About Ray Stanford, Jr. and Louis L'Amour

My name is Ray Stanford, Jr.  I have been associated with agriculture one way or another virtually all of my life.  I grew up in Texas where I helped my dad in the poultry industry starting when I was 10 years old, and I did quite a bit of cowboying on area ranches during my teens and early twenties.  I also worked for and received two ag degrees from Texas A&M University (Poultry Science and Animal Science).  My "career years" included time at Hy-Line International (a division of Pioneer, the corn company), Chilson's Management Controls, Inc. and a couple of other places in between.


All of my experiences were rewarding, but the work I really enjoyed the most was when I was an agricultural management consultant with Chilson's.  I did that work for about 15 years in all (3 contracts).  It enabled me to bring all of my previous experience in production, processing, marketing and general management to one place and combine it with new skills I learned in the field of benchmarking.  Working with consulting clients to produce and review benchmarking reports taught me what is really going on in commodity production agriculture.  How current systems of production and management philosophy position the players in an industry.  How different management teams view the future, where they want to try to be in that picture and how they intend to get there.  Trust me, there is so much variation out there it is incredible.


The variation still exists today, and it will be even greater in the next 40 or 50 years because of technologies that will come into play more and more that were not available 20 and 30 years ago.  This blog will emphasize the role of technology, because I believe it will be the deciding factor in who will control global nutrition and how - in the not-too-distant future.  I predict that the global food industry is in for an enormous shock as a new paradigm shift takes place, and, because the global food industry is so big in its entirety with so much money invested in various ways, there will be enormous global political wars and other reactions until the new paradigm is secure, at least for the time being.


The rate and volume of change is increasing with the changes in computing power, and a lot of people will be "blindsided."  Won't even see it coming because of the speed until it is too late.  But for now I want us to slow down just a little, step back in time and remind ourselves of something that has always been the way of the world regardless of things like rate and volume.  It is something we must never forget.


Like I said earler, I grew up in Texas and I did my share of cowboying.  As a result I have always liked stories about the old west, and Louis L'Amour is probably my favorite author.  I have read many of his books including all of the Sackett books, and, as a result, I have learned that Louis L'Amour was quite a philosopher and a wise man.  He frequently wove life lessons into his stories for us to consider.  For example, in his book, The Lonely Men (one of the Sackett novels) (circa 1875-1879), we find the following words in chapter 11.  I hope you will take the time to read them, and then think about what was said.


"Long after the others had turned in, I sat in the quiet of the old Don's study and talked with him.  The walls of the room were lined with shelves of leather-bound books, more than I had ever seen, and he talked of them and of what they had told him, and of what they meant to him."


'These are my world,' he said.  'Had I been born in another time or to another way of life I should have been a scholar.  My father had this place and he needed sons to carry on, so I came back from Spain to this place.  It has been good to me.  I have seen my crops grow and my herds increase, and if I have not written words upon paper as I should like to have done, I have written large upon the page of life that was left open for me.'


'There is tonic in this.'  He gestured toward the out-of-doors.  'I have used the plow and the Winchester instead of the pen and the inkstand.  There is tonic in the riding, in the living dangerously, in the building of something.'


'I know how the Apache feels.  He loves his land as I do, and now he seeks another way of life supplanting his.  The wise ones know they can neither win nor last, but it is not we who destroy them, but the times.'


'All things change.  One species gives way to another better equipped to survive.  Their world is going, but they brought destruction to another when they came, and just so will we one day be forced out by others who will come.  It is the way of the world;  the one thing we know is that all things change.'


'Each of us in his own way wars against change.  Even those who fancy themselves the most progressive will fight against other kinds of progress, for each of us is convinced that our way is the best way.'


'I have lived well here.  I should like to see this last because I have built it strong and made it good, but I know it will not.  Even my books may not last, but the ideas will endure.  It is easy to destroy a book, but an idea once implanted has roots no man can utterly destroy.' "



tags:
nutrigenomics human nutrition food safety food wars hunger malnutrition poverty genetics nanotechnology robotics kurzweil monsanto dupont pioneer corn genetically modified usda fda eggs beef poultry pork turkey fish shellfish fruits vegetables food borne illness wheat rice oats barley sorghum soybeans alfalfa protein vitamins minerals amino acids fats unidentified growth factors fatty acids genetic engineering