Raven's Eye Speaking & Storytelling

Please feel free to download these articles and use them in your e-zine or publication. My only request is that you leave the credit line at the end of the article attached. Enjoy!

Noel

Articles

Coaching Couples in Business (Published in Consulting Today)	Balance	When Are You Going To Start?
A Thought On Living The Good Life	How Much Is Enough?	Difficult People

Agriculture Commentaries

Carbon Credits for Agriculture	Helping Tomato Plants Call Their Friends	Animal Stress Hormones
Sharing Germplasm	Profit In Agriculture	Food Is Emotional
Will Biotechnology Just Kill More Farms?	Biotechs Golden Promise May Be Made of Brass	"Jumping" Genes
Can Organic Farming Be Profitable?	Viagra Keeps Fruits and Veggies Firm	How to Make $1000 Per Hour In Agriculture
Biotechnology Will Change the Way Farming is Done	Marketing Water	Harvesting Sunshine
Tests Used To Register Pesticides May Not be Reliable	Meeting Customers Needs	Boom in Organics May Mean Trouble

Coaching Couples in Business

by Noel McNaughton

When it is working well, a business run by a couple can be extremely rewarding. When it is not, it can be frustrating, and place a strain on the business and marriage. As a coach, I work with couples to help them manage problems inherent in couple (and family) businesses.

The business couples I coach are often looking for someone to act as a sounding board... someone they can talk over their ideas with, who will not judge them, but will ask probing questions to help them explore their ideas more fully.

We usually begin with goal setting, a much ballyhooed, yet little-practised discipline. But just as all the experts say, having goals can make a big difference in focussing the energy spent in running the business. Just as importantly, goals help the couple running the business clarify the quality of life they are seeking for themselves and their family, so the business doesn’t take over their lives.

I begin by helping couples with the quality of life goal. Most people, whether they work for themselves or somebody else, spend very little time talking and writing about exactly what they are looking for. Couples must clarify the kind of relationships they want in their family, the goals and dreams they have for their individual personal lives as well as their lives together, how much material wealth is “enough”, and how much of their lives they are willing to devote to their business.

Next is helping the couple clarify what, specifically, they want their business to be like over the near, mid, and long term. If the business is to succeed, a plan is essential. Perhaps most critical is a financial plan, yet I find many of the couples I work with have not found time to do one. Or if they have an annual plan put together, they have not managed to keep the monthly books current, so they know whether they are “on plan”.

When I worked with Alberta ranch couple Alfred and Mary a few years ago, they did their first financial plan. To their shock, they discovered they were only a few months away from bankruptcy. I recommended a consultant to work with them intensively for a couple of days to plan their way out of the mess they were in. They took steps to reduce their debt to a manageable level, began to plan, and follow their plan religiously, and within two years had completely paid off their debt, and were ready to build their business to the size they wanted.

In any business, and particularly couple or family businesses, clear roles and appropriate divisions of power are essential. Without these, couples end up with power struggles, resentment, overlapping of authority, and generally poor business performance. A coach can help sort things out.

Tim and Jan are both well-educated Ontario business people. Jan has worked until recently as a network television producer, but quit to work full-time in the family business. Her challenge was finding some part of the operation that felt like hers. She knew her husband was far more knowledgeable about the business, but she did not want to end up just being his helper.

Through coaching, she identified the part of the business she loved the most. She and Tim agreed she would be primarily responsible for that part of the operation, and they developed a plan to increase that part of the business.

Tim had a different challenge. He'd been invited to give presentations on his operation at several conferences. He was excited, but anxious, as he had not done any public speaking in the past. With coaching, he improved his speaking skills, and became confident enough to increase the fee he asked for speaking.

Many family businesses are passed down from one generation to another, and they come with their own special problems. The parents, particularly the father, although agreeing to the transfer of the business, can be reluctant to let go of official ownership, which can be very frustrating for the adult children trying to take over.

Gail and Brian are buying the family business from his parents, and when I began coaching them, they were frustrated that the details of the purchase and title transfer seemed to be stalled. Brian was reluctant to appear “pushy” to his father in order to get the purchase agreement finalised, but it was creating strain between him and Gail.

With coaching, Brian developed a strategy for approaching his father in an effective but non-threatening way, and the deal moved forward. Eventually, the deal probably would have been concluded whether Gail and Brian had coaching or not. But with a coach as a sounding board, they were able to explore their concerns and talk out an effective strategy.

At its heart, coaching couples is like coaching anyone. It is listening, and asking questions to help people discover the answers for themselves. Gail, mentioned above, put it this way in a note to me: “Brian and I agree that coaching was worth every bit of sweat that formed on our brows when you wouldn't stop asking probing questions. WE knew that YOU knew that WE knew the answers and you made us use our own problem solving tools instead of borrowing yours.”

Noel McNaughton, President of Raven's Eye Consulting Inc., is a professional Speaker, Coach, Journalist and Trainer in Edmonton, Alberta. He works with individuals, business couples and families, and business teams to improve their performance, profit, and quality of life. Contact him at 780-432-5492 or Email: noel@mcnaughton.ca Website: http://www.ravenseyeconsulting.com

A Thought On Living The Good Life

by Noel McNaughton

In 1987 I left my job as a television news reporter with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation to go back to university for a masters degree in agriculture. I had seen how modern agriculture, in spite of having increased farm production over the past fifty years, was becoming increasingly stressful for farm families, and hard on the land. I hoped to discover a way to farm that was good for the land and the people, as well as the farmer's bank account. (I did find a way, and it starts on focusing on quality of life. But that's another story.)

