By Dennis Sun, Wyoming Livestock Roundup
One can’t say agriculture never changes or never changes rapidly. Just take a moment to think about all the changes we’ve encountered lately. I’ve heard some say those in production agriculture are against change or change slowly.
At times, I resemble this, but usually I’m ready to try something new. I’ve come to a point in my life where I just want to be comfortable, while realizing the joy of trying new things.
I’m always learning something new on the computer. This is a necessity in the publishing business. I never thought I would own a computer, iPad, tablet and smart cell phone at the same time, all while disliking driving newer cars, which are like driving computers down the road – it is just so distracting.
Once you get it in your mind that change is good, it just makes for an easier world. For someone whose first phone in the house had a long and a short ring for a phone number, I now thank God for smart phones.
Here we are in the middle of a pandemic, and change is predicted to come faster. The rules for living are changing and our businesses are changing. Agriculture is caught up in those changes – conservation, transparency and sustainability now have meanings we’re not sure we recognize.
The government is now managed by a president who issues executive orders while Congress blames one another for the wrongs of the country. The daily news is someone’s opinion, which masks the true news. From a pandemic to religion to throughout our daily lives, everything is political. This is the change I don’t like.
But, with change comes opportunities. A futurist and Former Naval Intelligence Officer, Jack Uldrich, said, “Today is the slowest rate of change we will experience. Our world is not slowing down, the pandemic unexpectedly accelerated the future by five to 10 years.”
People now think everything we do affects climate change, but I feel climate change is misunderstood. Climate change will have regenerative agriculture as a solution, which means farmers and ranchers will get paid to sequester carbon and adapt conservation practices.
Some of the biggest changes will be blockchain as a currency and electric vehicles for transportation, maybe even for plowing fields. The rural areas will have to ramp up infrastructure to meet the demands of electric vehicles. Broadband will be in every rural household, which is a great happening.
The one thing about change is that we can’t stop it. I look back and realize what our daily lives were like before cell phones and look at us now, we’ve all learned to use them. Information is power in the business world, as information is constant, 24 hours per day. We have to adjust to change to stay in business and keep our families together.
The one practice that will always stay the same for agriculture is we have to keep telling our story to consumers. They need to trust the food we produce is safe, nutritious and doesn’t harm the environment. In fact, it complements our environment.
We have to tell the consumers why we manage our animals and crops the way we do and how it helps everyone. Agriculture is misunderstood by some, but change will help us explain why we do what we do.
The Wyoming Livestock Roundup is a weekly agriculture newspaper available in print and online. To subscribe, visit wylr.net or call 1-800-967-1647.
