Who Do You Trust?
In the late 1990's, Growers Chemical Corporation saw this article "Who do you trust? For starters, just yourself' by Alan Guebert in a home town newspaper. As a company, Growers Chemical Corporation felt the approach described by Guebert spoke directly to GMS and the Growers Program type of customers. The Growers mindset is field test the concept and use your own business model to decide if the concept fits your business' course of action.
After the stress and adversity of the 2019 crop season, this article seemed as correct-or maybe even more correct-as it was when originally written some 20 years ago.
Who do you trust? For starters, just yourself
By Alan Guebert
After a recent speech to a group of Iowa farmers, an older gentleman quietly asked me a question that I had never been asked in public before.
"Years ago," he said softly, "I trusted my banker, I trusted my Extension adviser, I trusted my seed dealer. Now, though, I don't trust them much, if at all. Who do you trust?"
My quick reply: I trust myself. Many people in agriculture don't trust themselves; they trust others first, themselves second. That's just backward. They should first trust the person they know best-themselves.
A slight nod of acknowledgment came from the questioner; he said nothing more. Maybe the preachy answer was offered too quickly. Maybe the quickness suggested insincerity or egotism. Maybe I offended him.
Or maybe his silence indicated he was contemplating what I guessed to be a completely unexpected answer. I hope that was the case because I meant what I said: trust yourself. Too few people do.
What I didn't say, but is equally important, is know what you don't trust.
The questioning Iowa farmer knew who he didn't trust. So do I.
I trust few farm leaders and even fewer politicians. Oh, I trust their mostly honest, mostly honorable intentions, but agriculture has witnessed far too much compromising of those intentions to trust its leaders to do the right thing when the expedient solution is within their weak grasp.
I do not trust big business. I know-all too well-that I have to deal with these faceless firs to build my cars, process my food, and make my computers work. But I've never bought a car that didn't cost too much, there's StarLink in my tacos, too much water in my ham and my computer seizes up more often than Dick Cheney's heart.
I do not trust any airline. Sure, I buy their overpriced tickets to arrive late (or possibly not at all) at an overcrowded airport where I didn't want to go but had to go so I can hop on another airline-to finally take me where I need to go-whose pilots are underpaid and mechanics are under court order not to strike.
I rarely trust anyone whose job title includes the words "communications director" or "public affairs specialist."
I do not trust figures unless I do the math.
In sorrow I admit that I don't trust many state Extension services anymore. The once glorious, once trusted Extension is, today, mostly run by bean-counting, budget-watching academic bureaucrats who are so far removed from farms and so closely linked with big business that they wouldn't know a stock cow from a stock broker-and they have more in common with the stock broker.
I don't trust ag economists whose only solution to today's low ag prices is to tell farmers they need to be least-cost producers. Least cost, to a Brazilian soybean producer, is about $3.60 per bushel. That's a death sentence, not a solution.
I don't trust market analysts who don't know the difference between market risk and production uncertainty, but lump the distinctly different terms together and suggest farmers can manage both in the expensive, fund-driven futures market. Research has repeatedly proven most market analysts give bum advice: they rarely deliver better than average sale prices to their trusting clients.
Why all this talk of distrust now? Because, for the last five years, farmers and ranchers have trusted their politicians, farm leaders, farm groups, ag businesses, universities, ag economists and market advisers to lead them to agriculture's promised land. And for all that trust, farmers have landed first in the roadside ditch, then in the government trough.
Farmers claim they hate it but, heh, what can we do?
In the coming new year, you can trust yourself more and trust outsiders less.
Or, as a friend often reminds me, in the valley of the blind a one-eyed man is king. Keep your eyes-at least one of them, anyway-open. And trust what you see rather than trust the seeing-eye dogs of agriculture.
Fremont News Messenger: Guebert (1998)
This is an excerpt from the Winter Growers Solution (2020) written by Alan Guebert.
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