Too Cool for School ...

24 hours. 5 minutes sleep. 6,000 miles. We are in Phnom Penh. Straight off the plane. A tuk tuk ride - sything through the heat, smells and madness of an alien culture - to the Royal Agricultural University to meet the Rector ... the main man.

With excellent English and endless patience for daft questions he draws the skeleton of Cambodian agriculture so we might be able to add bits of flesh at a later date.

He spoke of the future mostly. The one time he dwelt on the past he became emotional. By 2015 Cambodia wants to be the third largest exporter of rice in the world. The target is 1 million tonnes exported. In 2011 they officially export nothing.  Already though, in the last 10 years, they have increased their average yield from 0.9 tonnes per hectare to 2.7 tonnes.  New varieties, irrigation, double cropping have all helped.

Before Pol Pot - in 1974 - 85% of the population were farmers.  Now it stands at 74%. 2 Hectares of Rice paddy makes a decent living especially if it can be double cropped. Yet most have around 1 hectare, many can’t double crop.  

Corporate agriculture is now gaining momentum. As there is no legally effective deeds of ownership, companies have started farming smaller farmers’ land.

The land price has increased from $1,000 per hectare in the recent past to $15,000.

But the one question I wanted a different answer than I got was in relation to New Entrants.  The brutal facts are 1. No one aspires to farm (too hard and looked down on) and 2. Most of the population have a direct family link to a farm anyway.  As my study is on aspirational new entrants from non-farming backgrounds, I briefly consider my stupidity for not thinking the trip through ... I should really go back to the airport ... but then cold beer amidst the craziness of Phnom Penh with two fine Welsh gentlemen was too hard to resist.   

No Sleep Till Phnom Penh ....

Notice: Navel gazing has been temporarily suspended on this blog. Disruption is likely to last until the 14th of February.  We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience caused. The author would like to assure readers (if there are any) that every effort will be made to continue the same low standard of waffle despite the adjustment in subject matter.  Thank you for your patience during this time.

Today we fly to Phnom Penh ... a city I know so little about I don’t even know how to pronounce it.  Capital of Cambodia, some obscure travel blogs have suggested that its only been recently that murder and rape have become social taboos there.  I suspect this information is unreliable in the extreme ... but just in case ... I’ve taken some body armour and a male chastity belt.

I have told a few farmers where I’m going and the looks in response have varied between incredulous to social black balling.  “What are you going to learn there?”, they say adding at least one more adjective than quoted to add emphasis.

As I’m effectively in middle age (... something I’m struggling in my brain to accept ...) I can vaguely remember the pictures on TV of the horrific famine there ... I can recall a film called “The Killing Fields” achieving Oscar recognition ... and - based on limited information - Pol Pot still makes it onto my ‘Top 5 Bad Blokes that used to run countries’ list.

Cambodia has a significant part of its history written in blood with a pen of misery.  That history centres on agriculture. Our history centred on agriculture once too ... but that was four centuries ago, not three decades. Pol Pot’s version of Agrarian Communism put the farmers as the saviours of the country and intellectuals as the curse [interesting you can’t be both].  It didn’t work. People starved to death.

We live in a country where often agriculture is perceived as tenuous, adjacent to the core wealth and prosperity of our nation. In Cambodia - where 70% of its population are farmers - agriculture is everything, crucial, central. Almost the inverse reflection of ours.

To recover from the horrors of the past requires an extreme resilience that our generation, in our country, in our industry have thankfully never had to look for.  I know I will learn things in Cambodia that I won’t learn anywhere else.

Operation Futile - Phase 2 (Shock & Awe) ...

Zero nine thirty hours, 19th of January, I perform a flanking maneuver and reach the village post box, encountering little resistance.  My breath is shortened by adrenalin (.... or smoking).  This has to work .... The first advance of Operation Futile - (ok ... that only means writing an article in the local paper) - has proven unsuccessful. Now with limited numbers (that just means me), many casualties (largely in the pride and ego regiments) and basic rations (no beer until I get to Cambodia) I have initiated my second assault. The mission: to secure land for my people (/sheep) and thus live an endless peace. 

I deploy many copies of a two page flyer into the post box.  These are to a number of Estates controlling a total of 275,000 acres; more flyers are addressed to all the Land Agents in the area - probably controlling a similar amount of acres.  That’s half a million acres ... and I only want 200.