I freelanced my way through university as a researcher, writer, and video producer. Needless to say my days were full, and I fell into the habit of working long hours, seven days a week. Before long I began to notice that in spite of spending 14-16 hours a day either at class or in front of my computer, I was not as productive as I should be. With some help from my fiancée (a psychologist, who is now my wife), I had a "discussion" with various aspects of my personality.

I discovered that there was a "slave driver" in control, who did not see the need for rest and relaxation. But there was also a little "rebel" in there who said "you can make me sit in front of your computer, but you can't make me work!" I decided to start taking Sundays off.

What a difference! I relaxed and enjoyed my Sunday's, and when I got back to work on Mondays I was far more productive. I ended up getting more work done than when I had been driving myself to work long hours. How are you doing in the day off department? When I am coaching people to help them create a more balanced and fulfilling life, I help them find some time for themselves. If their lives are really hectic, I suggest finding just a few hours a week to begin with. In the beginning, it sounds impossible, but with some thought and commitment, they begin seeing possibilities.

Sometimes couples will decide to take one Saturday or Sunday a month to do something special with the kids... go to a park or movie, or go skating or bicycling, or have a wiener roast. They find that once they decide to do it, it is nowhere near as hard to find the time as they thought it would be, and it has tremendous payoff for the whole family, including bringing the family closer together. If you decide to find a way to take a break this week, I guarantee you will be more productive when you go back to work, whether you are self-employed or not. Anyway, isn't work supposed to support our lives, and not the other way around?

Balance

by Noel McNaughton

One way North Americans routinely get out of balance is with work. I read a statistic the other day that said professionals with full time jobs today put in enough extra hours every year to add up to a full month more work than in the 1970s. It is as though we get so busy we don't live our lives any more, but just watch them go by while we try to work a little harder. Of course things suffer when we get out of balance like that.

In the early 1970s, I used to work sixteen to eighteen hour days seven days a week. I was on the road from Monday to Friday, and my wife would complain that she never saw me. My response would be that I was building our future, and I kept on working. Well, life has its ways of whacking us on the head from time to time in order to help us pay attention, and my whack on the head came when my wife died in a car accident, and the future I was building suddenly disappeared. I began to get a grasp of what people meant when they talked about smelling the roses along the way, but it was a little after the nick of time. Today I try to maintain more balance in my life.

When I think about it, working such long days was really motivated by greed as much as anything. I wanted as much as I could make, as fast as possible. A theologian I know says we have as much greed for experience these days, as for material wealth. We hate to miss out on anything, and with so much to choose from, we can lose track of what is important. There are many stories about greed. One of my favorites is from the book "Jacob the Baker" by Noah benShea. Jacob the baker is known as a wise man, and an old woman comes to him for some advice. "Listen" she says, "I am going to be dying soon, and I have a great deal of money. If you are so smart, why not tell me how I can take it with me?" Jacob just looks at her. "Well? well? What can be carried to the other side?"

"Everything of value" says Jacob, as if this was common knowledge.

Her greed is excited now. "How? How?" She cries. "In your memory" Jacob says.

"Memory?" says the woman. "Memory can't carry wealth" Jacob looks her in the eye and says "that's because you have already forgotten what is of value."

Balance is remembering what is of value and paying attention to it. One of the things I have learned over the years is that abundance has as much to do with saying "no" to things as saying "yes".
Balance

How Much Is Enough?

by Noel McNaughton

Tough question! How do you tell when you have enough? And enough what? Stuff? Success? Love? Happiness is a by-product of living a fulfilling life. But we have become a little distracted over the past 80 years or so, by thinking that happiness comes mainly from having enough material goods. It is true that a certain amount of material wealth does contribute to our happiness. We must have our basic needs met if we are going to be happy.

But here is the funny thing about human beings.... we have to have bench marks to see how we are doing compared to the rest of our society. When we get a bigger house, we are happy with it until everybody else has a bigger house than us! Houses in the 1950s averaged about 950 square feet. By the 1990s new houses were more than 2500 square feet. Cars are far fancier and faster than the cars in the 1950s (which everyone was happy with at the time).

You get the idea. With material goods, every time the bar gets raised, we are less happy with what we already have. It creates a vicious circle, that leaves us working harder, and having less time for family, fun, personal development, and relaxation, all of which contribute to lasting happiness, and cost very little except time. There is a scene in Anthony de Mello's wonderful little book "One Minute Wisdom" where a wealthy woman complains to the spiritual master that riches had not made her happy. The Master said "You speak as if luxury and comfort were ingredients of happiness; whereas all you need to be really happy, my dear, is something to be enthusiastic about."

Do you have something you are enthusiastic about? Maybe a hobby, or a contribution to your community, or a social or environmental cause? A rewarding spiritual practice? It can be easier to feel like we have enough when we are enthusiastic about making a contribution, and becoming all we can be.

