Thinking like an Immigrant

What makes America so appealing that would encourage an individual to pull up roots, leave their home country, friends, and most of their family?  They are putting so much at risk: their livelihood, their relationships, and ultimately their lives.

Free Enterprise.

For most of the immigrants that I know the best personally, the chances offered by free enterprise are the highest motivation.  Most of us home grown Americans take free enterprise for granted.  There's a whole lot of other places in the world that inhibit opportunity with laws, culture, and corruption.

Just being born in the USA is like winning the lottery of life.  You are born into millions of opportunities for a better life.  Many immigrants arrive looking for employment, but are destined for self employment.  Free enterprise offers the best chance of success towards that goal.

Why do so many immigrants realize so much success in the USA?  Despite so many barriers - not the least of which being the language, they are able to surpass many homegrown Americans toward economic prosperity.  My observation is cliche', but it is because they work harder and smarter.

Work ethic is a requisite.  Nothing moves without being pushed or pulled.  I don't know of a single successful immigrant that is not a hard worker. 

Duty is held in high regards.  Duty of 365 days a year.  Duty doesn't take a holiday off, it doesn't call in sick, it doesn't offer excuses.  It is a complete dedicated effort.  No sandbagging allowed!

So many homegrown Americans are lacking that motivation.  Many are complacent underachievers.  Some are self defeating pessimists and others are malcontents.  A few spoiled children that never grow up and a few are overly ego-tistical.

A had a friend who was a talented bike racer.  He would train very hard for a race only to go out the night before and get drunk?  Some people have such big egos that they sabotage their own efforts so they have a ready excuse for failure.  They never have to look close and serious at themselves because of the obvious reason for failure that they provide.

There is no sandbagging among successful immigrants.  They don't play that way.  They were held back in their homelands.  Remove the reasons of failure that were beyond their control and LOOK OUT!

Although, hard work is essential, we all know that it is not the only ingredient.  You can work very hard on a treadmill without getting anywhere.  Successful immigrants don't confuse action with progress.  They are adept at working smarter.

They see hidden opportunities, they establish a goal, and then they go after it.  They are inherintly risk takers and don't fear failure.  But they do not expect immediate gratification.  They are measured optimistic and certainly not self defeating.

Many of them suffered defeat in their homeland.  Usually the fault was none of their own.  They were working hard and smart, but somebody changed the rules!  That kind of thing can happen in America too, but it is far less common.

Americans hate corruption.  We also hate anything less than fair play.  But we LOVE a figher and a winner!  Just ask General Patton.  A fighter, a winner, a smart, hard worker thrives in the free enterprise of the USA.

Shopping Locally - for Sagacity

Financial success is aplenty if you look for it.  From an early age, I have been cognizant of learning from seemingly unlikely sources.  Business philoshophies and strategies have always peaked my interest.  So with my parabolic reciever aimed in that direction,  I have gotten a lot of repeat strong signals leading me to believe there is some truth to the matters.

"First, we find a way to make money, and then we just do that over and over again."  It is a local rancher's recipe for good business.  Seemingly simple, the first part can prove a lot more difficult than it sounds.  Especially in agriculture when it can be like hitting a moving target.

You can be profitable one year, do the same thing and lose money in consecutive years.  The lesson in that realization is to expand the definition by finding something that works more often than not. 

The second part of that strategy is just as challenging.  Controlling all of the variables to ensure a repeat performance can be very difficult if not impossible.  I think the key is in stocking away a surplus to help you make it through times when forces out of your control are against you. 

It might be stated in other more modern words: "Follow the money."  If you have found a profitable business, say in selling beef, don't modify your whole operation to start selling hay.  It sounds like simple common sense, but this mistake is made in all levels.

Remeber when Coke changed their original recipe?  They had an established winner, but thought they could do better with "New Coke".  The resulting fiasco caused a significant loss in market share and a prompt retreat back to what was working.

"First we ask how can we make it better.  Second, is how can we make it cheaper."  This was the simple guiding principle of a NW food manufacturing equipment manufacturer.  I fell in love with it's simplicity, but it is very difficult in application.  Especially in the high tech business they compete in.  Nevertheless, it focusses on two important business goals: quality and cost.

The competitive nature of business requires improvement.  How can you do it or make it better?  Creative thinking and engineering really pays off here.  But do not forget about the second part!

Anything in the world can be improved if money was no object.  In business, money is the objective - so making it better economically is what's important.  Making it better for less than the competition is a fundamental advantage.

"Now you boys always remember this:  It's not how hard you tamp a post, it's how many times."  That old cowboy at my very first paying job was referring to more than building fence.  Henry Ford implementing mass production as we know it comes to mind.  Quality gets so much press, but quantity is just as economically important. 

Many higher profits can be attributed to mass production.  High yields and big numbers can cover up a lot of little problems.  The bigger your production numbers the lower the cost per unit. Don't try to do things in one big effort.  It's the sustained effort that is going to add up.

"The more junk you've got, the more headaches you've got!"  I heard this repeated from the same local rancher many times.  It illustrates the importance of simplicity of design.  The fewer moving parts in your operation, the more robust it becomes. 