I wrote the flyer in my own slightly jokey, slightly informal, slightly “special” style.  I know some people find this way of writing a bit weird and I’m guessing that that particular demographic might be highly represented in the world of land agents.    

I’ve had two responses though - one to offer sympathy, but he hadn’t let anything for 5 years and is unlikely to ... if things don’t change significantly.  The other was more promising - potentially a joint sheep venture on the nearest Estate to home. I’ve been to see him already and managed to speak, putting most of my words together in the right order.  I actually sold myself - which is unusual - and painted a picture of my sheep, breeding strategy and ambitions with a broad brush, using bright colours.  I can do no more now but hope. 

The other conversation I had was interesting too. A thoroughly decent chap who ran a big Estate.  He was totally cheesed off with the whole tenancy thing and his total distrust of politicians.  This mainly stems from the huge issue discussed earlier this decade in Scotland of allowing tenant’s to have an absolute right to buy their own farms.  He didn’t quite say “those commies in Holyrood” but it was evident he accepted MSP’s had absolutely no sympathy with his challenges in trying to protect his employers assets and glean any sort of income. 

In many ways it’s a class war out there - landlords versus tenants.  Each ensconced in their trenches, whilst farming is not allowed to grow on the battlefield due to their impasse.  I’d like to see the day when both sides agree to play metaphorical football in No Man’s Land, give each other a big hug and then busy themselves with something worthwhile like filling the trenches in.  Birds will sing, as the poppies sway in the breeze, bathing in the bright warmth of evening sunlight.  They will skip hand in hand through the fields, down the gentle hillside, toward the quaint Midsomer-like village of Cloudland-apon-Cuckoo.

Tenuous music video usage

PS Its to Heathrow on Wednesday then Cambodia on Thursday and then on to India on the 4th.  This will be my last trip abroad for Nuffield .... probably.  So then its a case of a slow surrender in accepting some special things can’t carry on forever.

Farmers 4 Justice ....

Only 15 days in and I’ve packed a lot into 2011 ... I’ve given up smoking three times already.    

I have used the ‘F (sweary) word’ - as a noun, verb, adjective and prefix - a total of 328 times.  Principally its usage related to EID tags and getting them into sheeps‘ ears ... its harder than you think ... if you are a bit useless.  I huffed and I puffed and now two thirds of the flock are done.  Some currently have 5 tags in their ears which - deep in the dark recesses of my mind - I think is illegal, punishable by continued tutting and a resultant long term sense of worthlessness.

I also had that weak stab at the resourcefulness I mentioned in the last post.  Its 75 days and counting before I need to be off my current grazing.  I have nothing secured for the summer (just writing this makes me feel slightly queazy).  So, I wrote a press release and sent it to my friendly local farming editor from my friendly local paper.   It has a circulation of 80,000 and a good farming section.  Alot of people read it and hence if you appear in it, the teasing is relentless.

Article so big, A4 size just wasn't enough!!

Not my best side ....

Obviously I’ve had no success.  There was a very nice lady that phoned up to say she wouldn’t like to see me stuck and has 100 acres. It’s even further away.  I worked out that by March this year - having had the grazings 35 miles away for 5 years - I will have travelled the equivalent of twice the circumference of the Earth just to get to the same point where established farmer’s walk out their house door!  .... I have the carbon footprint from the really rough area of hell.  The nice lady was nice enough to say she’d keep the offer on hold just in case I can substantially aid Kyoto Protocol emission targets and find something closer.

One of my friends - he just thinks he’s a client - said I had shot myself in the foot by saying, at the end of the piece, that if I don’t make it up the “Ladder” it would have been down to me and no one else.  He reckoned I had a duty to complain about what is obviously a failing system.

Now I’m feeling guilty.  I’ve also started thinking that perhaps if publicity and phase two of my plan - to be confessed in time - doesn’t work ... maybe it isn’t me after all ... maybe there is nothing available.  Phase three will have to be dressing up as Batman and shouting from the roof of the Parliament building at Holyrood ... either that or actually phoning people ... I’d prefer the former - I’m no good on the phone and like how I look in a Batman outfit.

I just feel there has to be opportunities out there ... people thinking about letting ground out ... but its the efficiency of providing them with comfortable solutions that is screwed.  Taxation; complicated, legal methods of tenure; risk (not knowing or trusting that person); security of tenure; right to buy; knowledge (lessors have no idea where or who all the potential lessees are); ignorance (they don’t comprehend the extent of the potential benefit); fear of the unknown ... they all cause friction and resistance along the path from landowners thought to landowners action. 