When Are You Going To Start?

by Noel McNaughton

One of the very best pieces of direct mail advertising was for selling a book called "Lazy Man's Way To Riches", by Joe Karbo. The last line of the ad said something like "Six months from now, you could be on your way to living the life you have always dreamed of, with all the money you need, or, you could just be six months older. You decide."

That line really got me. It was true! We are getting older anyway. If we do not start making the life we want now, when WILL we start? With that in mind, here is a little exercise to help you get a picture of where you are going. Hope you find it useful.

A Five Year Goal Setting Exercise Its five years from today. Answer these questions in the present tense: (for example, it is 2004, I am 58 years old.)

1. Your age (I am _____ years old.)

2. The ages of your spouse and children

3. What you are doing for a living.

4. What recreational/social activities you are participating in.

5. Where you are living. What kind of accommodations you have.

6. Who the most important people in your life are.

7. What lifetimes dreams/objectives you have accomplished in the previous five years.

8. What you did the previous five years to achieve those dreams/objectives.

9. Any obstacles/logjams you had to overcome in order to achieve your dreams.

10 any attitudes/beliefs you had to change in order to achieve your dreams.

Got some dreams you want to achieve? Five years from now you could be on your way to accomplishing them (or maybe already have them accomplished!), or you could just be five years older. You decide.

Difficult People

by Noel McNaughton

I believe that our task in life is to become as fully human as possible. That means not only learning self-confidence and self-acceptance, which can be major tasks themselves, but also learning patience and compassion for others. It is easy to be patient and compassionate with people who are easy to get along with. The hard ones to deal with are the negative, angry and irritating people in our lives. And it is these people who can teach us the most about patience and compassion, although the learning is not easy. Spiritual teachers know this, and sometimes create difficult circumstances for their students in order to help them learn.

There is a story about the spiritual community that G.I. Gurdjieff led in France. People paid to live in the community and learn from him. Among the community was a very difficult old man.

He was irritable, messy, always fighting with other people, and unwilling to do his share of the work. Nobody liked him, and he did not like the group. After many months of struggling to stay with the group, the old man left for Paris. Gurdjieff went after him and tried to get him to come back, but the old man said no, it had been too hard. Finally, Gurdjieff offered to pay him a large monthly stipend if he returned. What could the old man do? He agreed to come back.

When the rest of the people heard that he was paying this miserable old cuss to stay in the community, when they themselves were being charged a handsome fee to stay there, they were up in arms. Gurdjieff called them together and said "Look, this man is like yeast for bread. Without him you would never really learn about anger, irritability, patience and compassion. That is why you pay me, and I hire him".

No doubt to begin with, the people in the community had reacted to the old man's anger with their own anger and irritability. But eventually they would have to learn a better way, and this is what Gurdjieff was looking for. So how does one deal with difficult people? I suppose there are many ways, but one of the best I know of is to listen to them.

Anger is always a cover for some other feeling that lurks underneath, and my experience with most angry and negative people is that they are really feeling hurt and unloved, and that frightens them. Simply listening, with the true intent of understanding them, in other words listening from the heart, can be very healing for anyone in pain. When was the last time you felt truly listened to? Didn't it feel good? It is surprising what a difference it can make when you respond to a person's anger and bitterness with genuine interest and compassion, and listen patiently from your heart. Patience and compassion are two skills that take us further on the path of becoming fully human, and if we can't learn it the easy way, the difficult people in our lives can help us out.

Carbon Credits for Agriculture

by Noel McNaughton

Scientists who study climate change say Global Warming may be the most serious threat we will face in the next century.

But it might also provide a whole new source of income for conservation-minded farmers.

Global Warming is caused by "greenhouse gases" such as carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide that build up in the atmosphere, and prevent reflected sunlight from escaping back out into space. The exhaust gas from burning fossil fuels is mainly made of carbon dioxide, so it is the most important greenhouse gas.

Energy companies, such as electrical utilities, and gas and oil companies will soon be required by international agreement reached in Kyoto, Japan a couple of years ago, to reduce their carbon dioxide contribution to the atmosphere. They can do it both through more efficient technology, which emits less C02 to begin with; and by paying other people to take some of the carbon dioxide they do emit back out of the atmosphere for them.

This is called "sequestering carbon", and that is what growing plants do. Plants pull carbon dioxide out of the air, strip the carbon from it and store it in the soil as organic matter.

Now here is the opportunity.... farmers who adopt soil conservation practices which increase organic matter (meaning sequestered carbon) in their soil may soon be able to sell the "right" to that carbon to companies who need to buy the "carbon credits" to reach the reduction targets set for them by the Kyoto agreement. All the farmer has to do is guarantee that when he builds up his organic matter, and sells the carbon credits he accumulates, he will maintain that level of carbon in his soil from then on.

How much money could a farmer make? Right now energy companies are trying to buy sequestered carbon for about $3.50 a tonne. A farmer who switches from conventional tillage to conservation practices can on average sequester somewhere in the neighbourhood of half a tonne per hectare per year. That means about $1.75 in income per hectare. Although that figure may seem low, predictions are the price of carbon credits will rise to anywhere from $10 to $50 per tonne in the next 20 years.

There are a couple of catches... right now there is no accurate way to measure the average soil carbon level on a whole farm, but researchers are working on a new technique, which should be in place soon. And agriculture soils are still not officially recognized as "carbon storage sinks" under the Kyoto protocol, but probably will be within a year or two. In the meantime, if you want to cash in on this new opportunity, start gathering information now. The best place to look is to your provincial soil conservation association.

