Editor’s View: ‘Three boy’ mindset holds back progress
Farmer and writer AG Street © Frank Hudson/ANL/Shutterstock “One boy will do nearly as much as a grown man; two boys do half the work of one boy, and three do nothing at all.”
A saying that our famous former columnist AG Street remarked was elderly even when he published it in a column penned 70 years ago this week.
I have begun looking back through some of his columns, which ran nearly continuously from 1935 until shortly before his death 60 years ago in July 1966.
See also: Columnist AG Street remembered by his granddaughter
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I know there are many fans of his still out there so if you happen to have any favourites that you think are worthy of republishing – and know roughly when they went into print – then do let me know.
In this dispatch he had been in receipt of a letter from three 15-year-old schoolboys who had contacted him to ask for advice.
They had written to many farmers offering free harvest help without any accepting their services and he suspected the reason for the refusals was the prejudice ingrained in the motto above.
Like many other sayings, while not always true, there is plenty of truth in it.
Many in our industry nowadays rightly lament the lack of young blood coming into it.
But giving inexperienced people their first foot on the farming ladder (and a living wage) is a hard task that many do not feel their business is equipped to deliver.
Yet all is far from lost. There are those out there emphatically bucking the trend by training and mentoring the next generation.
And the brilliant collaboration story that made our front cover this week shows that, with the right mindset, new and better ways of doing things can be found at any age – in fact, it may even be easier with trust built up over long periods.
In politics, these lessons are partly turned on their head.
Plaid Cymru’s Llyr Gruffydd, who holds the farming brief in Wales (fashionably referred to as rural resilience and sustainability), will have been in post for less than three months when he arrives at the Royal Welsh Show later this month.
As we note in this week’s news analysis feature, he is basking in the customary glow of optimism that surrounds new administrations, particularly when there is a change of party running the government.
Smart-sounding new initiatives, such as a review of the regulatory burden, are being set in motion and not enough time has elapsed for him to be accused of failing to meet any pledges.
Contrast this with English Defra secretary Emma Reynolds, who had an at times bad-tempered exchange with the Efra committee on Tuesday (7 July) on the work of her department.
She is in the less politically easy position of having to be accountable for pledges, such as the Farming Roadmap, which have now come to fruition in a way that many, including Liberal Democrat committee chairman Alistair Carmichael, find underwhelming.
If Mr Gruffydd wants to avoid her fate then he must take AG Street’s lesson to heart: find every part of his department where there is a “three boy” mindset and root it out.