Inflight Reading: Complexity of FarmManagement
On a recent flight, I took the opportunity to catch up on some of my neglected reading. The September issue of the Harvard Business Review carried a large section on Embracing Complexity. While the article focused on large organizations, much of the discussion could equally apply to us as we manage our farms.
The authors categorized complexity thus:
We can’t predict what will happen when various parts of the system interact. Think about how that applies to crop production. When variables like fertility, genetics, and traits interact with heat, rain, and wind, the results are not as predictable as we would like to believe.
Simple actions produce unintended consequences. Many of the “simple” decisions we make in production turn out differently than we planned. Perhaps we work a field a little too wet because there is rain in the forecast — but sometimes it doesn’t rain. The decision may still have been the correct one, given the available information, but the result may be undesirable.
Human being’s cognitive limits mean that no manager can understand all aspects of the system. Man, does that apply! I have been farming for more than 30 years, and intensively involved in seed for 16. The biggest thing I have learned so far is how little I know.
To me, the message is this: 1) Gather input from as many sources as possible. 2) Carefully weigh all options, and most importantly; 3) Evaluate the “correctness” of your decisions based not on the empirical outcome, but by the information available when the decisions were made.
If you would like to read the article that spurred my thinking, email me at carl@petersonfarmsseed.com. I’ll see that you get a reprint.
