Farmer Focus: We need both the magic and the science events
John Pawsey © Phil Weedon We are playing the harvest waiting game in Shimpling. Given the searing forecast, by the time you read this submission we should be immersed into our winter crops.
Other news is that my neighbour’s farm came on the market for the first time in 300 years.
My pioneering Scottish grandfather would be turning in his grave to know that I have shown no interest in buying it.
See also: US research reveals benefits of regenerative agriculture
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The opportunity of farmed income which would generate only half the annual interest due on the loan needed to buy the farm is not appealing.
Sitting on our hands gave us the time to attend the two great annual farming shows – Groundswell and “Diddly” Cereals.
Innovation guru Matt Kingdon, founder of ?WhatIf!, talks about the importance of separating the “magic meeting” from the “science meeting”.
To paraphrase Kingdon, every innovation needs two meetings: the magic meeting and the science meeting.
The mistake organisations make is trying to have both at the same time. In the first, every idea is encouraged and imagination runs free; in the second, ideas are rigorously tested to see what actually works.
Although both Groundswell and Cereals wend their way between magic and science, I think that we can all agree that Groundswell is more magic and Cereals is more science. We need both events.
Without the magic meeting, nothing new is imagined; without the science meeting, nothing is ever proved.
However, we are trapped in a system that only validates the magic through commercialisation and there is no business opportunity if that magic can be made on-farm. As they say on Dragon’s Den, “I’m out”.
Commercial opportunity is not necessarily the same as scientific truth.
Perhaps the next agricultural breakthrough won’t come in a can labelled Rhizobiometafungicillinate (I made that up by the way), but in the same product made in a home-made Johnson-Su bioreactor, proving itself in farmers’ fields before science recognises the benefits.
The opportunity might just be ours.