Sharing Germplasm

by Noel McNaughton

About twenty years ago, Plant Breeders Rights were enshrined in law, which besides giving developers of gene sequences for new plant varieties the legal right to patent their inventions, also upheld the rights of other researchers to have access to the germplasm of those patented varieties to work with in their own breeding programs.

It is no surprise that private corporations are not always willing to share their new germplasms with other researchers, but this niggardly attitude has slowly been creeping into public research establishments as well, and it is causing some alarm. Enough, in fact, that Dr. Tom Michaels, a plant breeder at the Ontario Agriculture College in Guelph wants to do something about it.

Michaels fears that information and germplasm flow could slow down significantly in the future, which of course would delay advances in research aimed at developing better crops for farmers.

He recently sent a paper to plant breeders around the world suggesting a new cooperative agreement is needed to promote the continued free exchange of ideas and germplasm. Calling his proposed program a “General Public License for Plant Germplasm”, GPLPG for short, he hopes to nourish the cooperative spirit in the public plant breeding community despite increasing pressures for breeders to get proprietary protection and restrict access to novel germplasm they develop.

His program would operate under two principles:

First, by releasing germplasm under the proposed agreement, a plant scientist gives others the right to work with it, develop new germplasms from it, and release them to the research community without the original researcher being able to put any restrictions on them.

Second, if a researcher using some genetic material he got through this program comes up with a new plant variety he does not want to share with other researchers, he is not allowed to release it at all, including selling it to farmers.

I hope the research community gets behind Dr. Michaels proposal. Since the early 1970s, virtually all the private plant breeding companies, herbicide manufacturers and biotech companies have been bought up by multinational giants such as DuPont, Hoechst and Monsanto with almost breathtaking speed, and they are increasingly stingy with the germplasm of their new crop varieties. If publicly-funded plant breeders start hoarding their knowledge as well, farmers and ultimately consumers, will suffer for it, and we’re the ones paying the bill.

Will Biotechnology Just Kill More Farms?

by Noel McNaughton

New technology has always driven farm families off the land. In the 1930s, more than 75% of the population of western Canada lived on farms. With the adoption of gas tractors in the 1940s, 30% of those families were gone within ten years.

With the widespread adoption of chemical fertilizers in the 1950s, and herbicides in the 1960s, the farm population dwindled until by the mid-70s, farm families made up less than ten percent of the population.

I believe the next wave of technology arriving on agriculture's door step, bringing an array of new products no one could have dreamt of even thirty years ago, will drive at least half of the current farm families in Canada off the land within twenty years.

The new products include "genetically engineered" crops, for example the so-called "suicide seeds"; plant and animal hormones such as BST; "molecularly designed" farm chemicals; pheromones and allelochemics; "smart" farm machinery; and even totally synthesized food products, called "food analogues", which will compete with traditional products grown on the farm.

Some food scientists even envisage a new type of farm that simply grows crops such as wheat, oats, potatoes and sugar beets for their starch, protein and fibre; and mint, carrots, and other specialty crops for their flavour and color. The basic nutrients extracted from these crops will then be combined to manufacture food analogues ranging from dried soups and puddings to vegetarian meat substitutes.

Farmers in the future will face more choices and more pressures than ever before as they struggle to find balance between the "higher technology farming" offered by a wide range of new biotechnological products, and the "higher knowledge farming" required to work with natural systems and minimize damage to the environment. It won't be easy, and, once again, many farmers will not be successful in making the change.

Can Organic Farming Be Profitable?

by Noel McNaughton

Conventional wisdom has it that organic farming cannot produce anywhere near as much as food as conventional "high input" agriculture, nor can it be profitable for "real" farmers, with large-scale operations.

Few people in mainstream agricultural circles question these assumptions - their truth seems self-evident. But in reality, organic agriculture often yields just as much crop as conventional and comes out on top in profit.

Recently, the scientific journal "Nature" detailed a 10-year research project at the Rothamstead research station in Britain (the oldest agricultural research station in the world) comparing a conventional, high-intensity system with two organic systems for growing corn and soybeans.

Ten-year-average corn yields differed by less than 1% among the three cropping systems, which the researchers say were nearly equally profitable.

The two organic systems, though, had significant advantages. Soil organic matter and nitrogen content - measures of soil fertility - increased significantly in the organic systems. Moreover, the conventional system had greater environmental impacts - 60% more nitrate was leached into ground water over a five-year period than in the organic systems.

A study in West Germany in the late 1980s comparing 57 organic farms with 223 conventional farms found yields were virtually the same, but the organic farms were almost 10 percent more profitable.

A Washington State University study of the farm of Don Lambert in Poulouse county, Washington - who for forty years had grown wheat, barley and peas using green manure and conservation tillage but no commercial fertilizers - found yields were slightly lower than his neighbours.

But Lambert's land had six inches more topsoil, twenty five percent more organic matter, half again as much soil moisture in an average year, and two thirds less soil erosion. It was also more profitable.

Organic farmers have achieved these gains without the support of the research establishment, which rarely undertakes projects with a strong organic focus. Imagine what could happen if the research community took organic agriculture seriously.

