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Rural System? Just Dreaming …
A For-Profit Conglomerate for
Meaningful Jobs
Healthful Communities
and Improved Natural Resource Management
by Robert H. Giles, Jr., Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus
Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia
2007
Dreaming: Not chimerian, that monster of Greek mythology, fanciful … absurd. Was it a hybrid or just imagined, full blown in the dark of the night, a large hybrid organism or perhaps the result of juvenile planned grafting? Maybe it had no form but was the void of music, and the incongruous first movement of the symphony underway. Just Dreaming …
The basement design concepts and principles behind Rural System, including doubts. |
A design is a statement of a desired end state or expected performance for a system and the conditions and functions needed to achieve that desired state or performance. The goodness of design may be judged before and after it is implemented. Judgments after it is implemented may be based on: (1) the magnitude of the necessary differences among the states and performances, (2) changes needed between the design presentation (documents, etc.) and the actual results, or (3) some standard. Necessary change is implied in #2 (not some alterations by an outside force that, in essence, prevented the design from being implemented; surely not meaningless or whimsical change in an energy-limited world). A design must identify the desired condition, describe the current condition, and explain or describe the means (possible viable alternatives) to reduce the difference between the two. Poorly conceived portions of a system, for example, programs for which data were not collected or analyzed, may need to be re-designed or corrected.
A plan is a text, often with images and electronic aids outlining a design. A plan and a design are nearly synonymous. A plan, in some circles, will list many options and indicate the preferred action at each step along the pathway to full implementation. Conventional plans tend to emphasize the "functions" or performance in the above definition of design and often provide timing, sequences, and scheduling, thus seem more precise than a design. Plans are descriptive of a present and past system, and prescriptive of optional future states. They tend to be specific about timing and placements and the means to implement a design. If implemented well, a plan will achieve a large set of objectives that are stated within it.
Classical forestry and similar land management follows a plan. Rarely will "forest design" be discussed. To maintain a forest, trees are cut, replanted, and next year, a few more are cut, and replanted. This is called a "rotation" and when practiced well, the same area is re-harvested again in, say, 100 years, those years being the length of the rotation or "rotation age." If one acre per year is cut every year for 100 years, at the end of year 99, the owner will know exactly what acre is to be harvested next year. It takes 100 acres to implement this simple plan. Most owners do not have even 100 acres. Most do not want to cut only one acre per year (for many reasons). The result is that there are large cuts, long periods of waiting, low financial returns on land production, and deteriorating sites. The next harvest will usually be worse than the previous one. Some people do not care. They want to "get theirs" now; they have no or little responsibility, they say, to future generations. (Having just collected money from a harvest, it is good that a past generation did not feel the same way about them!).
Why have private landowners not practiced good forestry or related other rural action? (I discuss this further in Chapter 12 on The Working Platform in Chapter 27, The Forest Group and in Chapter 31.) If we knew, we could probably design systems to increase such practice. We do not need more studies to answer this question. The answers differ for each person for they and their land are unique. Average answers will not serve us well. Reasons vary greatly but are about the same for the farmer with only pasture and crop land. Their lands were abused, their areas are too small, they do not have knowledge, they do not know where to get advice, advice that they got was excessively general and not site specific, they are distant from mills or markets, they do not know where to get help in implementing advice perceived to be suitable, they could not financially take the advice or the help (or borrow the money or take the risk for doing so), and usually (in the past) the advice was rejected because it was unrelated or at odds with their objectives. Advice freely given is suspect, "probably worth about as much as it costs." Any one of these reasons is sufficient to prevent forestry and agricultural production being actively practiced by the private owner of small tracts. Variable results always suggest the need for more research. In this case, we do not need more on this topic. Rural System addresses them all positively and works for profitable total land use systems. It needs a design and then a plan to implement that design.
The Rural System staff knows from past studies of "the firm" that natural resource systems are not unique. The input requirements for forests are like those for conventional and well-known agricultural commodity systems. Commodities are produced, often at high-energy costs (and even higher preparation, storage, packaging, transportation and preservation energy costs), and also with high negative products such as sedimentation and water pollution. As Hawken (1993:52) said, "We need a different kind of growth, one that reduces and changes the inputs of raw materials and energy, and simultaneously eliminates the outputs of waste." These dimensions of production demand attention and they are so diverse and abundant that they require many approaches and techniques for their solution.
We must design a really good system. Then, perhaps, we can implement it to solve many of our problems. What does that mean? We know in general that we need a way to promote environmental improvements that are fundamental to developing the rural areas and reducing unemployment, even poverty. Given a document describing how to do such a thing, how should a person evaluate its design? More precisely, how would anyone know that they had a design that might be implemented? How do we know when we have a good design for an ecosystem … or anything?
The Good Design
We design today. A person or group evaluates that design. They decide that it is more or less good. What is good and how shall we know? What is the epistemological base for our design? I answer that in Chapter 5. The meaning of "good" is the fundamental ground of philosophers, but here it means an excellent match between actual conditions in the environment and an imagined and well-described condition. We have a good condition when we have achieved an approximation for a mental model of good conditions and processes. It is a concept of a model of a potential best state. It may be dynamic. It may be personal or group-specified. "Good" is a condition that approximately and sufficiently meets a set of often-imprecise and sometimes conflicting criteria such as those for judging whether the proposal seems to be:
"Good" is an intermediate state of how well objectives have been achieved on a continuum between "not at all" or "badly" and "excellent." The above criteria are quite general and appropriate for many systems. Other criteria are needed.
Comprehensive
We operate from general systems theory (Von Bertalanffy 1968, 1975) slightly modified. It provides a general and comprehensive view of almost anything, possibly for analysis and design, possibly as grounds for deciding whether something is or is not a system. I conceive of it as in the figure below and discuss it further in Chapter 6, Systems and later in Groups.
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We work on the concept that lands need not and should not be managed as forests, or fields, but as total farms. A "summer-place" may be a cabin, yard, field, and wooded area. It is bought, sold, taxed, and thought about as "the place." Rural System lands are not merely forests but parts of larger land holdings. Decisions are made by individuals and not about forests but about their total holdings. To sell or buy, to fertilize, to delay harvests -- all are decisions made in the context of annual income, taxes, family health, and owner's age.
| Rural System is grounded in "Caring for the Earth" A Strategy for Sustainable Living, a statement issued jointly by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, World Conservation Union; the United Nations Environment Program; and the World Wildlife Fund for Nature, Gland, Switzerland in 1991. The Sustainable Biosphere Initiative of the Ecological Society of America recognized issues of change in climate, biological diversity, atmosphere, land use, and biogeochemical processes. These all affect the workings of ecosystems. |
A forest, as important as it may be to a forester or recreationist, is a part of an estate. If the owner is "bankrupt," no optimum management strategy can be devised (unless "clear-cut and sell" is the strategy). A forest needs to be seen as one "stock" in a stock-and-bond investment portfolio. It may be "up" or "down" or "holding its own" in profitability or gaining wealth.
A portfolio manager will rarely make decisions about the fate of any stock-holding without thinking about the total holdings, long-term objectives, estimates of total holdings financial performance, and naturally, estimates of future interest rates, the nature of the economy, and how likely political change may influence it. The forest is a "stock holding," one unit of richness in a typically diverse land portfolio. The forest is one element in the annual tax return. Its net returns may influence capital-gains taxes and even the tax bracket of the owner. To cut or not cut timber may be a tax-based decision, one not reflecting acceptance or rejection of a forester's recommendation based on superior tree growth models and financial models of the forest itself. Most land owners now know more about stock value growth than tree growth.
