ON Thu, 30 May 1996 03:44 Ray Harrell wrote -
> Joan Pomo said on Sun, 19 May at 09:02:
> >IMHO we will be the same kind of human beings we are now and as such
> >will adapt to any new circumstance. Manufacturing jobs are going the
> >way of agricultural jobs - down. In the U.S., at one point over 30%
> >of us were employed in agriculture and now it is less than 3% even
> >though we produce far more agricultural products than ever.
> Fred Nichols added.
> >>Where we seem to be at this point is poised on the edge of another
> >>great displacement. Armies of service workers, especially clerical
> >>workers, can be displaced by automation (which is different from
> >>mechanization). Changed management methods, reengineering, and
> >>the like, have the potential to do much more than simply decimate or
> >>take out one in ten managers, it could leave only one in ten standing.
>
> According to my relatives who were on the land in the 1930s, the problem
> was not productivity but the farmers ignorance of the needs of the land.
> It took the lessons of the hardship brought on by the drought to convince
> all seven children of my Grandparents to leave the farm and get college
> degrees. If you talk to the farmers and their representatives today
> they are using the same language that was used prior to the 1930s. It is
> truly frightening to listen to a politician say that he mustn't reason but
> simply represent the attitudes of his constituents. Maybe there is a
> wave form that follows the weather and is expressed in the attitudes of
> the farmers, a sort of massive denial of their vulnerability and thus
> ours.
>
> In any event the point must be made that "productivity" in relation
> to agriculture is a market term and not an agricultural one. It may be
> cheaper in the short term but if farming becomes like oil, a diminishing
> resource, then we had better have a depletion allowance for the farmers
> and plan for much less "productivity" with much higher prices for the
> consumer, in the future. If this seems a long way from an organization
> that learns, we might consider why our human organizations don't seem
> to be capable of learning these rather basic principles of how to align
> an organization with an externally superior system. We might also
> consider that the first element of team work is an accurate assessment
> of the resources and their limitations contained within, not only the
> team, but the team environment as well.
Ray,
I certainly agree with your conclusions re what agriculture has done to
us. It is the reason for needing Super Blue Green Algae in order to
fulfill our needs for trace minerals and others missing in food today. I
was not attempting to reflect on the success or failure of farming, only
on what I see as an inexorable drive toward producing more with less
people and other resources in order to meet the consumer's desires for
more value at less cost and the employee's desires for more compensation
from the same number of hours worked.
We definitely need to get back the quality of our food which has been
degraded by the FDA and the Agriculture Dept. We should never have given
them the power they have nor abdicated our responsibilities as consumers
to vote with our feet. The more we put government in the loop, the worse
things get. Public outcry is a far more powerful and value based approach
to the issue of having watchdogs over industry.
Regards, Joan
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Joan Pomo The Finest Tools for Managing People
Simonton Associates Based on the book
jpomo@gate.net "How to Unleash the Power of People"
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