Biotechnology Will Change the Way Farming is Done

by Noel McNaughton

The industrial revolution simply improved traditional farming practices by mechanizing them. But biotechnology will change all that.

According to Sano Shimoda, president of BioScience Securities, an investment banking firm that focuses on agricultural biotechnology, biotechnology will re-engineer the whole agricultural production infrastructure. He says closer links between farmers and end_users are creating an integrated supply and production system that he calls the "agricultural industrial complex."

Shimoda says the early stages of biotech research focused on input traits such as herbicide - and insect - resistant crops, but it will be output traits that drive the re - engineering of agriculture. And that will mean a whole new role for farmers.

Shimoda anticipates there will be only three or four world-scale “complexes” that will control the major row crops. These will be vertically and horizontally integrated consortiums of biotech-based seed, chemical and processing companies, along with end-users.

These consortiums will not only deal in traditional ag products, but whole new kinds of crops engineered for applications in nutraceuticals, pharmaceuticals and animal health, as well as industrial products such as plastics, and many other uses. There will also be “engineered animals”, who’s milk will contain potent and expensive medical drugs.

Most biotech experts believe farmers' will have the potential to make more profit. Not only because of lower production costs and higher yields, but also because the new crops and products will command premium prices, and open whole new markets.

In return, farmers, who will increasingly contract their production to these huge, integrated “complexes”, will have to learn to operate in a far more competitive environment.

"The farmer's value will not be determined by size,” say Shimoda, “but rather by the quality and efficiency of production. Farmers who can meet the challenge, like parts suppliers to the auto industry, will be winners. Those who are unable will be uncompetitive."

Which means to say, out of business.

Tests Used To Register Pesticides May Not be Reliable

by Noel McNaughton

Over the years, groundwater tests in rural Canada have found varying degrees of contamination from nitrates, pesticides, and faecal coliform bacteria. For example a survey of 1300 wells in Ontario in 1992 found that 43% contained one or more contaminants at levels higher than provincial safety standards.

Although somewhat concerned, most experts have not been overly worried about these findings, as the pesticides are tested for toxicity before being registered.

However, a new five year study at the University of Wisconsin may change all that. The study, headed by Dr. Warren Porter, professor of zoology and environmental toxicology, shows that the testing procedures used in registering pesticides may be totally inadequate.

Dr. Porter found that combinations of commonly used agricultural chemicals and fertilizers in concentrations the same as those routinely found in groundwater can damage immune and endocrine systems and affect neurological health.

His experiments suggest that children and developing foetuses are most at risk from pesticide-fertilizer mixtures. The chemicals affect a young child’s brain development, level of irritability, sensitivity to stimuli, and ability or motivation to learn.

Porter says this finding is important because the standard tests are one-chemical-at-a-time experiments. Tests of combinations of chemicals are very rare.

Dr. Porter’s discovery doesn’t surprise me. It is common knowledge that combinations of chemicals or drugs can have unforseen effects. Elderly people routinely take increasing numbers of medications, most of which are used to address symptoms caused by previous medications. Pharmacists call it the “prescription cascade”.

If that happens with medicine, why would any scientist think it wouldn’t happen with toxins, and at far lower concentrations?

Dr. Porter says this study adds to growing evidence that current testing methods for pesticides are fundamentally flawed, and should be changed. I agree.

I have always thought farm water was safer than city water. Now I’m not so sure.

Helping Tomato Plants Call Their Friends

by Noel McNaughton

Scientists have known for at least twenty years that when plants are under attack from insects, the plants can launch a two-pronged chemical defense. They can pump foul-tasting substances into their vascular systems that makes them less tasty to the insects, and they can send out chemical “invitations” that attract the insects’ natural enemies.

Research at the University of California’s Davis Campus may be able to help the plants use their defenses even more effectively, and lead to a dramatic drop in the use of chemical insecticides.

In a recent study encompassing tomato plants, beet armyworms and parasitic wasps, researcher Jennifer Thaler, found that when she applied a naturally-occurring chemical called jasmonic acid to stimulate the defense systems of tomato plants, tiny parasitic wasps attracted to those plants killed twice as many armyworm caterpillars as did wasps on untreated plants.

The wasp pierces the caterpillar's flesh and places a single egg inside. The egg hatches and the wasp larva feeds on the caterpillar's internal organs, the wasp then builds a cocoon, and a week later a new wasp emerges and the cycle begins again.

Thaler’s next objective is to figure out how to scale this research up to a commercial level, and how to apply it to a variety of crops.

I wish her luck. The use of chemical insecticides has worsened the problem of crop pests all over the world. For example, fruit and vegetable crop losses from insects doubled in California between 1948 and 1978, while insecticide use skyrocketed from 50 million pound per year to more than 600 million. And here in Canada, more than 250 species of insects are now resistant to one or more insecticides, even though insecticide use goes up every year.

Its refreshing to see a scientist work with nature for once, rather than against.

Profit In Agriculture

by Noel McNaughton

Many new biotechnology products are coming to agriculture. The companies developing them rave about the tremendous benefits they will have for farmers. I am suspicious of these claims.

The true history of new technology is that it increases production, lowers prices, and eliminates the 30% or so of the farm families who cannot adapt to the new prices. Every new technology that comes along makes it more difficult for farmers to make a profit.

