I must first say this is not an attempt by me to be disrespectful toward Motley, but his blog "Is the practical man superior" demanded a response I felt. In it, Motley asserts that to many on this forum and in the farming community, "education and thinking is of no value". I don't believe that is true. What I do believe is true is most of us who are practical have learned long ago that people with great educations and who are big thinkers, yet have no practical experience or common sense, tend to be completely useless.
Exactly 20 years ago I was a young college student(you would say university) just completing my 4 year degree. I had spent 3 and a half years listening to some very educated professors work to instill in me the very latest in teaching techniques, discipline theories, etc. I was sent out to student teach for a semester,and at the very first teachers meeting when asked my opinion on something I cannot remember, was immediately told by the principal, "you are in the real world now, forget all the crap those high and mighty professors have taught you, it won't work here" upon hearing my answer. Some years later, my position in life had changed some, I was now a farmer and a member of the school board(in the USA public schools in all communities are run by elected school boards) and I had come to realize that the principals words were very true, the folks in academia lived in sort of a haze of their own superiority, much of what they were teaching potential teachers was exactly as he had described it, crap. Time after time we would hire a teacher with fantastic grades and who gave the right answers to all the interview questions, then once on the job found they had no common sense, they were not practical. This culminated with our hiring of a Superintendant with a PhD. He certainly was educated and intelligent, with a remarkable air of class about him. Quite likeable. The seven of us patted each other on the backs for getting such a find to come to our small farming town. It didn't take long at all to discover while he had a very long list of academic accomplishments, his lack of skill in the real world was going to be his downfall. He called the Sheriff when a school bus encountered cattle out on the road, perhaps the educated thing to do, but in a farming community where 4 of the 7 board members were farmers, not terribly practical, at least for someone who hoped to remain employed by the taxpayers of that school district(the appropriate thing would have been to notify the farmer personally). He dogged the bus drivers(part time employees) about their attire, one worked in the oil field as his real job, and consequently on the evening route showed up rather greasy. Bus drivers are hard to find, and the pay is not enough to live off of, yet no one could get it through our educated idiots head that if the driver had to choose between the oil field and the bus driving job, he would pick the oil field, and we would be without a driver. Several times, he directly disobeyed the BOE because we did not follow his advice, knowing we were the folks who would have the say over his retention or dismissal. Finally, after a year and a half, when he knew he was on thin ice with us, he demanded a $10000 pay raise....guess what happened?? He soon found himself elsewhere.
It isn't just farmers who know that you must be practical when dealing with life. For some reason, many people who get an education and excel feel the "common folk" have nothing to add to any conversation intellectually. Add a little power to that, such as a government title, and without common sense things get stupid fast. Kansas is around 86000 square miles, at least 80000 of that is protected by volunteer fire departments, many of the trucks are actually leased for $1 from the government, and overseen by the Kansas forestry division. Several years ago a new director was bestowed on the KFS, and he was very high minded in his thinking. He sent out a decree that no longer would anyone be allowed to ride on the outside of the trucks on platforms when fighting range fires. All platforms were to be removed, or the trucks would be seized on January 1st. "Do not try to be sneaky" the letter went on to say. Like many, I responded with an angry email about the difficulties of dragging hose on foot several miles in a grassfire. His response to me was he didn't doubt for a minute it was "easier to ride, but it is safer and better for you to walk" to which I replied "fat chance of getting many people to leave their jobs to walk up and down hills in the smoke, as far as being safer, far more will die of heart attacks then will ever be put in danger riding on the front". Of course, he was overruled, but in a last swipe at us commoners sent out a letter dropping the demand, but asserting that "he was still right". .
Motley asserts that agriculture is in trouble because not enough young people enter, and little investment in R and D. This to me is an abrupt shift in the theme of his blog, and I am not sure where practical thinking is tied into that thought. I will agree that is a problem worldwide, but disagree that farmers being slow to change is the root of all of agricultures problems. The problem with farming worldwide is we have so little control over our own destiny. Regulations are drafted and crafted with no regard to how they will work in the real world, usually by people with no working knowledge of farming. By far though the biggest hurdle farming faces is we are told what we will get for our products, and what we will pay for our inputs, and if those prices do not allow us to make a profit, we are told it is our fault and we must change. That puts many or all of us in an impossible situation, and farming becomes a war of attrition. The problem with that is, if prices get so bad farmers actually stop producing in droves, it will lead to food shortages, and the public doesn't want that either.
Farmers do a good job on the whole, they usually adopt new practices as quickly as is practical for their operations. Profitability is the key, and we have no control over the open markets. More young people would be drawn to agriculture if there was more economic reward to be had, and the amount of money to start wasn't so daunting. Finally, the practical man is superior in every way to the fellow who has a degree a mile long, and no real world experience beyond creating his own theories. Our world would not be in the shape it is today of more common sense folks with dirt under their fingernails and a strong sense of ethics had been running things, and the elite had spent their time playing golf and reading essays.