David Rauschenbach ("Leader by default")

I just found myself recommending the Stockman Grass Farmer again, this time to an acquaintance I met in NYC a few weeks ago who is researching small-scale closed agricultural systems. My standard line about this publication is that Allan Nation, its editor, is a collector of the world's very best agricultural R&D, which seems to be predominantly coming out of New Zealand and Argentina. If you want to grow something profitably, I could not imagine ignoring the wealth of information coming from this outlet.

To update myself on what has been going on with this publication lately, I sampled one of Allan's columns, titled The Ghost in the Machine, and found no less than the answer to one of the most important questions the world is facing today: "What makes a living system stable?" Allan writes:

“This “natural” way of business organization was first discussed by Arthur Koestler in his book called The Ghost in the Machine.

In studying living organisms, he saw that entirely self-supporting, non-interacting entities do not exist.

Every living organism is dependent upon other independent living organisms for its survival. The key word Koestler emphasizes here is independent.

He noted in nature that no one had to organize and manage what was in essence a very complex operation.

Each organism is a self-managing “whole” unto itself and yet plays an integral role in another “whole”just by doing its thing.

Koestler noted that while nature was very complex it was very stable, highly resistant to disturbances and yet adjustable to change in the environment.

In contrast, industrial systems were very brittle because there was no self-reinforcing mechanism or synchrony in its various parts. And, the more “efficient” it became the more brittle it became.

For example, today’s industries are dependent upon supply chains that stretch around the world. They are totally dependent upon low-cost, uninterrupted transportation.

If a hurricane ever hits a major container port, it will send economic shock waves around the world.

In addition to being very brittle, Koestler said that for there to be synchrony in an industrial system required a huge amount of communication and coordination between its various parts. As a result, management consumes a great deal of economic margin.

In contrast, nature hums along with no one in charge. Koestler said this was because of the independence of the parts of the whole.

No one has to teach a pig to eat cow manure. It just “knows” to do this.

The pig is free to grow and develop fully as a pig and yet it is dependent in this situation upon there being a cow for its survival. The pig was a pig and yet a part of the cow and the cow was a cow and yet part of the pig.

While mutually beneficial to one another, the cow and the pig did not have to communicate or coordinate their actions or even fully understand one another. What a lowering in management and input costs if a business could be structured in the same way! Koestler hypothesized that it was this factor of self-management of the smallest parts of the whole that gave nature its stability and resilience.”

I see by this quote that this publication is still at the top of its game, and I am still very happy to recommend it to anyone wanting to profit from agriculture, or to anyone interested in creating stable "biodynamic" (or diverse and interdependent) living systems, or to anyone who simply enjoys reading about lessons learned from the farms and ranches of the far corners of the globe.