Since 1991 I have taught hundreds of farm families a financial planning process that focuses on taking profit first, rather than concentrating on production and accounting and hoping somehow to “pencil out” a profit, as is taught in most farm management courses.

The process is not complicated. You simply take your anticipated gross income, subtract a large percentage off the top for profit, and use a combination of knowledge, open-mindedness, creativity and discipline to limit your expenses to the money left over after the profit is taken out.

This approach can seem daunting at first, but as farmers work with it, and let go of the deeply-ingrained belief that more technology automatically means more profit, they become increasingly profitable. I have noticed time and again that as farmers begin to concentrate on profit, they simplify their operations, and often drop entire enterprises which might be contributing a great deal to their cash flow, but very little to the bottom line. Some livestock operators have even sold their tractors, and become more profitable!

Some of the new technologies may be good for society, and some may even help all farmers make more profit, but I wouldn’t bet on it. My observation is that almost literally none of the people developing the new technologies has ever managed a farm. And furthermore, they would not be able to. Those who try almost invariably go back to jobs with pay.

Biotechs Golden Promise May Be Made of Brass

by Noel McNaughton

The promises of the new genetically engineered crops have been hyped by the biotech corporations and government agencies alike. The new crops are said to increase yields, decrease pesticide use, be good for the environment, give cheaper food for consumers, and more profit for farmers.

In keeping with this expectation, the Economic Research Service of the United States Department of Agriculture recently released some data that purported to prove the new crops delivered as promised.

But Dr. Jane Rissler, a senior staff scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists took a look at the figures and concluded the new crops are falling well short of industry claims.

The USDA data covered herbicide-tolerant corn, soybeans and cotton; bt-engineered corn, soybeans and cotton, and their non-engineered counterparts in seven major growing areas of the United States in 1997 and 98.

Looking at pesticides, Dr. Rissler found that of the 12 combinations of crops and regions studied, in only four instances did engineered crops show a significant reduction in pesticide use compared to their conventional counterparts. Seven showed no statistically significant differences in pesticide use, and the Bt cotton crop in the Mississippi Delta area required significantly more pesticides than conventional cotton.

Dr. Rissler also found no statistically significant difference in insecticide use on Bt versus nonBt corn in the big corn-growing states such as Illinois, Iowa and Ohio.

Regarding crops yields, Dr. Rissler’s reading of the data for 1997 shows that engineered crops gave no significant yield increase over conventional crops in seven of the twelve instances studied, did increase yields in four out of twelve, and in one situation, the engineered crop actually yielded less than its conventional counterpart. 1998 comparisons were similar.

These statistics suggest that about two thirds of the farmers buying the new engineered seeds made less profit than their conventional neighbours in the past two years.

If the biotech revolution is going to deliver on its promises it will have to do better than that.

Viagra Keeps Fruits and Veggies Firm

by Noel McNaughton

For years plant breeders have struggled to develop fruits and vegetables that have long shelf life, yet maintain their flavour. It is an uphill battle, and many fruit and vegetable crops have to be picked before they are ripe in order to keep them from spoiling before they reach market. That means they are not as flavourful as if they were field-ripened. The genetically-modified “Flavr-savr” tomato was developed to combat this problem.

Enter Viagra, the virility drug that helps men who suffer from impotence, and that gives stand-up comedians endless one-liners.

Dr. Ron Wills, professor of food technology at Australia’s University of Newcastle, and a colleague, Yaacov Leshem from Israel's Bar_ilan University, were for some reason studying the way Viagra works. They found that viagra decomposes into a gas called nitric oxide, and further discovered that this gas also stops fruit, vegetables and flowers from degrading after harvest.

Apparently plants produce nitric oxide when they are ripening and Viagra appears to extend the process. In fact it appears the shelf life of fruits and vegetables could be extended by a whopping 200 per cent, which suggests they could be field-ripened, and still be in decent shape when they reach the supermarket.

Wills and Leshem have already tested the gas on 40 different types of plants so far and found it works best on flowers and leafy vegetables.

Before stand-up comics start adding one-liners about extra-stiff veggies to their acts though, professor Wills notes that commercializing this discovery will not mean handing out viagra in the carrot patch. More likely it will mean treating the products with nitric oxide and an inert gas.

Just the same, I suspect with a little marketing this could create a whole new craze for extra-firm fruits and veggies. It worked for peanut butter back in the 1970s. Now maybe it’s the salad bar’s turn!

Marketing Water

by Noel McNaughton

The world is facing a growing water shortage. A 1996 United Nations report predicts that in just twenty five years, at least 30 percent of the world’s population will not have enough water for its citizens. This scarcity will lead these countries to tap into any kind of water source they can find, which means lower water quality as well.

Among countries that will experience medium to high water stress are the United States, Germany and Poland, along with a number of developing nations such as China, India and Mexico.

That means that in 25 years or less, 4 billion people will be short of water.

If you are a government leader in one of those countries, the looming water shortage looks like a crisis. But if you are a large corporation, such as Monsanto, it looks like an opportunity. The spin off may benefit Canadian farmers as well.

At a Sustainable Business Forum in San Jose, California, Susan Colby, Co-President of the Sustainable Development Sector of Monsanto Company, explained her company’s interest.

