Spudman January 2023 - 47

Einstein nails it once again
To succeed financially,
production-based
Einstein: " The
UNITED POTATO
GROWERS OF
AMERICA
Buzz Shahan
Chief Operating
Officer
world as we have
created it is a
process of our
thinking. It cannot
be changed
without changing
our thinking. "
How empowering
it is to learn that
we can change
our circumstance
by changing our
thinking!
When Wilbur and Orville Wright chose
to investigate and thereby understand
the physics of heavier-than-air flight,
correct thinking led them along a process
of elimination until they could soar
through the air like a bird. Uncounted
prior attempts by men that did not think
correctly led to comic, even disastrous,
results. That did not happen with Wilbur
and Orville. Their thinking was so solid,
so logical that success was inevitable -
they knew that a kite soars in the wind.
Their hometown of Dayton, Ohio, had
only sporadic wind. They found consistent
wind at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
Living in a tent on bleak and bare Kitty
Hawk Beach for months on end, they
built a series of winged kites that they
could control, not from pulling on a string
anchored to the ground, but from upon
the kite itself.
Within two years of beginning their
project, they had learned enough that
Orville climbed aboard one of their winged
kites and took off into the wind. To replace
wind, they added a motor and propellers to
their kite.
You know the rest.
Again, it was correct thinking that led
them to one aeronautical discovery after
another. It was correct thinking that yielded
the Wright brothers significant scientific,
financial and personal dividends.
Awhile back, this space pointed out
that one's circumstance is the product of
one's thinking, one's decisions; Einstein
restated. One need not look too far back
into one's own past to come up with a
decision that could have been better
made. Such remorse can be resolved by
rightly determining never to make the
same decision the same way again, or
wrongly addressed by excusing the poor
decision with rationalized nonsense. It
is strength of character that determines
which will happen.
Decision-making is subject to varying
blends of emotion and fact. Emotionbased
decision-making can be flawed
as emotion often crowds out logic and
reason. Fact-based decision-making is
different because fact-based decisiondecisions
must address
head on the supply/
demand/price equation.
making, as success in the potato
production business demonstrates, is
mathematically derived. The underlying
math of all production-based decisions
- potato production or not - is this: To
succeed financially, production-based
decisions must address head on the
supply/demand/price equation. In cases
where the producer fails to acknowledge
this equation and match production with
demand, the equation itself takes over and
deals with the producer as it will. This is
an immutable fact. Everyone can look at
Idaho this year and see what balancing the
supply/demand equation does for bringing
a fair value to a potato crop.
Correct thinking in the potato production
business must include addressing the
supply/demand/price equation. The
kicker is having access to the equation's
numbers. Until and unless a potato
producer has that access, he is just
floating on the wind with no motor and no
propeller.
Spudman.com 47
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Spudman January 2023

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