That’s the angel on my shoulder speaking ... the devil is whispering in my other ear that land ownership does not come without responsibility. It should not be a tax, subsidy or wealth haven that effectively encourages a lack of agricultural efficiency in many instances.  He reckons, that soon it will be in the national interest to farm land as efficiently as possible and poor land use will be outlawed.  He is really keen on the idea that I should get some mates involved, grab my pitchfork and storm the capital, shouting in a way that leaves no room for doubt that I am profoundly irritated ... Even he thinks the Batman costume is a bad idea, though.

There is the Farming Ladder - with or without rungs, that are obvious or just hidden - but there is also the person climbing it .... surely we have a duty to ourselves to climb it the very best we can, using everything in our power.  I’ve got a bit more in the locker than one article in the Dundee Courier .... last resort is my Wonder Woman outfit.

Weapons of Mass Distraction ....

I am easily distracted.  And those devils at Google know it.  They have started to make work for my idle hands to do.  On my Google Homepage they have now started to recommend YouTube video clips that I might want to waste yet more time with.  I duly oblige ...

Video 1.  A scientist from Harvard talks about the power of synthetic happiness.  He gives examples of people who have had to endure hardship and then quotes them afterwards.  All effectively said it was a blessing and that they were glad the proverbial had hit the fan ... in the end it made them happy.  He used the statistic that a year after two groups of people had a major event happen to them ... both groups scored the same for happiness ... one group had won the lottery ... the other had lost the use of their legs.  Basically there is something in us that convinces us we are happy with our situation ... however bad, we can adjust.  Synthetic happiness is as powerful and “real” as actual happiness.

Video 2.  This big guy I’ve never heard of - Tony Robbins - speaks ... he has a lot to say!  He suggests people think he is Mr Motivation ... he denies this ... then proceeds to motivate.   I am wary of Self Help Gurus.  They tend to be heavy, Max-Strength American types which my shallow Scottish Lite attitude finds hard to embrace.  But he said something that was particularly pertinent for those on the farming ladder.

He reckons that when we don’t achieve something, we convince ourselves that the reasons we didn’t are things like ... lack of time, lack of money, lack of opportunity.  Basically what we are convincing ourselves of, is it was due to a lack of resources.  He says the REAL reason we don’t achieve something is lack of resourcefulness.  

Big Tony

It brings to mind the gnarled old army veteran ... like Clint Eastwood but with less reliance on rude words ... that showed our Nuffield group round the Gettysburg battlefield.  His catchphrase ... his ultimate message was there are barriers to everything, many circumstances seem impossible and all of those that succeed do three vital things - they 1. ADAPT; 2. INNOVATE and 3. OVERCOME.  Clint actually mentioned this in the true classic film that is Heartbreak Ridge but he termed it as Improvise, Adapt and Overcome ... It must be a US Marine thing.

Foul mouthed Clint

This in turn brings to mind the first farmer I met in Australia and his reaction when I moaned about the system in the UK that prevented new entrants progressing.  The look he gave me suggested I may as well have said my favourite singer was Liza Minnelli, I loved West End Musicals and had strong opinions on male fashion. 

The point is ... ultimately it has to be up to the person on the ladder to find his or her way up it, despite the lack of rungs.  Lack of opportunity is really annoying but this annoyance can lead us to defeat ourselves ... to convince ourselves it can’t be done. 

Big Tony also spoke of what we want as human beings.  He boiled it down to two things - achievement and fulfillment.  The two aren’t necessarily the same and its fulfillment that is the most powerful.  Many make the mistake to assume achievement will provide fulfillment but quite often it doesn’t.  Maybe climbing all the way up the ladder isn’t the be all and end all.

So we can convince ourselves we are happy; we can convince ourselves its not our fault for not getting to where we want to be and we can even convince ourselves that the final achievement will provide us with ultimate fulfillment.  Perhaps we should be wary of the salesman inside us all ... be less convinced ... and look at things a bit differently.

My brain is overheating ... I’m going to have to stop now ... but soon I’m going to have a weak stab at resourcefulness ... I have a plan which hopefully I’ll tell you about soon.  Not sure if Clint would approve but I’m sure it will be my very own Heartbreak Ridge.