Ms Colby says there is a trend toward privatization of water infrastructures which is likely to increase because public sector management is inefficient, wasteful, and does not enforce quality and service standards. Besides, in order to build the infrastructure to meet world water needs in the next ten years alone, an investment of 600 to 800 billion US dollars will have to be raised, and that can only be done with the help of the private sector.

What Monsanto envisages is creating partnerships with technology companies, governments and international agencies, and with domestic companies that are “members of highly influential family business groups” in countries facing water shortages.

Now here is where Canadian farmers might benefit. One of the focuses of all this market activity will be to develop more efficient and lower cost irrigation equipment, stress tolerant seeds that can thrive in dry and saline conditions, and runoff-monitoring equipment to help eliminate erosion. All of those developments would be useful right here at home.

Meeting Customers Needs

by Noel McNaughton

The number one rule for successful business is giving your customers what they want. The second, is flexibility.

European consumers do not want hormones in their beef, nor genetically modified foods. But agricultural corporations, and the Canadian and US governments are trying to force the European Union to accept what they don't want.

The result is reduced market access, bad publicity, and poor public relations. Not a smart way to do business.

Roger Rivest of Staples, in southwestern Ontario, on the other hand, is doing very well by being flexible and giving customers what they do want.

On his 400-acre Nature Lane Farms, Rivest, with wife Jane and son Jeff, raise pigs, organic field crops, and exotic crops in special walk-in cold frames.

For several years they grew salad mixes and edible flowers in their cold frames, for high-end restaurants in Windsor and Detroit. When lower-priced produce from California and Japan edged them out, they switched to sweet basil, a herb in high demand in the US. Jane is now learning the art of greenhouse flower growing so they can service the demand for fresh cut flowers.

Roger is working on direct marketing his organic grains to European buyers. He says Europeans are at least twenty years ahead of North Americans in health consciousness, and selling Canada's clean, fresh reputation is his number one marketing tool.

The North American market for organic produce is exploding too, and Rivest is taking advantage of it. He has contracted part of his soybean crop this year to an American grocery chain for $19 US a bushel, f.o.b. his farm.

He says the whole scenario is totally consumer driven. He is simply responding to demand. I wonder when the rest of agriculture will catch on?

Animal Stress Hormones

by Noel McNaughton

Bud Williams teaches farmers and ranchers how to handle livestock with a minimum of stress. His training clinics are famous all over North America, and he has saved many livestock owners literally hundreds of thousands of dollars in reduced livestock medicine bills.

For years, Bud as argued that it is the way animals are chased and handled, rather than anything done to them, such as vaccinating or shearing, once they are caught, that causes them stress.

And, he says, if you scare an animal once while handling it, it will be scared again the next time. Animals don't get used to being scared.

Now scientists at Ag-Canada’s Lethbridge research centre are confirming what Bud has been saying.

They’ve found that by measuring levels of the hormones beta-endorphin and cortisol in an animal's blood, they can get an accurate, objective reading of the amount of stress the animal is under.

The researchers measured these hormones in sheep while they were being handled and sheared, and were surprised to find that a visual assessment of how stressed an animal is feeling is not very accurate.

The scientists had assumed that sheep that had previously been sheared would be used to it and be more relaxed. Besides, says lead scientist Dr. Gerry Mears, the sheep that had been sheared before looked calmer than those that had never been sheared. However, hormones don't lie, and the experiment showed that experienced ewes were far more stressed during shearing than their inexperience counterparts.

Another unexpected discovery was that it was the normal handling procedures during shearing, and not shearing itself, that caused the most stress in the sheep.

Just as Bud Williams has been saying all along.

Food Is Emotional

by Noel McNaughton

Biotech companies did not expect consumers to resist genetically modified foods.

When the resistance did start, they blamed environmental radicals and the media for spreading scare stories, and assured everyone there was nothing to worry about.

But the resistance has continued to grow, and the biotech companies are both shocked and puzzled. They just don't understand why consumers are so uptight about GMOs.

That is because scientists, lawyers and politicians don't seem to understand a simple, basic truth about food: it is as much an emotional substance as a physical one. Had they known that, and if they had done even rudimentary market research they could have found out, they would have known, that genetically modified crops were in for a rough ride.

Think about it ... our bodies can digest a wide range of substances. If we were desperate enough, we could eat anything from sheep's eyes to chicken innards.

But we would have to be really desperate – our minds won't accept them as food. We are emotionally involved with what we eat, and we don't like putting strange substances into our bodies. And we especially do not like having strange substances quietly slipped into our food without us being aware of it.

When we find out, we get upset, and that is why there is so much resistance to genetically modified foods.

But farmers who grow the kinds of foods consumers do want can benefit from this situation. After all, people are emotional enough about their food supply to be willing to pay extra for what they believe is safe food. These days, that means non_genetically modified crops, and especially organically grown food, and smart farmers will grow it for them.

"Jumping" Genes

by Noel McNaughton

On days when the temperature soars in the southern U.S., farmers have noticed the stems of a particular type of soybean tend to split. It’s not an event the rest of the world would normally take much notice of, except that the soybean in question is a genetically engineered variety called Roundup Ready. It appears that somehow the gene which bestows herbicide resistance, plays a role in the unusual stem splitting.

It’s that kind of unexpected result which has some scientists worried about genetically modified organisms in our food supply and saying, “Not so fast. We have never done anything like this before, and we don’t know the long_term ramifications."

