There was a farmer who owned
the same farm for many years. It had been is fathers farm before him. He had
gained a great deal of knowledge and experience over the years. He knew about
the seeds that he used to grow the crops, how to get them to germinate and how
to recognise healthy seed that would bring a good yield. He knew about the
soil, he could tell just by looking at it what condition it was in, whether it
was too dry, too wet too acidic or just right. he knew about the crops and when
to plant, when to reap.
But there had been three
consecutive years of bad weather - the worst kind of weather. It had rained
when the farmer needed sun and it was dry when he needed rain. Most of the
crops had failed and the farmer was quickly falling into debt. So he went to speak
to his friend from a neighbouring farm who seemed to be doing better than him.
He asked his neighbour how he was managing to cope with the poor weather. The
neighbour told the farmer how he had brought in a young agricultural expert who
was researching new methods of farming. 'You should get the expert to come and look at your farm' he
said. Reluctantly the old farmer did what his friend advised.
The agricultural expert looked
around the farm, for several days, weeks in fact. She looked at all the old
famers methods, his land, his buildings and his farming tools and eventually
came back to the farmer to offer her advice.
She said 'you need to do three
things. Firstly you need to diversify your crops, keep some of your old crops
and add in some new ones that can cope with the changing climate. Secondly you
need to make some measures to protect a
proportion of your crops from the weather. Continue to grow some in the field
as you do now, but put some under plastic sheeting, put some in greenhouses.
And thirdly you need to improve your drainage and irrigation so that the soil
will have the right amount of moisture.'
The farmer was angry because he
had paid a lot of money that he couldn't really afford to get advice that he felt he
already knew. 'I always do my best to choose the right seeds, I always try to
protect my crops and I always give the crops the right amount of water, what
you're telling me are things I already knew.' So he ignored the advice of the
expert, and ignored the subtle differences between what the expert had said and
what he was doing. That year the weather was bad again and the farmer lost too
many crops to carry on running the farm. So he had to sell it. He met with his
friend to share a drink and lament the loss of his farm. His friend gently
asked the farmer, 'why didn't you take the expert's advice? If you already knew
those things then surely you must have known the advice was good.'
He sat and thought for a moment
and then said, 'I suppose I was just too proud to take advice from someone with
less experience than me.'
The neighbour asked even more
gently, 'well what did you think was going to happen?'
He sat and thought for a moment
longer and then said, 'I suppose I just hoped that the weather would improve.'