Implemented or Not
I worked with the university architectural faculty for a few years and some faculty members held the premise that a design was never any good unless the structure was actually built. That idea was debated, but the kernel of the debate was one about total systems practicality. I feel that the ideas of Rural System, that is its design, can only be judged to be good (or not) after they have been implemented. There is much debate on this topic. Some will state that (1) acceptability and (2) use should be used as criteria. If there is no use, therefore, the design is poor. I prefer not to require implementation as a standard for the good design. There are too many ignorant people, young and inexperienced people, and people of ill will to allow them to become the determinants of design quality. Peers and potential citizens of the designed system can judge the goodness of design proximally, conceptually. That a perfect design is not implemented because of a budgetary shortfall in another system, an earthquake or other mega-catastrophe, or the capricious whim of an administrator - none of these things should prevent the judgment: this is an excellent design. It is that excellence which we seek. I can write, think, discuss, even develop computer simulations of these ideas, but they need to be tested in the fires of building, maintenance, performance, and critique. I'm working on finding a way or ways to implement the ever-improving ideas. Perhaps the readers can help me to find a way.
Winning
Running off in all directions may be good exercise but it will not solve the problems we are set on solving. I once posed for classes that we (in wildlife management) were engaged in a big game but we did not know how we would know when we won. My small grandson during his first soccer game played hard and after it was over asked if they had won. There are similarities. People seem to want a single, simple scoring mechanism, a simple way to summarize a "win." How can we tell when the game is over, who won? We still have not decided about the meaning of win. I have assumed that there would be a break-through in my career and that some parsimonious, brilliant solution would be published. Maybe it has, but I have searched and not recognized it. Thus I describe the basis for a Rural System win, anticipating that it can be re-formulated and revised when the conceptual breakthroughs are made. The major objective is making profit. The secondary objective is achieving a high value of Q, an index to quality of life that reflects most human needs.
Ecological Economics
I have a very large file that I called the "Illusive Wildlife Unit." I struggled with others over quantifying "the worth of a duck" for the courts in game law violation cases, environmental impact analyses, and "proof of importance" for annual agency budget proposals. Being able to make such an estimate seemed essential to federal agencies as they debated the alleged monetary costs and benefits of federal projects like constructing large dams. I summarized my understanding in over 20 ways that economists had attempted to estimate these "non-market" and "non-consumptive" values (Giles, 1978). I fell into the trap, stated more than a few years ago by the Bard's Portia in the Merchant of Venice:
"Therefore prepare thee to cut off the flesh.
Shed thou no blood, nor cut thou less nor more
But just a pound of flesh …"
I searched for ways to express the value of an animal, a species, even the worth of the entire wildlife resource of the state. I had been trapped. I recalled my football story. Cheerleaders, like wildlife, are important, but they take on real value only within the presence of several football games, and winning or losing conditions change their importance.
Many values are inseparable. "existence value," suggested by some economists, may be in having the whole system (e.g., a wilderness), not some part. Some things gain value only in the presence of competitors. Not to exploit an opportunity may be to forego profits, thus denoting a perceived minimum financial value to such opportunities. Not to exploit carefully an opportunity to change waste into a raw material is to ignore a cost reduction, thus a potential profit increase. I think that we have potentials for reducing several waste streams but I especially desire reducing soil, water, and nutrient losses from the rural areas and waters. Not wastes, these are basic resources dribbling through our fingers like play sand. They are losses that are easily translated as lost capital, at least "costs" of business for the future. Many are naturally cyclic; it seems stupid, certainly risky, to break such cycles.
I no longer work on the "worth of a duck" question. That persists for federal and university economists, very well paid by tax dollars. The coin of the new realm (discussed in Chapter 7) is that of company profits over 150 years from the rural resources of a region. It appears that there is the potential of a profitable, expandable private company being seen as the cost of achieving regional natural resource enhancement, full land use development, and community stability. It's a cost that taxpayers do not have to bare. It's a transformation of commerce to a restorative undertaking. As Hawkens (1993:12) observed, "Environmental protection should not be carried out at the behest of charity, altruism, or legislative fiat. As long as it is done so, it will remain a decorous subordinate to finance, growth, and technology."
But why should protection or any other resource practice be carried out? We're trying to see our objectives very clearly and then looking for a perfect solution for achieving them. We stumble over awareness that such a solution for one piece of land surrounded by failing neighbors and difficulties of many types cannot be a real solution. Regional action is needed to retain profitability of the single ownership, even if it is large. The seeds of action for Rural System had been sown, and the good crop will be recognized by the design criteria (clearly related to those listed above) of:
There are other design criteria. These are like the boundaries of Type 4 objectives (Chapter 7). Some people will confuse program quality or goodness with questions of verification or validation. Among the criteria for goodness can be discovered several fundamental ones. It seems worthy to continue to search for these, to find the primary conceptual cuts as between "analysis and design" as among plant "monocots and dicots," and others such as "structure-dynamics-and relations," or "inputs-processes-outputs-feedback-feedforward." It seems worth discussing the meaning of "genuine" emoted by an observed design. To list criteria of design goodness only opens the designer to the question of the epistemologist: "How do you really know?" or, weakly, "How do you know these are good criteria? The source, the root please!?"
Biological Roots of Good Design
From biology there can be seen and learned the roots for good design. All of biology is negentropic. This means that its main success is in opposing, entropy, the natural tendency of all matter and thus energy (because of the first law of thermodynamics) to dissipate, to disperse, to move toward cosmic otherness. (This is the second law.) Biology - all of it - has very few governing laws. Those that exist can be interpreted as life system objectives and they are parsimonious as would be expected for simple fellows like amoeba and armadillos (Dasypus), the quiescent coontail (Ceratophyllum), and foxtail (Setaria).
The objectives within biological systems (re-phrased, the criteria for population survival) seem to be:
The fundamentals of botany are in large measure the study of light-gathering structures - leaf size, shape, organization, duration, and movement, and alternative energy gathering structures and strategies. Mixed strategies are played by decomposers, damsel flies, dugongs, and dingoes as they collect energy. Optimization is the byword for energy collectors because even plants with abundant "extra" or surplus solar radiation become competitors because there is always a mountain of shade from a real mountain, a sister plant, or a hostile distant relative. What is the optimum tree size? (Massive storage; solar source advantages (as in Sequoia, but what of other factors such as ice and snow?)
What is best …, now and for the long run? (I do not think biological systems (maybe not even humans) do or can deal with the second part of the question.) A mutant in the form of a seedling may one day be a survivor in an environment unfit for its predecessors. That environment was a past event without the purpose of future benefit. In fact, mutation, if judged by any index other than retrospective performance, would be considered a giant waste. Most mutants do not survive.