Dr. Dick Richardson, a geneticist at the University of Texas at Austin, is one such scientist.

Dr. Richardson says the profound level of ignorance we have about moving genes between species deserves the greatest caution.

He points to the splitting in Roundup Ready soybeans as an example of how genes produce many traits and how environmental conditions and interactions with other genes can influence when, and how, those traits are expressed.

But Richardson gives a much more ominous example than splitting of soybean stems – a type of cancer called Burkitt's Lymphoma. “It is a cancer that was so rare it was unknown outside research centres, until HIV erupted on the scene,” says Richardson. “Now Burkitt's Lymphoma is common among HIV positive individuals."

The cause of this cancer is an exchange of a gene controller from HIV with a human gene that controls human cell replication. With the virus in control, the human gene turns into a cancer gene.

Genetic engineering uses these same kinds of “controllers” from viruses and bacteria to help transfer genes from one species to another. The problem is, these controllers are also used by genes known to "jump" around in our genetic system, so there is no guarantee where they will end up.

"Putting engineered genes into our body via food is lighting a fuse" says Richardson, "but we don't know the kind of bomb it's attached to, and the results don't necessarily show up for some time."

How to Make $1000 Per Hour In Agriculture

by Noel McNaughton

Any business is like a stool with three legs: the production leg, the marketing leg, and the administration leg.

In agriculture, the production leg is usually the strongest. Most farmers spend most of their time working on this leg and they’re encouraged in this by all those companies selling farm inputs and by agricultural scientists with their never_ending list of advancements.

But as with any stool, if one of the legs is weak, the stool itself is weak.

When it comes to hourly wages, the worst paying jobs are the ones where you use your hands and back, not your head and your imagination. If a farmer can hire someone to drive a tractor or feed animals for $10 per hour, that is what he is worth doing that activity.

Earning a bigger pay cheque usually means spending more time in the office – the job many farmers like least of all. That’s why more than 90% of farmers do not do an annual financial plan, and in fact do not even have an accurate picture of their cost of production.

But time spent doing a financial plan can make a tremendous difference in a farm's profit picture.

Two or three days spent analysing each enterprise to see which has the greatest potential for providing profit, identifying which expenses actually produce more wealth, and which just keep him running on the treadmill, and planning a significant profit for the coming year, can literally pay huge dividends.

It is not an exaggeration to say that activity can pay the farmer a thousand dollars per hour.

Harvesting Sunshine

by Noel McNaughton

At its core, all farming really amounts to is harvesting sunshine. The sun hits the earth, plants catch some of it and use the energy to turn nutrients into plant material. We harvest the plants, and sell the products in the form of grains, forages, cotton or whatever. Or sometimes livestock eat the plants, and we harvest the livestock. No matter which way we do it, we are simply catching sunshine and putting it in the bank.

It’s as though there is a chain from the sun to the bank, with three links in it: the energy conversion link – where sunshine is used to make plant material, the product conversion link – the end product we get from the plant, and the marketing link.

Every year, on every farm, one of these links will be weaker than the other two, and in order to make a profit, that link must be strengthened before any money is spent on the other two.

Suppose the weak link one year is product conversion – the farmer does not have the machinery he needs to get his crop in on time. When he is doing his financial plan for the year, he must first allocate resources to strengthen that link. He might buy a bigger harvester, or employ custom harvesting, or arrange with a neighbour to share equipment.

Until he strengthens the product conversion link though, any money spent strengthening another link is wasted. That means, for example, if a piece of land comes up for sale nearby, which would strengthen his energy conversion link by giving him more area to catch sunshine with, the investment in land would be wasted unless he fixed his product conversion problem first.

It’s a simple concept, but it’s helped hundreds of farm families improve their bottom line.

Boom in Organics May Mean Trouble

The British supermarket chain Iceland announced last week it's going to start selling organic food at no extra cost to the customer

British news reports also say the company has bought up nearly 40% of the world's organic vegetable crop to meet a growing demand among supermarket shoppers. Iceland, one of the biggest grocers in the U.K., says it's prepared to sacrifice profits – to the tune of $20 million a year – because it's customers like organic foods but not their high price tag.

On the surface this sounds like great news for organic growers, but it ain't necessarily so.

An organic farmer in Ontario recently told me he and many farmers he knows who have been farming organically for years, are becoming discouraged with organic farming.

The main reason is, as the "big players" get involved, prices drop, and it is harder to hang on to niche markets that have given organic growers the price premiums they need to meet the higher costs of organic production.

Traditional organic farming is "knowledge intensive", rather than "technology intensive", and although yields are important, soil and crop health, and food quality are more important. Organic farmers must learn new ways to control weeds, as well as learning the relationship between fertility management and crop health, and pest and disease resistance.

They must also increase their knowledge of soil biology, crop rotations and cover cropping.

With demand for organic food growing at 20% or more per year in most industrialized countries, traditional organic growers worry, that as huge corporations such as Iceland move into the organic market, and conventional and corporate farms quickly switch to organic production to take advantage of the current premiums, the organic niche market will rapidly disappear.

They fear the result will be the "food as commodity" scenario that typifies conventional farm production now, with overproduction, depressed prices, and a handful of buyers pitting growers against each other.