Accountants value this as return on assets (ROA).  The more efficient you are with utilization, the easier it is to be profitable.  It's not what you've got that counts as much as what you do with what you've got.  Make the most of what you have before you go out to upgrade your "assets".

"Grease is still cheaper than metal, last time I checked."  I saved this bit of wisdom spoken by another local rancher as my favorite for last.  My whole professional career was based on this premise.

The more sophisticated and better that I became at preventing problems, the greater my worth was realized.  "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."  is another way of saying it.  It's about working pro-actively to attend to small details before they multiply or grow into major events.

Grease is cheaper than metal and so is paint.  Wax is cheaper than paint.  Armor-all is cheaper than vinyl and molded plastic.  Do you feel like you are vainly wasting your time  by waxing paint or armor-alling seats and dashboards?

Why not change a hydraulic hose before it blows?  Waiting for failure is going to still cost the hose plus the oil spewed at $12/ gallon and worse it could cost you a new hydraulic pump if it runs dry long enough!

To summarize all these tidbits: Attend to details so you can fully utilize a few assets to mass produce a better product or service at a competitive price that you can usually make money at.  That's all you need to know to make a living in the intermountain northwest!

Mined Over Matter

There are numerous studies about the reduction of food value in our modern fruits and vegetables.  It seems that the carrot you eat today is not as packed full of our bodys' essentials as it was years ago.

Modern ag practices have shouldered much of the blame.  The trend has been bigger and bigger and quanity over quality.  Yield is the primary concern and minute compromises of quality are ignored.  If the customer can not see the difference then it is not a significant difference?

Ever increasing yields by means of genetic manipulation, high rates of synthetic fertilizers, and high rates of herbicides and pesticides are all commonplace.  But the often overlooked result of those practices can be the root cause of substance depletion in our food supply - the resulting depletion of soil organic matter (SOM).

SOM has been mined out of our soils for decades.  That practice has necessitated replacing those nutrients with high levels of fertilizer to maintain economical yields.  The trend for big ag and everything getting larger and more expensive creates the demand for evolving crops with higher yields.

Yield is king!  To make margins profitable in the modern ag economy, you must continually improve yield.  There is zero tolerance for imperfections that would compromise yields.  High rates of herbicides and pesticides to the rescue!

All of those practices destroy the biology at work in the soil.  Improving the soil has not been a concern of big ag.  Could that be the reason for the decline in nutrition of our food supply?

I have been taking steps and making decisions to improve the soil on my farm for five years now.  I started out with an average SOM of less than one percent.  This is typical for my area of farm ground that is continuously tilled.  Ironically, our farms was certified organic for six years and that contributed to the destruction of organic matter.  Organic farmers have few options for controlling pesky weeds, so they often resort to additional tillage.

Pulling iron through your top soil kills the micro organisms at work trying to reproduce and increase your SOM.  It's analogous to raking scars on your skin.  The health of your skin and body would seriously be compromised from that continual practice.

For five years I have been instituting conservation ideas and the SOM appears to be responding to those efforts.  This laboratory data that I am basing this assumption on was the source of some controversy last year.

My field man has a lot of years of experience in this valley.  He has not witnessed such improvements in SOM and immediately concluded that the laboratory erred.  I suspect that I am his first "no-till" client.  I base this assumption on looking at farmers' fields whenever I have to drive somewhere (without running off the road!).  This areas farmers are prominently traditionalist, so it wasn't a surprise when he told me that he has not seen much change from one percent in SOM.  "The ground here is not capable of that much improvement."

He went on to educate me of the massive amounts of dump truck loads of importing material that it would mathematically require just to raise a single acre by a single percentage point.  I didn't offer any argument to the contrary because you cannot be too sure about these things initially.  Time will ultimately tell the truth, but a related university study came to mind that illustrates the great mass that life can accumulate out of "nothing-ness".

This particular agricultural university study was to identify the source of the mass required to grow a massive tree.  Measures were regularly recorded of the contained soil, the water added, and the mass of any added fertilizer.  They concluded that the mass supplied to grow the massive tree came out of the air!  The masses recorded from the soil, water, and fertilizer were negligible.

This leads me to believe that the magic in nature can create tons or living matter from the air that we breathe.  Providing of course that we do our part to keep conditions favorable for life.  So that has been my fundamental guiding principle: provide favorable conditions to support life in the soil.

Food, shelter, and clothing?  Life in the soil is not all that different.  It needs food, water, and sunlight.  What it doesn't need is harmful disturbances: tilling, poisons, or pH imbalances.  It's taken a lot of patience and tolerance for less than perfection to improve conditions for the soil life.  The explosion of earth worm populations are a good indicator.

My most recent laboratory tests, along with other observations, lead me to believe that I am on the right track.  My SOM has improved from less than one percent to average about three percent.  Another macro-indicator, the Cation Exchange Capacity (CEC) has also improved from single digits to average in the middle teens.  These improved numbers along with field observations of the soil composition and our increasing yields with lower additional fertilizer inputs all point to improving conditions for the matter that really matters on our farm.