to change. At first it was just unsettling to contemplate changing the way his father had done things, and the way he had been taught back when he had been at college.There was sound science behind it all, and he wanted to see how sound the reasoning behind the new methods were, before he committed to the new way. Gradually he began to see that the reasoning was deeply flawed. In fact,he saw that there was very little reasoning behind it at all.The so called new way was more about the emotion and state of mind of the farmer, than anything else. He began to suspect that this new way might be another one of those fads that swept through the industry every few years, that kept everyone very busy, and made people feel good about what they were doing, but in the end did very little, and sometimes did a lot of harm. He remembered the project that was named after a chap called Phillip, and then there had been Economic Expansion Three. They had been useful and good things in themselves and provided work to a lot of people and produced lots of product, but they had eventually died away.
As Joe examined the excitement about the new farming methods, he kept hearing that none of the old science had changed. Exponents of the new method were saying that everything is still in place, but when you are in a crisis, you just have to change your methods to provide a different result. Of course, Joe liked results, but he had also been carefully taught that methods are based on underlying principles. You can’t just change your methods and not think that the underlying principles are not going need to be adjusted to match what you are doing. That didn’t sit at all well with Joe. He believed that a genuine scientific approach to a problem is to understand the underlying causes of the problem. Until you have understood this,you are in no position to consider the scientific principles involved in finding a way through. He understood that a good farmer will always begin with the principles and science, and develop his methods from that. To work from results back to the principle leaves you seriously at risk of taking short cuts, and becoming lazy, so that sound farming practice is forgotten which may lead to an even worse outcome in time.
(to be continued)