I continue the search for the proper design criteria, in general, but specifically for Rural System. The high energy bonding of biological systems, that extra-special energy of organic as compared to inorganic systems, is dependent upon nitrogen and phosphorus. In seeking to simplify, to gain conceptual control, it is easy to oversimplify. A person interested in and committed to becoming a phosphorous expert should see the world through "phosphorous-colored glasses." It is a needed perspective; there are others; none of us can see the whole systems with which we must deal. To evaluate the performance of a system it is necessary to have objectives and a means for knowing whether those objectives are achieved. Certain aspects of the system must be quantified to provide an index to the performance of the system. For Rural System, the index is profit and the sub index is the rate of the energy budget (which can be translated into profit). The latter provides ease in making transfers between system components, a universal and not-likely-to-be-modified general theory, a ready basis for expanding or contracting models, and the potential for unification with models and computer systems developed by others on the same topic.
An energy or energetics objective is a very powerful one for the system designer. This theme is clearly evident in Moen (1973), Odum (1971), and in much of the work of various biome study groups of the former International Biological Program. I resisted the energy theme at first, attempting water-based (e.g., runoff) models, but found that they could readily be converted to energy-based (and thus economic) models. I tried animal-specific models but found forage and behavior were readily unified in a concept of energy (Rayburn and Giles 1975). I attempted with Damalas (1972) to use the forest floor litter as the focal point of ecosystem modeling and found it too limited and that carbon dioxide evolution was, after all, a concept of energy transfer. In human models the concepts of food and travel are easily transferred into energetic measures. The models of living space heating and cooling adapted smoothly to an energy theme and were already united with concepts of the shade provided by houses and the shade, wind, and radiation all associated with urban wildlife plantings.
The excitement of energy-modeling or of designing whole systems on a unifying theme of energy is the excitement of a child walking into a room of jewels. He cannot see the parts for the whole. Then the manager-modeler begins examining each. It takes time; there are riches aplenty. It is good to look often at the room. It is fun to run and show off a special treasure. The energy room is full of theory, equations, and relationships (Odum and Odum 1976, Odum 1983).
Ecology is often defined as the study of interactions. Some definers add "…between plants, animals, and their environment," while others, like "human ecologists" prefer not to add this phrase. They are satisfied with "interactions," or tend to point out the person-to-person relationships. Few do analyses of interactions or design for optimum interactions. The most usual "analysis" is a list of ecosystem components; occasionally these are presented as webs of various relations, strong, weak, and supposed. Energy provides a universal and unifying perspective, primarily because of its role at all levels, its transferability (atomic) with energy, and its profound role. All systems are highly sensitive to this one variable!
Animals and plants are energy budgeters. They appear to use a most intricate and genuinely fascinating array of strategies, easily interpreted as budgeting. There is attention to gaining and holding a net positive balance. The definition of death is having a net negative balance (for almost anything) for too long. The long term performance measure for life is existence within a reproducing population. Within the natural world, this seems to mean organisms collecting, storing and conserving energy and reproducing that system which does these three.
Incoming energy must equal that outgoing. Living is very energy expensive. It must continually be taken in (as for most ungulates) or it must have been stored and then replenished when needed (preferably just before the need or the risk of failure is increased). Conspicuous examples of storage in plants are wood structures and root systems (notice the potato!) and in animals (notice the walrus) and muscle mass. There is an exciting interplay with each animal. For example: get food; get fat (too much fat = collecting efficiency low; too thick = risks high); stored food (caches = loss high; store fat = costs high and collection efficiency low), etc. Clearly each predaceous animal cannot make such decisions each day or for every kill. These actions are learned (as from parent- and group-watching and some from trial-experience) or genetically disposed (by the information content of the gene).
The energy costs of reproduction are very great. But in the life picture, so is everything. The second-law asserts that for every transformation of form, for example, from 10 grams of squeaking mouse to 10 grams of snarling fox, there is significant loss of energy … of the magnitude of about 90%. The so-called "rule-of-l0" is useful in teaching but is very variable. It states that at each transformation of food in an ecosystem there is only one-tenth the energy left. For example, 1000 units of grass become 100 units of mouse, which becomes 10 units of snake, which becomes 1 unit of the consuming hawk. The precision of the 10-factor is not important but the concept is: energy is passed through the various levels of the ecological community; there is great loss at each level and no chances for gains. Even stability is out of the question because of the ominous energy laws under which we live. A fairly stable state for biological and any other system requires (1) energy input and (2) feedbacks. Losses or costs of living are already assured. The fundamental laws are known and thus the counteractions and strategies for Rural System for the future can be attempted.
Geist (1978:1-2) provided the arguments for reproduction as the major biological imperative, perhaps the law. Perhaps collection, storage, and conservation are done only as the basis for reproduction. He stated: that individuals act on behalf of their genes. To maximize its reproductive fitness an individual maximizes the proportion of individuals endowed with its own genes in the succeeding generation. It can do so only if it survives. In maximizing reproductive fitness, an individual must act on behalf of other individuals only if they share a significant fraction of the same genes.
There may be considered a grand strategy, trading off between (1) securing gains against competitors and the vagaries of the physical environment and (2) expanding, either geographically or into new resource exploitation opportunities. However, genes act through individuals. What must an average individual do to maximize its reproductive fitness? It ought to do the following:
These rules apply for sexual reproduction and they are played in a mixed strategy. Simultaneous or sequential application of the rules is needed … then evaluation. I think there are design lessons here as we translate "biological population" as Rural System.
It appears that species have changed over time, surviving and adapting in a ponderous game of energetics. In the game, the environment makes a move; a species must move. "Staying in" is to win for there seems to be no scoring mechanism, no specific top score. Playing not to lose is the strategy. The objective is formulated in several ways; reproduce, subject to the other three rules; conserve, subject to the other three; etc. There may be a balanced, simultaneous, additional strategy. These may be different strategies employed in different ecosystems or species. Nevertheless, it now seems clear that the species that win over the eons are those that have met these three criteria.
It is possible to conceive of a natural design, presumably thus of a designer, but not necessarily. The design is thus of forms and systems. The criteria for "good" are the criteria for survival. They are the characteristics of the fit as in "survival of the fittest." Similar biological syllogisms such as "nature abhors a vacuum" are reflections of the fourth rule. "Migrate, mutate, or die" is a reflection of a behavioral or genetic response to changing energetics.
People challenge the grand sweep of history and of evolution when they make decisions at odds to these above-listed basic rules. I believe they are so fundamental to life and so manifest in the human consciousness that they impinge upon theological constructs (supported by Odum 1983:509), perceptions of things beautiful (Odum 1976:218), and have meaningful dimensions in all aspects of design, broadly those of efficiency, effectiveness, simplicity, diversity, homeostasis, and many others.
Rural System's design is for maintaining or restoring productivity and in some cases to approach maximum productivity but only within the context of reasonable profits. (There are few places where we even know what this productivity is or can be.) Pictures of historical giant tulip popular trees and oaks are of a size almost unbelievable. We believe that, with management, they can be seen again. In few places they can be afforded because past a point, gains in wood of specified high quality are not profitable. Tree volume, wood quality, and monetary value of the standing log become stable, and then eventually decline. Rural System staff works with all of the benefits of all trees of a stand. In each stand the total actual and potential value to the owner is evaluated. While wood value may decline in a very old stand, the floral or faunal complex may produce esthetic, recreation, tourism, bird-watching or other benefits suggesting appropriate harvest delay. (Even though there is financial loss in wood value, the net gains of the delay---especially for the long-term increase in site quality may fully justify the no-cut recommendation.) This not negative economics; it is a promotion of rational financial strategies to maximize profits and other benefits from a forest over a very long time. We may call it a program for "sustained benefits" if we must (wading into the "sustained yield" and "sustained development" morass; Chapter 8).
