To me the definition of Agriculture means trying to harness nature to provide food for all living creatures.
Farmers are very innovative when it comes to working with nature.
There are four seasons… but only one chance per season to get it right. If something goes wrong most of the time you have to wait until the beginning of the next cycle or season to try again… nature is sometimes unforgiving and brutal.
We farmers are always trying to push the envelope to take advantage of those short seasons. We utilize many tools and try lots of different things to achieve the earliest and most productive bounty possible… by trial and error we learn the limits of nature, sometimes the hard way… but we are always trying and ever learning.
My mentor Lee Roy Hays use to tell me “if you try something new and it works people will think you’re a genius… if it doesn’t work, then you are just another idiot.”
We have been trying a new precision planter the last couple of years that plants and then covers the bed with a vented biodegradable film that allows us to plant earlier, giving us a head start on the season which gives us an earlier harvest date.
It’s innovative ideas like drip irrigation, genetic engineering, machinery adaptation, biology identification and utilization along with reliable data that enable us as a shrinking agricultural community to produce more… on less ground. Don’t be afraid to think outside the box. Experimenting sometimes costs you money… but in the end it can be a win.
Ecclesiastes 5:9
“Moreover the profit of the earth is for all: the king himself is served by the field.”
