Those who’ve served in the military know that in the services there’s a certain amount of disdain for the concept of “management.” Military officers and NCOs don’t just manage — they lead!
This hubris is obviously a bit off the mark. There is a difference between management and leadership — managers generally oversee or directly control people or operations while leaders inspire others to accomplish goals. However, in practice, most people who are in charge of some level of an organization — military or otherwise — end up doing both. Army officers inspire their soldiers to take the hill by giving them the objective and leading by example, but they also have to plan and conduct training, write operations orders and keep track of administrative records — i.e., management tasks.
Similarly, farmers — even if they work alone and thus aren’t directly leading anyone — have to manage a vast array of complex variables, from variety selection, to timing of planting or grazing, to equipment maintenance, to marketing decisions — not even considering what we’re now telling farmers they need to do: “manage” the billions of microbes in their soil, most of which scientists haven’t even identified!
Napoleon supposedly said that amateurs discuss tactics, but professionals talk about logistics. In other words, relating this to farming, everyone likes to be in the field and talk about what kinds of yields they got. What’s far more important, though, is managing the logistical details that enable those days in the field: the maintenance plan for the equipment; ordering the right variety and quantity of seed; hiring the labor to help with harvest; having a solid plan to store and sell what’s been produced.
These are the details that are truly difficult to manage; they’re what sets the amateurs apart from the professionals — the good farmers from the bad — the profitable from the unprofitable.
In every issue of this magazine — and in our Acres U.S.A. conferences, online courses, newsletters and other educational products — we aim to equip farmers and ranchers like you manage complexity.
This issue, Gary Zimmer provides time-tested wisdom concerning managing crops and soils via testing, reminding us that what isn’t measured can’t be managed — you have to know where you are to know where you want to go. Will Winter gives a history lesson on the farm cooperative movement and its decline — and what that means for farmers today. And Nina Galle shares the story of a farm that is utilizing a digital platform to help manage marketing and sales.
While focusing this month on management, we don’t stray too far from our bread and butter: soil health and regenerative growing systems. We have the privilege of continuing to provide insights into the new discovery of rhizophagy — this time via an entertaining excerpt from Jeff Lowenfels’ new book, Teaming with Microbes. And this month’s interview digs into a similarly little-known agronomic strategy that has had a tremendous effect in less-developed countries in recent decades: the system of rice/crop intensification.
We’re confident that this issue will, at the very least — and, hopefully, as always — provide a few bits of information that you can implement on your farm.
And that’s the view from the country.