Design Elements and Premises
Starting at the End
No play on words, the intent of "start at the end" is to suggest that a desired end product, a precisely stated result, is of foremost importance. This is consistent with the above definition of a design. The issue of adopting a concept or project is grounded in "how will you know when it has happened?" Discussions, studies, analyses, modeling, planning, and design are done only to achieve an end, and that is the decision to adopt the design and to implement it.
Making Timely Responses
Incomplete designs and mis-matches are detractors. Enough of them qualify a document as a bad plan. Another area of design failure is the natural rate of change in a system and the mismatch of the design with the emerging system. If the system is very dynamic (e.g., a small rural community), a design that will not accommodate the on-going change before the plan becomes implemented can hardly be judged to be good.
Selecting the Proper Scale
Early advisors about Rural System wanted to discuss "where to start?" and "within what small enterprise?" Many people answered "start small" as I discussed Rural System with them (Chapter 2, story #6). The answer was doom, for it promised diseconomy of scale, one of the very large barriers and difficulties within the rural environment that the system design sought to breach. We had to achieve adequate size.
I had no time to grow Rural Systemand other reasons for not starting. Nevertheless, I was convinced that "small" was the regional problem. The markets were not large or diverse, the number of products that could be produced and stored for standard lot sales was too small, the transportation costs were too great for small lot sizes, the slaughter facilities were inadequate for processing many cows, milk production too low or uncertain to support the pickup service, the costs too high for facilities for uncertain or small number of animals to be processed. Prices of production supplies relate to the scale of operation. Small projects tend to be affordable but in Rural System work they are often unwise and result in unstable and unsustainable conditions, the opposite of the desired "sustainable" conditions of the economic development literature. A small project is afforded like one of repairing and covering a mile of road in a degraded 50-mile section. Even 5 miles of repair distributed equitably among villages along the road still can result in an awful, axle-breaking roadway. There is a threshold rule. The capital stock becomes useful only when it meets a minimum standard of benefit production. Efficiencies are gained when large equipment is operated over many acres or several periods, not underutilized. Small is a major rural problem.
I was "starting large," studying other aspects of proper scale, especially those of the region of work. Realizing that geographical features of the Earth are constantly changing is one of the great insights of the human mind. Massive plates of the Earth crust have moved, "floated" around. Continents grinding against each other have created conditions of unimaginable tentativeness. It continues today, with Europe's coast and Virginia's Atlantic coast separating at a rate of several centimeters a year. The distance and rate seem like a trifle but even in the geologically-brief 10,000 years since the last glaciations affecting the area and pre-settlement people roaming the land, the distance moved could have been 650 feet. The mapped area was once in an equatorial area, evident by the fossils of plants growing then. The plate has migrated northward over hundreds of millions of years. It is essential to know the changes in animals and plants since the glacial period, including relict spruce forests on mountains, Ohio bogs, or ruffed grouse struggling among the hardwoods where the aspen once grew. The shape of the post-glacial world is that damped by millions of beavers all seeking, each year, ever-higher elevations to build their peak flow-changing, terracing dams.
"The environment" still seems to me to be a topical arena for significant concern and much work. "Quality of life" was similarly a giant umbrella concept under which many different people cluster (discussed later) but it catches the essence of my concern. There is slippage and it needs to stop, even improve. We have to scrap doubts (such as I expressed above to be open to discussion) and scholarly cautions and to act as if we know we have a set of problems that will not disappear and that are not likely to decline without active work. There are clear current economic problems, but environmental problems also abound. Most of these can be perceived as costs for us all, at least losses. The World Bank estimates the costs of environmental degradation are 4 to 8 percent of gross domestic product annually. These problems are related, and solutions in one area nest well within the other. In The Saskatchewan Environmental Agenda: Securing a Sustainable Future it was said "…it is not possible to have a healthy economy or society in the long term without a healthy environment." They, unlike others using "health" and "sustainable" ambiguously, developed environmental policies intended to have an impact on human health.
Because of the way we live today, our civilizations are at risk. The 6 billion people alive now, especially the one billion in the best-off countries, are excessively and poorly using natural resources and seriously over-stressing the Earth's ecosystems. World population may likely double in 60 years, but the Earth will be unable to support everyone unless there is less waste and extravagance, and a more open and equitable alliance between rich and poor (families, communities, counties, and countries). Even then, the likelihood of a satisfactory life for all is remote unless present rates of populations increase are drastically reduced and distribution of people relative to resources is address daily. The picture is dark.
Problems of Scale
In the US about a third of the land is in farmland. Competing agencies mix land use change to justify their budgets. Farm land turning once again, as natural, to forests may justify forestry budget needs or it may be the agency's wail over farmland lost. There is no clear picture. Farm and forest land around cities is being put under structures. Some wild animal species are benefiting from that, others being threatened. In the Southeastern US, a majority of private (non-industrial) landowners own between 100 and 1000 acres. Only 5% own larger tracts. About half of the owners live on their lands. There are 200 million acres of forest in the southeastern states (18 million in Virginia). In general terms 70% are privately owned (about 13 million acres in Virginia), 20% are industry lands, and 10% are public (Brunson et al. 1996). There is a lot of private rural land, and people are leaving it in droves. The profits there are low, legal issues great, the work is hard, and child-oriented current societal demands difficult to meet from the farm home-place. International markets for food supplies ebb and flow creating great price fluctuations for the farm produce.
Owners of forest land receive little income from their land. Less than half of the owners in the Southeast (40%) receive any income from it and it is less than half of their income for less than 5% of them. The only way that most of these people can seem to be reasonable in a money-dominant society is to claim that they own forests for wildlife, natural beauty, personal recreation, and the satisfaction of land ownership. "Investment in land" is generally stated by about half of the owners as their objective after the above four factors are tallied. Investment in land generally with increasing value (and with speculative high gains) is widely recommended for holders of diverse portfolios. With apparent high costs, rumors of low returns, increasing taxes and liability threats, it is reasonable that intensive forestry within a total resource management system has not emerged. The work of Rural System is an alternative way to achieve financial gains and the typically-stated benefits.
Most forests are in small tracts. There seems to be no other way to make money from a small stand of trees than just to cut, then to look at it for 60 or more years for woody plant cells to grow around a 2 x 4 piece of lumber. This is called "waiting," not forestry.
Many people think that "scale" is a more important or more interesting topic than ever before. Dr. Dave Trauger summarized the entire Rural System idea as a solution to the problem of scale. Not just avoiding the "too small" but finding the appropriate scale becomes critical. The potential for a forest to be productive is strongly related to its size (and of course other factors, but this need not be said for each factor). A forest must be large enough to justify management costs. Where advice may cost $500, then at least $500 in extra benefits (confidence, risk reductions, or net gains) can result if the advice is followed. To pay less is likely to be infeasible to a consultant; to pay $500 or more is likely to be judged readily as irrational.
