New knowledge transfer paradigm: A whole brain at a time

Sometimes, we all need the help of a critical friend, to point out home truths and be our devil’s advocate. That is the intention of what follows here.

For any business or sector of business to remain vibrant, innovative and competitive, dead wood needs to be cleared and replaced with vigorous new growth. In the worlds of hairdressing or fast food take-aways, motor repairs or corner shops, this is a fairly simple matter: Those not good enough to be able to pay their bills go out of business; and the barriers to entry are low enough to allow ambitious start-ups to have a go in their place. One consequence of this is that knowledge transfer, and the improvement it creates, happens automatically and in the most effective way there is…a whole brain at a time.

The contrast in farming is illustrated on two facing pages of the 19^th November Farmers Guardian (FG) and couldn’t be more stark. On page six is the Princes Rural Action Programme to reduce the number of dairy farmers leaving the industry. Put this another way, it seeks to keep current farmers farming, regardless of whether this is deserved, by benchmarking costs through Dairyco’s Milkbench+ service and working with experts to reduce costs and improve performance. All very laudable too, until you see on the facing page a story from the NFU Tenants’ Conference where, according to FG, president Kendall said that for the industry to change with the times, ‘the best people’ were needed to meet the challenge of producing more and impacting less. By now, you will see the dead wood and new growth metaphor I hope?

Let’s face the fact that farming has become more or less a closed shop, with a sitting elite (tenants and owner-occupiers alike) being helped to preserve their occupancy at the expense of potential new entrants…except that some of those in situ are not very elite at all. Why else would the same issue of FG need to carry an article titled “Simple steps to reduce forage, straw and concentrate wastage” containing advice from the first year of a dairy OND course. Moreover, farmers who do want to improve performance can surely avail themselves of Milkbench+ and experts without the help of a ‘programme’.

In a similar vein, the industry has numerous knowledge transfer teams working diligently to push knowledge upon farmers, regardless of whether they want it or can see its merits. How much easier would it be for the industry to open up genuinely to survival of the fittest (actually, I think Darwin said it was adaptability that really mattered rather than fitness)? Then, as opportunities open up for new entrants to take the places of those no longer adaptable or fit enough to earn their own survival, knowledge transfer can take place automatically, a whole brain at a time. For those who might feel threatened by such competition for places in the industry, it could be a whole lot worse; just spare a thought for corner shop proprietors with a new Bestco Local opening for business in the next street. Now that would test anyone’s survival skills.