A quote from Shane Parrish on social pressure caught my attention this week:
“Stubbornness and flexibility aren’t opposites; they’re responses to different inputs. Be impenetrable to social pressure and quick to adapt to evidence.”
This is great advice for our personal life but has implications for agriculture as well. For a long time, I have said farmers and ranchers are way too concerned about what their neighbors think of them. This is often the reason they are afraid of change. After all, “What would the neighbors think?”
The other part of this is being able to adapt to new evidence. Maybe the more important thing is to be able to recognize that there is new evidence!
Pharo Cattle Company® has been presenting “new evidence” of more efficient, fertile, and adapted cattle for many years. Those who were able to recognize this early on are among the early adapters and adopters. Others are just now starting to catch on as they look for ways to create bigger and more sustainable profits.
Why is there so much social pressure against Pharo Cattle Company? The short answer is that PCC® represents something new and different. The complicated answer is that PCC goes against the Beef Industrial Complex (BIC) by shifting more of the profits to the rancher.
The BIC wants ranchers to subsidize them with bigger, leaner cattle. Thus, when someone dares to go against their scheme, they are immediately labeled as nuts, crazy, looney, etc., etc. If that’s what they want to call being a profitable rancher, I’ll wear the title like a badge of honor!
Quote Worth Re-Quoting
“The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ideas.” ~ John Maynard Keynes