Rural System does not solve "smallness" but attacks it, reducing it. One marketing specialist observed that Rural System would not work because there were inadequate markets. That was a few years ago. Now there is e-commerce and the potential market is worldwide. No longer is the region and the people there the market. No longer must big lots be produced to meet the requirements of the big-lot buyers. The buyer is the person with a computer, a credit card, and access to a still-operating delivery system (with essential customs interventions), now worldwide. The product to be sent can be a book, a handcrafted doll, woven materials, baked goods, even frozen meat products.
Any small tract of land with trees that cannot experience a reasonable rotation (either in stabilizing wood removed or area treated) suffers the problem of scale. Where the area of ownership is large, a single Rural System Tract may have many contained units. When the area is small (or a small mapped part of a larger area), they may be (voluntary of course) managed in unique ways. When the area is small (or a small mapped part of a larger area), they may be (voluntary of course) managed as a single forest.
Scale influences costs. A small cost that may be overcome by being involved in Rural System is that of contracting for, arranging for, and reducing the travel costs for the owner and the forester. Travel time and costs from office to any forest, on average, are great. A forester working with 10-20 forests within an area could readily regularly visit each forest for a few hours, make observations, up-date records ... all at no appreciable extra costs.
A single computer, accountant, office, legal counsel, advertiser, products marketing group, and security group can serve all Rural System Tracts. All are likely to be prohibitively costly for the small tract owner but are affordable for the larger total unit of Rural System.
Design work must raise the following macro- and microeconomic issues for lands and, where possible, speak to them in reverse progression:
Expertise Costs
The apparently high cost of forestry and other land use consultants is, in part, due to the few customers and high overhead and expenses per customer. The Rural System concept stabilizes the "consultant's" income, reduces costs, and by other incentives, makes the service affordable. It may have been affordable before, but since less than 20% of private forest harvests are now done under the guidance of a forester (1997), it seems that the appearance has been otherwise. One objective, not intended to be hidden, is the desire of the staff to move land to its potentials for the land owner and to bring more rural land under wise management.
Trust Land Management
One option for all or part of Rural System Tracts is designation as trust lands. These are dedicated for perpetual existence in their current rural land uses. They are carefully managed for esthetic, recreational, and other benefits. Owners and families retain the use of their land but it is intended to remain and retain public benefits and services (scenery, carbon storage, water, watershed values, flood peak reduction, fishing, and other benefits are derived from the dedication and foregone taxes). "Limited-liability partnerships" are being formulated, allowing many forests, separate from each other, to be managed as a single forest. Instead of 10 20-acre forests, a 200-acre forest composed of the 10 units is managed as a single unit. Harvest regulation, management, boundary work, protection, sales, harvests, and marketing are done from a single office to achieve cost effectiveness--and annual returns when profits are made. The expectation (the lowest measure of success) is that at least annual real estate taxes will be paid and land ownership will not be a net annual cost. At least this will reduce the tendency of society to liquidate forests and to forego all of their real and potential benefits. Conflicts are on the horizon, for land is difficult to be retained as scenic pasture when meat prices are very low. Forest rotations are impossible to maintain when wood prices are low, labor unavailable, or wood processing centers close. Rural System have computer aids that can assist in clarifying the objectives of owners for trust lands and then establishing and managing such lands for owners and those who next acquire such lands.
Diversification
Financial advisors suggest diversifying investments. There is a limit to that and few advisors will suggest the strategy of holding equal amounts of money invested in each enterprise. Such a strategy, if existing in nature, would produce for ecologists the highest biodiversity score. Ecologists argue for diversity but rarely for equal numbers of California condors and Carolina wrens. Diversity, well analyzed, tends to suggest a stable aggregate system, i.e., when some stocks are down, others are up and thus the income is about even. The same generally applies to regions and the pain occurs in a region without diversity, and the single business present falters. There have to be many enterprises, subsystems, all of their profits tallied together (hopefully working together) for a stable profit record to be produced. There needs to be variety in sizes as well as topics addressed by each enterprise, and computer assistance is needed to simulate very bad and very good hypothetical events and to plan from these by creating appropriate structures and functions. In ecological work, the count of species is called "richness." The count of enterprises is called diversity. It needs to be given special treatment since excessive richness can exceed the limits of profitable span of control. Without the proper divisions and leadership plans, a single enterprise may fail in profitability (or totally from any cause) because leadership looses adequate control.
While supportive of "biodiversity" enthusiasm, I take diversification to mean and include more than endangered species preservation. We return to biological roots (above) to assert that a variety of animals are needed in the life processes of a variety of plant populations and that plants, including trees, need animals for rooting-body development, fertilization, and many other parts of their complex set of life requirements and stand-support functions. We work to maintain and enhance particular aspects of land uses, hundreds of such parts, and are reluctant to generalize and to amalgamate them unnecessarily in a "diversity index." (We'll do it if necessary, but we have a collection of indices and will find one that will trump your claim of failing to diversify.)
Consilience E.O. Wilson's "Consilience: the Unity of Knowledge" (1998), affirmed my thoughts, expanded my perception, and gave me new heart for the battle. The battle it seems is with everyone because of his or her analytical and descriptive procedures. It is with the splitters who claim that ever-increasing refinement and precision is the way to truth, all the while the lumpers claim that meaning is in the species, the organism, the ecosystem. Even my classification as "lumpers or splitters," (learned from botany classes), leads away from the intellectual power that lies with the premise of the working hypothesis that things are more alike than different. Things like ideas and animals have very common elements or operative forces. When the evident differences are temporarily laid aside (just for fun; just because) and entities are examined, they all have very common structure (discussed later as isomorphism) and processes. They progress from common, innate, or intrinsic rules. "…The world is orderly and can be explained by a small number of natural laws (Wilson 1998:4).
Wilson, as did Einstein, had that "wonderful feeling" of realizing how similar things are, how form and pattern replicate, how to know one thing well provides the playing board for other ideas and work … for the next game. The game is unending for along with the freeing thought that there is unity comes the burdensome thought that it must be understood, the connections made, and that we might understand who we are and even whether "why are we here?" is a good question.
"Isomorphism" is the system theorist's word for observations that the world is full of similar structures - snow flakes, flowers, ferns, crystals - and that many things can be called systems and they can be evaluated in a few terms of system theory: inputs, processes, output (or objectives), feedback, feedforward, and context. "Consilience" is broader, emphasizes processes, and shows the major similarities and causative links among biology, environmental topics, and the social sciences, for example, ranging among forest genetics, the beauty of the forest, environmental ethics, and the philosophical grounds of esthetics.
Operating on the first-order principle that things tend to be isomorphic is consilient behavior. This is a behavior to be studied and rewarded within Rural System. Realizing that many things in life seem to be symbolized as tetrahedronal was for me an early awareness in my systems work. It was evidence for me of fundamental isomorphism. The more I worked with the idea and sought confirmation, the more evidence I found. There were detractors and they asked if I found metaphysical meaning in them … and mushrooms. I found the limits, it had been useful (and it still may be a peek at truth (Wilson, 1998: 50); the regular triangulated
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To design a system such as Rural System is to engage in consilient behavior such as to use the fundamental principles observed in biology. To study the biology and psychology of objective-setting by groups is consilient behavior for it leads from the biology of dreams, through the emotional maturity for risk-taking, to the end-reasons for designing and operating any human system. Consilient behavior, is taking a systems approach (until a better pattern or awareness emerges; i.e., testing it in the hot coals of daily use for almost every purpose, seeing an operating system (or its flaws or incompleteness) in everything). Consilient behavior can be scary. It operates on principles that are unlikely to be clear to everyone and it may be new. The members of Rural System are aware of this and try to be encouraging, but are aware that using hidden or poorly-known assumptions can conceal the charlatan as well and leader. The advances from being consilient will be in the power of the unifying idea or insight advanced, the advantages gained from its use and the resulting unifications.
