How To Thrive On the Edge of Chaos: A Guide for Farmers – Successful Farming

Vance Crowe is a communications consultant who thrives on chaos. Heis a keynote speaker at the Land Expo 2020 in Des Moines on January 14. Successful Farming magazine caught up with him ahead of time to get a preview.

VC: My talk is called The Edge of Chaos, where and how society changes. What is accepted, what is desirable, and what is not allowed in a society? There is a difference between perceptions in the countryside and the city. What ramifications does this have for how things will be done in the future with agricultural lands, whether thats growing crops or raising animals? Which perceptions and demands of people living in the city are fads, and which ones actually have a chance of radically changing the way land is being managed?

VC: Ive only been involved in agriculture for the last five years. Before that, my jobs varied widely. I ran a camp for inner city kids, was a deckhand on a ship that traveled around the Western Hemisphere, lived in Africa as a Peace Corps volunteer, worked in public radio in northern California, worked at the World Bank, and then worked at Monsanto.

It has been an interesting journey. I have seen how ideas started and then flowed out into society. That became very real for me when I was working at Monsanto. A group of people who disagree with modern agriculture can alter the publics perception of the way the world ought to change. I saw what happened when society and culture turn against certain components of agriculture.

VC: Things you think are certain can change. The Overton window can shift on you. Changes in society that you couldnt imagine can happen. Even if you know something is far better for society, it may reject it.

On the other hand, you can change perception with enough coordinated effort. Five years ago, there was a lot of concern about whether or not you should eat GMOs, and that fight has basically dissipated. There are people who still think that, but the issue is nowhere near at the velocity and temperature that it was before. Agriculture figured out that it was a technology people didnt understand, so we have to explain it to them. Otherwise they will become so impassioned that they wont let us use this technology.

VC: Catastrophic. It is the manifestation of how our legal system can be profited by individuals. If you can sue glyphosate, you can do that to any chemical, because glyphosate is one of the most innocuous. That has very serious implications for the future.

It is a challenge to be in the number one spot. People focus on you. The companies in the number two, three, and four spots dont jump up to help you out. They kind of scoot back and let you take the slings and arrows, even though they all have a shared interest in genetic engineering or crop protection. They say, Monsanto is the one being sued for glyphosate, its not really our problem, were going to stay out of this. But if you can knock glyphosate out, any chemical in their portfolio could get knocked out.

VC: Societies wont live in chaos. Its not acceptable. They will accept suboptimal conditions before they will accept not knowing. So people will choose a certain future that is less good, rather than an uncertain feature with lots of potential.

There are good things that can come from chaos. If you stay too much on the ordered side of life, you dont make the changes you need to make to evolve and thrive and get better. If youre too ordered, you become tyrannical.

VC: The people who thrive the most in these situations are the ones who are the most curious about the chaos the ones most interested in learning what is on the edge. Its good to have opinions, but loosely hold them so that other people can give you a good argument that makes sense. Be willing to change and adapt and not be so rigid that you break.

The only way you make change is if you get up there on the edge of chaos. You figure out what changes society is asking us to make that we should make, and which ones are unreasonable demands that we should find a way to convince them otherwise.

VC: Kenya, a place I used to live in while in the Peace Corps, is close to approving BT. Once farmers see the benefits of genetic engineering traits, you may watch the adoption of genetic engineering technology in a place that gets more sunlight than anywhere else on earth the continent of Africa. They are adding technology in a very big way. That will change global agriculture. It will change where countries like China look to do trade deals.

VC: Synthetic biology, whether it pertains to synthetic meat or other types of products that were naturally grown, is coming on in a big way. Where do farmers fit into that? Dont focus on the micro issues, because this is starting to blossom all over the world.

VC: Farmers either get mad or they get very dismissive of it. The biggest impact of synthetic meat is not going to be the burgers and steaks that the beef industry is so worried about. Its going to be pet food. Its like what the rebar market in steel did to the steel manufacturers. In Mexico, they built these tiny foundries that made cheap steel, and they stole 3% from the steel market, which was enough to grind that to a halt in the United States. Synthetic meat is going to enter through the pet food market, or some ancillary market that isnt going to compete on taste and texture.

VC: Absolutely, with 100% certainty. The things that are possible to do with precision gene editing over the long term are so mind bending as to be difficult to believe. It will have profound implications not only on the way we grow things, but also what we grow.

VC: Sensors will become inexpensive to put in peoples fields. Sensors can start figuring out exact applications of nitrogen for your field, meter by meter. Farmers will be able to conduct those tests themselves; they won't have to wait for an agronomist or a seed company to come by and tell them what to do. Thats coming very soon.

VC: I happen to know quite a bit about banking and the marijuana system. Banking is one of the biggest impediments, but once that flips and you can now start loaning on capital for hemp or for marijuana production, that is when the whole game takes off. Marijuana has been held off because you havent been able to do proper banking. We are within six months of that flipping, and then youre going to see a whole bunch of bankers looking for farmers to be taking those loans.

VC: There has not been a new active ingredients for crop protection approved by the USDA in the last 20 years. The rise of biologicals is because theyre regulated in a completely different way. Youre bringing it in through a side door. There is way more innovation going on there. A lot of it is snake oil, but some of it is solid gold. Biologicals are going to come on in a big way in feed. Its a way to lower methane emissions.

VC: I love Bitcoin. Thats one of my favorites. Its held its value. Its far and away the best investment Ive ever made by orders of magnitude. I was in pretty early.

VC: There is a concept called the intransigent minority. It was developed by a brilliant guy named Nassim Taleb, whos a mathematician that hates genetic engineering. He really hated Monsanto. The intransigent minority is the number of people you need in a given society to be absolutely entrenched on an idea that society relents to them and gives them whatever they want. For example, how many vegans would you need before you require all food to be vegan. Or organic?

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How To Thrive On the Edge of Chaos: A Guide for Farmers - Successful Farming