Moments of inspiration : management
"I always remember a story that my brother-in-law once told me. He was a forester in the Eastern Cape, around Ugie. He said that some forestry company (the name has been long forgotten) held an annual competition to see who could grow the best pine plantations. You would think that some guy who had been farming for thirty or forty years would win it, wouldn't you? If someone had been involved in forestry for that long, surely they could do it perfectly with their eyes closed? Nope. It was won (apparently) every single year by a new guy straight out of varsity. Do you know why? He would farm exactly according to the book. The old guys would never do that. They would find shortcuts and do things differently as the years went by, and this sometimes made them poorer foresters (in a sense). The lesson that I have always remembered is that farming has proven basics that you have to stick to. As I grow more experienced in dairy consulting, I see more and more dairy farmers who have forgotten the handbook and been distracted by snake oil, smoke and mirrors, sidelines and often those aspects of dairy farming that have little impact on the profitability of the business."