The future strengths of Rural System will lie in our abilities to design improved software and gain access to appropriate hardware and a growing staff knowledge base. Preparing for fossil energy shortages and price increases will give us advantages for the future. Soundly grounded in theory, continued design alterations, and increasing diversification to studied limits will remain strengths and our expert-base will provide abilities to respond to opportunities as well as to threats.
Basic Human Criteria
There are some folks that seem to need meetings and discussion groups and complex social experiments to be sure that whatever is to be done or whatever Rural System does or will do seems "right." We seem to need focus groups, taskforces, nested committees, and stakeholder groups. My feeling has been that we've done that. We can and need to listen because there may have been some recent changes, but we have to stop talking and get to do things. I think we already know what we need to do. Still being very general, we have to face that awful taskmaster word "know" of Chapter 5. How do we know what we need to do? We learn from philosophers and others that "how we know" is one of the most important questions of people. We know based on criteria or objectives. I have developed a long list of these with citizen help when I was chairman of the Blacksburg planning commission and they are in the appendix. For here, though, we can quickly summarize that after months of meetings and hours of discussions, groups of people will define their objectives in the same way. We people know what people want! These things and conditions we call objectives (listed and described in Chapter 7). They include:
We've responded well in a fairly predictable manner, and match well with Maslow's list of human needs that was largely person-centered, for the isolated individual. It is easy to agree that bonding, affection, and social acceptance may be as important for people as food, drink, and shelter. A secure and meaningful social context may be captured or approximated in the last two items of the above list and in "memberships" as one of the listed benefits.
If I hide these lists, then meet and discuss our goals and objectives and write a new list, I'll wager that the lists, with minor editing, will be the same…but the difference will be a delay of 3-months and total disregard for the value of human time (10 meeting x 8 people x 3 hours each -- a minimum of 240 hours, even at minimum wage, is an expensive document that approximates one that we already have!) We need to leave the meetings and get started.
How well a design addresses and reflects after implementation the clients' (e.g., citizens') objectives is the primary test. It is most difficult to compare the actual or prior with the desired condition because the desired state has already been expressed in objectives of a good plan. These were just expressions, however, and the designer will seek to determine the real perception of life quality after the design is implemented. High satisfaction is an expression of the low difference between perceived objectives and the perceived implemented system or its performance. At least slowed deterioration of reported life quality would be evidence for a good design. In computer work, clients often see a final product and realize what they might have conceived of and asked for more. Their objectives (wants) evolve with the participation of the designer.
There are real differences in landowner understanding of and definitions of goals and objectives. There is a set of words used synonymously in different fields, sometimes within the same field. These include: mission, aims, role, target, purposes, goals, objectives, standards, yardsticks, needs, wants, priorities, policy, criteria, guidelines, constraints, and probably some others. The set can be very confusing. One agency used "priority" synonymously with a high-order objective. Priority means the sequential position of an item in a ranked set. I have analyzed these concepts, developed criteria for good well-stated objectives, and have found such statements to be readily classified into types of objectives (Chapter 7). The analysis is believed to be relatively new and clarifies a maze of concepts. Importantly, it can reduce the hours spent in committees debating the meaning of goals and objectives.
People are very different and yet for societies (even small ones like "the family"), these differences coalesce and can be identified as an action called the singular decision. There are many people who, individually, will not make the same decisions, but due to many forces (too numerous and variable to account), singular decisions are made. Trivial to say, human non-trivial decisions (e.g., what cereal to eat at breakfast) involving novel mental activities (contra automatic decisions made in sports or emergency situations) are usually very complex. The decisions within Rural System are among non-trivial alternatives and for individual owners or owner groups, reflective of the "will of the people."
The will can be expressed as objectives. Precise objectives are so very, very difficult to produce and so infrequently used that I have decided on several occasions, very reluctantly, not to try to work with them any longer. I reach the point at which there are so many objectives with so many dimensions, all with such limited range of values being expressed (e.g., high, medium or low or 1 to 10) that all alternatives when their scores are computed tend to be equally valued. I now work on an alternative describing the means for deciding on a satisfactory condition. From one perspective, this is little more than defining a set of constraints (also called a policy-like objective (Chapter 7). People seem to know well from past experience and history what they do not want. They sometimes look for things new…and are afraid of them.
There are differences, however, in searching for the satisfactory condition and one of these is in relaxing the required precision in stating a desired state. What is stated is desired existence within a decision space or volume, a hypervolume with fuzzy boundaries. Along with this, multiple conditions are stated as being satisfactory. Some are substitutable for some others. As needed, reliance may necessarily be placed upon predictive modeling of the probable consequences of any major change in a system. Reasonable rather than exact boundaries may need to be accepted. Workers will be reluctant to change from well-described states. There will be a general willingness to make gradual change and great attention will be given to risk-taking strategies of people.
Humans are too complex to have a single objective, even just a few of them. With age they realize there are many objectives, some conflicting, and they like summaries, end conditions…then they like to discuss the elements (but prefer to discuss the baseball or bridge game.) They do not really have a single objective. They want a score or scoring mechanism. They want someone to respond to "How are we doing?"…then perhaps to discuss the dimensions or magnitude of that score if it is very great or very low. Thinking about objectives is very difficult and easily laid aside "until later" or for "a better time."
People are pluralistic decision makers (Costanza 1991). They have and usually take many means to arrive at difficult decisions. Buffington (1972) described types of decisions, helping express the dimensions of "difficult," and isolated those that needed more inputs than others.
While human decision makers say that they want much data and great precision, few can handle the amounts that are now readily available to them for most decisions. Many will make major decisions based on folklore, intuition, prior decisions, and other non-quantitative factors. Rural System is designed in response to that human condition. It is as reasonable an approach as possible. I dodge "rational." "Reasonable" acknowledges the grounds for rejecting the rationality of this approach. Those grounds will be evident in time required, data required, staff required, data retrieval efficiencies, money required, probabilities of exogeneous events, limited powers of deduction, and the dark mysteries of sequences within the night-time forest. We try to make good decisions, those that achieve objectives, often with hidden or type 4 objectives working along side those such as "at minimum costs," "with minimum risks," "as safely as possible," and "without offending Mrs. Z."
Approximations are adequate for many decisions. This seems counter to efforts to make massive use of computers. It is grounded in observations that there are rarely sharp breaking points in tradeoffs made, that approximations in 20 things all unified within a model produce approximate results and confidence gained by decision makers comes from there being large differences in the approximations. If there are not, that is a signal to delay the decision and to revisit the dominant approximations (to which the system has been found to be most sensitive. Differences beget a second step in analyses. Rationally robust work is discussed in the next chapter.
