April 2019 - 41

Survey probes the beliefs and attitudes of farmers
If you're the farmer
UNITED POTATO
GROWERS OF
AMERICA
Buzz Shahan
Chief Operating
Officer
standing there with
thumbs hooked in
the suspenders of
bib overalls, chewing
on a piece of straw,
this article may not
interest you. On
the other hand, if
you're a farmer who
sees farming as a
highly remunerative
business opportunity,
the following will
interest you.
Where most farmer surveys deal with
farmers' ages, crop mixes, acreages and
debt loads, one recent survey superseded
those parameters by at least 10-fold. The
survey began by deeply probing various
farmers' psyches to determine their mental
characteristics, such as attitudes toward
change, growth, tradition, education, risk,
debt, work ethic and so on. No aspect
of the psychological survey intended to
compare intellectual capacity; rather,
every question aimed to discern those
mental parameters that a farmer ultimately
draws upon to make decisions. Because
decisions, as we all know, result in
outcomes, and outcomes result in equity
balances.
For example, a farmer who inherited
his operation might have a very different
attitude toward risk than one who began
from scratch and saw the risk of leveraged
growth as fundamental to survival. While
the heir might manage risk to lose the
least, the guy who began from scratch
might use risk to make the most. The
survey explained many more examples than
just these two, but space here is limited.
Much to their credit, survey designers
went to great lengths not to pigeonhole any
single farmer group. Rather, they looked for
psychological commonalities that particular
farmers shared with counterpart business
managers, generally.
Looking back to the 2008 recession,
certain businesses collapsed, while others
blossomed. Circuit City folded, while Best
Buy soared. What was the difference? What
about Blockbuster and Netflix? Blockbuster
went from 5,000 locations to two. Netflix?
Everyone can see how that is turning out.
So, as a business manager/farmer, how
do your managerial attitudes rank among
your most successful counterparts in the
following categories?
1. Debt. It isn't debt itself that matters
INDUSTRY NEWS
WET WINTER IMPEDES PLANTING EFFORTS
According to the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration, the winter
of 2018-19 was the wettest on record.
That led to a soggy spring, which impeded
planting efforts around the country.
As of mid-March, North Carolina potato
farmers were a month behind schedule.
Growers in Washington faced similar delays,
and flooding was expected in the Red River
Valley area.
among the most successful farmers.
Rather, it is how debt is used that makes
the difference. Clearly, credit allows one to
leverage into equity far faster than waiting
for equity to build.
2. Collaboration. Seventy percent of the
most successful farmers collaborate
through market cooperatives, just as
non-farming business managers of similar
ilk collaborate in key market points. In
the potato example, consider total potato
production as a single pile and know
that every 1 percent change in that pile's
volume results in adding or subtracting
7 percent of total value to the pile. Does
collaboration make sense in this regard?
Give any other business such power over
its financial future and ask yourself: what
would managers do with it?
3. Change versus tradition. The world is
always moving forward. It always has and it
always will. Staying in front of that wave is
what good business managers do. Staying
in front is hard work, but working hard is
also what good business managers do.
Spudman * April 2019
41
April 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of April 2019
