CHALLENGES FOR AGRICULTURE IN 2024
We need to close the gap between management and farming.
I would call this gap a generation gap.
Today’s managers operate mainly with crop production elements.
But crop production is only a component of agriculture.
The industry’s and each farm’s future depends on resolving this issue.
What is a sign of a gap between management and farming?
Increased dependence on the weather.
Increase in the cost per unit of production.
I am decreasing profit per hectare.
The solution to these problems is far beyond crop production and agrochemistry.
The solution is to comply with the fundamental laws of agriculture.
Let me remind you of the fundamental laws of agriculture
The law of plant autotrophy: green plants, using the energy of sunlight, carbon dioxide from the air, water, and minerals from the soil, synthesize all the necessary organic compounds in an amount sufficient for their full development.
The task of humans is to use agrotechnical means to promote the creation of conditions for plants under which the effect of the law will be maximized, which will ensure a high yield of plants.
The law of indispensability and equivalence of plant life factors: no plant life factor can be replaced by another factor, even if the latter is in excess.
The law of minimum: the yield of plants is limited by the factor of their life that is at a minimum.
The law of optimum: the most significant yield of plants is formed when each factor of their life is optimally available.
The law of the combined action of plant life factors: the more other plant life factors are at their optimum, the more productive the plants are in using the factor that is in insufficient quantity.
The law of increasing soil fertility: if used rationally, soil can not only not become obsolete but also improve its properties.
The law of obligatory return of substances to the soil: nutrients taken out of the soil by plants with the harvest must be returned to the soil with fertilizers with some excess (to compensate for possible nutrient losses from leaching, leaching, denitrification, etc.)
Top managers should know the basics of agriculture.
They define business goals and ways to achieve them.
And for maximum efficiency, the ways must be consistent with the laws of agriculture.
Otherwise, the laws and, in particular, the law of the minimum work: “the harvest of plants is limited by the factor of their life that is at a minimum.”
And it works objectively, regardless of whether the factor was ignored deliberately or out of ignorance.
Management needs specialists, intellectuals, and innovative practitioners to balance the laws of agriculture.
Without them, new knowledge, especially practices and skills, will not be acquired.
Why is it impossible to acquire new practices and skills in production units?
Because it takes years of work by intellectuals and innovators, from thought to tools to repeated repetition in practice.
This is not the scope of agribusiness.
No matter how hard agribusiness tries, it will always be years behind the most advanced innovators and will never catch up, because the thought and practice of innovators do not stand still.
What is needed is interaction between production and those with innovative practices and skills.
Only together can production reach the level of innovation.
And there are several conditions for this.
The initiative for change must come from within the agricultural structure.
It is necessary to act gradually and systematically, evaluating the changes.
Only a mind that is not constrained by authority is capable of making interesting and true observations.
Today we need to take the side of the soil.
Only together can we achieve the “impossible”!
The author of the product and president of YAROS
Alexander Chernetsky