Using Megafactors
Designers need gain predictive power and a way to gain that is to work within two major unchangeable physical laws - gravity and the second law of thermodynamics. These are examples of megafactors, those large, powerful pieces of information (called in statistics "independent variables" that help give reasonable explanation or prediction of landform phenomena. An example of a simple model can be shown in a general equation, sometimes called a model:
EH=a + bS + cA + dB + . . . eN where
EH might be, for example, erosion hazards on a farm area. EH is the unknown or "dependent" variable. By solving such an area-specific equation, the manager can determine EH and then attempt to bring it under control
S is the soil character weighted on some erodability scale
A is the slope or angle of the land
B is the barometric pressure which influences evaporation rate which is related to how much water the soil holds, and
N is any number of other relevant variables.
The small letters of the equation simply represent coefficients and are not particularly relevant to this example. If by knowing S we were able to get within 80 percent of the right answer most of the time, that is, we could predict EH pretty well, then the system would be said to be very sensitive to S. Since soil characteristics can be controlled somewhat, S may also be called a megafactor. Managers are looking for those controllable factors to which the system dependent variable, the EH, is strongly related. If knowledge of A added another 10 percent to our predictability, then we would be about 90 percent right for EH if we knew only two variables. For most land design problems, most managers would be very satisfied with being 90 percent right most of the time. But there are other variables in the equation. They can help, but suppose knowledge of B only adds 1 percent to the ability to predict. With 3 variables, we get 91 percent predictability, and thus conclude B and all the other N variables are "nice to know," not "necessary to know." We can then decide that we are willing to operate on the basis of the megafactors, those that are reasonable (based on some criterion of reasonableness decided beforehand such as: 80 percent is close enough). In all cases, we desire the probable benefits of knowing to exceed the costs of finding out.
Megafactors are the important dials on the control panel of the imagined system. When changed, they produce the most significant desired change for the least effort (time or energy). In a conventional multiple regression equation, it is the factor that explains the most variance in the dependent variable or factor. In a sensitivity analysis within a major simulation, we can discover the factor to which the system performance measure is most sensitive. We can use that knowledge to manipulate (or prevent others from manipulating) that factor. A megafactor is an answer to the data-gods' question: "For true knowledge of all of the factors that you can request for a particular management system, what one or two will you request?" It will surely be the one that gives you greatest explanatory and predictive capability over the performance of the system.
Examples of megafactors for specific individual systems are:
The idea of the megafactor is only one among many tools for the designer. It is a necessary simplification of complex ecological and economic system for timely decision making. It must be used cautiously in an environment and with continual feedback. It is a demanding concept and flies in the face of arguments from field people to "collect everything" and "the more you know, the better."
A Tentative Attitude
A tentative attitude is useful for the manager operating as designer. A rational insecurity is a part of the system person's philosophy as he or she searches, heuristically. The manager is sure, but …also ever ready to apply corrective feedback to the last state of greatest certainty. A basic design concept is that design must be tentatively dynamic. First there is a need for a very definite statement of "Do this." Simultaneously, however, there is an expectation that the designer will be around to help out, to answer questions, to refine the concept, to adjust, to change dynamically and to fine-tune the system toward some near-ultimate form. Near-ultimate form is emphasized, for even buildings have their walls knocked out and rearranged, their facades changed. Books are revised. Computer programs never seem complete. Few people seem to acknowledge this and either never get started or never seem to finish anything, living with the largely false expectation of 100 percent completion of anything. "Close enough is good enough" for the designer living dynamically with a vital concept of system feedback.
Avoiding Failures
I have tried to reduce the chances of failure of Rural System. The principles of planning, avoiding known dangers, diversifying, facing competitive threats early, preparing to change prior to and in the face of change (feedforward), building contingency funds and insurance options, and conducting continual timely monitoring are known. I've made efforts to integrate and use these concepts. I know about ecosystems and to the extent that businesses are like those, the variables are so numerous that it is impossible to specify what will work. What worked today may not work tomorrow because goals, conditions, players, and processes (or all together) changed; what was viewed as success yesterday is likely to change for tomorrow's discussions.
Success can come from studying and knowing where Rural System may fail. Designing to win will not be sufficient. Designing not to fail may be. My experience has been that many people want to know what to do in some land use situation, but when told, quickly ask questions indicating their concerns about the risks of action. Their questions typically suggest they have no intent to act upon the answer that they may get. For example, they ask about who said something (authority), where it has been done before (sensory and applied experience), and how confident the person is in making the recommendation (probability or statistical confidence). All of these cannot be readily answered; the educational requirements are too great. In cases in which a computer-produced report is produced with a recommendation, it is probably impossible to produce a completely adequate report. A computer-produced report prepared for an average user cannot be inclusive enough; some will be too long. Even though a unique report of plan is prepared such as proposed as the function of The Trevey (Chapter 19; producing a standard text with fill-in-the-blanks as well as internal branching to include or exclude paragraphs) there are hazards. Consultants or agency staff using such reports and commenting on them to a variety of clients can eventually begin rejecting the system or giving it low marks. They see it as boring or standard, even though clients only see one report for their land and resources and find it very useful and are delighted with the personalized nature of it. The consultant and reviewer will say they personally (1) knew the information already (not commenting on what the intended reader knew), (2) they know it now (studying the second or follow-up document) and are bored because it is not new, and (3) they cannot believe that most users do not know the material presented (because it has been presented in such a low-key, understandable fashion that all the academic mystery and most of the jargon has been removed. They may reject the total system because one part does match exactly with their expert knowledge of a small part. These four conditions have resulted in professionals rejecting a similar system. The situation is not hypothetical.
The major reason to be skeptical about the feasibility of the paradigm is that it depends upon many people accepting the concept and acting upon it. The probability of accepting it, optimistically, may be about 0.70 (a mere speculation) while that of acting upon such acceptance may be, similarly 0.70, thus the overall probability of paradigmatic success is only 0.49. The odds are not impressively high, like those of winning a coin toss. They are, however, significantly less for the paradigm(s) on which we now seem to be working.
If significant improvements are achieved for half (0.49) of the 74% of the world's population now in developing countries, some would be willing to judge the paradigm successful, at least useful. Faint-hearted, I expect less. I don't have a weak concept of what I will find to be acceptable as proof of success. I'm not yet willing to commit to percentages of acceptance, or implementation, or (probably better) increase in aggregate scores. I think this is an important topic for discussion. Unless people resolved the topic, they will always be frustrated by yet-undefined "failure" or elated by shallow success.
I have tried to reduce the chances of failure of Rural System by using the principles of planning, avoiding known dangers, diversifying, facing competitive threats early, preparing to change prior to and in the face of change (feedforward), building contingency funds and insurance options, and conducting continual timely monitoring I've made efforts to integrate and use these concepts. I know about ecosystems and to the extent that businesses are like those, the variables are so numerous that it is impossible to specify what will work. What worked today may not work tomorrow because goals, conditions, players, and processes (or all together) changed; what was viewed as success yesterday is likely to change for tomorrow's discussions.
I have studied the report of Annie Wilson of the Kansas Rural Center, 2003, "Romance vs. Reality: Hard Lessons Learned in a Grassfed Beef Market Cooperative." She, with the Tallgrass Prairie Producers Cooperative, learned some "hard lessons" and I think I may have learned from her. They tried "niche-marketing" of grass-fed beef. Their mission (I write about a special type of objective discussed in Chapter 7) was "to produce and market meat products from livestock raised in a way to maximize conservation of natural resources and minimize use of fossil fuels and farm chemicals." They formed a cooperative and investments were made from 10 ranch families. There were family board members, monthly meetings, one employee, and much volunteer work. Marketing, very pleasant, was very time consuming and expensive. They marketed beef in 23 states. Local markets were very low in volume and high in costs and never profitable. The large distributor market was finally recognized as essential for profits. Volume was too low to gain processing efficiencies; supplies too low to access the markets to gain affordable processing and transportation. Funds were inadequate to gain professional help over these barriers. Even with enormous volunteer time, they lost equity. They were unable to find funds, lacked capitalization. Families would not mortgage their ranches to back what they all were convinced was a worthy but risky enterprise "to compete in an absolutely cut-throat and volatile commercial arena." They became aware of concentration in the processing and retailing areas that reduced profit margins for them in their small operation.
They stopped sales, realizing later that they could have borrowed money and established a larger, viable, professionally-managed operation. They continue to wonder if they could have gotten to a desired scale of 30,000 head from their peak of 400 head a year.
They found that volunteers and commitment were not enough; that board members should not run the company; that professional management is needed. Access was seen as needed for volume markets. Adequate supplies (sufficient numbers, standard high quality, and regular) are needed for those markets. She suggested that to assure meat supply and capital for operations, balance must be struck with low-cost processing, gaining volume markets, and professional management.
Skepticism about production and the importance of the enterprise were recommended. She was concerned about inflated expectations and the failure to account all costs.
She said, ignoring the joke, that it may "take a rocket scientist" to make an enterprise work. "Just as we ranchers wouldn't want a heart surgeon to run our ranch, we should not presume to perform heart surgery….Getting food to the consumer today safely, legally, and at a competitive price is an overwhelmingly difficult and high-risk task, challenging even for experienced experts. The idea of exorbitant profits earned easily by lazy middlemen is an out-dated myth."
"…Company profits are generated only at high risk in tiny margins per unit on huge volume, capital-intensive, highly technical operations." This is not the definition of a niche company. Honest accounting is essential, not only for the business but the quality of life of the participants. She saw the business risk become a very real personal risk with scheduling pressures that were potentially destructive to family values.
The rules need to be followed, even at loss to competitors not doing so. Her group had agreed that if "60-Minutes" ever showed up, they wanted to be able to look straight into the camera and tell the whole truth with nothing to hide.
There are some rural areas where discussions of ethical customers are notable. Buying for health, avoiding current fears, discouraging practices by supporting quality businesses are all praiseworthy ideas but they may not be able to be sustained. People seek convenience and personal efficiencies. Those that maintain these ethical principles about product quality and the systems that produce them, over time, even with others added through education, in the face of price increases, become a very small market. Marketing must display relatively low price and high convenience for many people regularly (few will accept seasonal suppliers) if there is to be profit. New products can be profitable for a while but they must contribute to long-term profit potentials and marketing gains. She said nearing conclusion "…despite our strong commitment to the concept of grass-fed beef, we wonder if some lessons (about food quality, health, the environment, etc.) may just be too hard and expensive to teach, at least at this point of consumer consciousness."
I have read and re-read her paper. It is challenging. She and the cooperative had an objective such as I have expressed for Rural System. She has described the risks for a single product. It may be one of the most difficult products for which to develop a system - from raising the animals in competitive situations, complex processing, and delivery year around to a distributed market requiring education of buyers. The risks and warnings she has outlined seem very high. It may be that I can suggest how failure of the enterprise can be avoided, the design principles listed, and the warnings outlined here addressed in a realistic way. The risk of not doing so is to increase the risk of Rural System failing. I was already fearful before I read Annie Wilson's "lessons learned."
I've tried to address the downsides and realized that I can overcome only proportions of each. Maybe I can reduce the parts of the risks, but they are all so interrelated. It seems clear that Rural System needs professionals, a good plan, adequate capital, and careful recruitment of like-minded people with, at least initially, a love of the land. The first comment I received from one respected person to whom I described the system was, "Watch-out for who you get involved with."
Competitors
Success may not be in achieving desired production but in avoiding effects of competition. I must make a proper response in design to competitors. I know that small business fail. Most do. I also know that no matter how well planned or financed, a poor or evil manager can ruin a small business. "Risk" or the probability of failure is quietly spoken but it is a constant part of entrepreneurial activity. It is so natural to entrepreneurs that it is often ignored and rarely discussed. I now sense that whenever success is discussed, and the wealth of some people is viewed with amazement and often some greed, the reason for their success and the reasons for their riches are many but the key one is that at least … because they took a big risk. In their instant of decision, their $10,000 investment, for example, became an expected value of ((1.0- proportion that fail) x Amount) or (0.20 x $10,000 = $2,000) …they were rationally willing to give away $8,000!
I feared competition, for while I saw no group like Rural System (or I would have tried to join them), I could see contests arising for the separate enterprises. I also realized that the funds devoted to land improvement would be under continual attack from within, over time, for additions, instead, to employee salaries. Who are the best benefactors of charity is a perpetually confounding question. Macke knew that "the positive attribute of independence (of rural people) can have a negative impact when it inhibits willingness to network and partner."
The greatest competition to Rural System that I felt, from the beginning, was the current and old ways of doing business…in my head. I also feared the competition with the environment and with "the market." Management expertise (fundamental) may not be obtained readily or timely. Effective sales require a demonstrable product of demonstrated service in the early stages of the system. An effective computer system needs to be quite vast; programs on the shelf need to be moved into action and their services sold. It will take time to build to a high effectiveness that can be demonstrated. Achieving the early development is a risky task. Unseen or unknown competition may arise. Existing groups (e.g., funeral homes) may see our Memorials group as competitive rather than, as intended, supportive, and providing an extra or alternative service with profits for them. Miscommunication and extreme responses to potential competitors will abound.
The other major class of potential competitors is the staff of a group of public agencies. If I fail to overcome that, there will be reversion, but worse, increased difficulty for the desired change in the future. Staff members of resource agencies were once assigned essential developmental and research roles. Their past successes have resulted in them now being largely regulatory and educational. Public lands have few or low perceived payoffs or unclear objectives, making accountability impossible. Public lands such as those of the state departments of forestry or wildlife may offer some competition, but their use rates are high, signs of wear are high, users are non-selective or untrained, and safety and vandalism problems are reported to be increasing. Public funding is not stable so neither is staffing nor programs and the diverse costs of reductions in force (often resulting in network failures) are very high. Within Rural System is offered an alternative, with distinctively different services and opportunities than those found on public lands. Our products support activity on public land; we will take tours/trips on public lands as well as on our lands (of course with proper no- or low-cost permits and authorizations). Each of the enterprises within the conglomerate has slight competition, but there are no known direct competitors for the regional (initially) system. No individual competitors have the support structure and economies provided within the proposed system.
The State/Federal cooperative Extension Service has "free" services and is thus competitive. That agency is now being reduced in suburbanizing zones and, with less than one agent per county, the level of service is low and not competitive in our select enterprise areas. Few counties have our computer mapping systems for planning and precision management. It is likely that competitors will emerge as tax funds provide agencies with technological advantages. We shall attempt expansion into adjacent regions, perhaps leapfrogging to compete with non-adjacent competitors, or making attempts to form partnerships with other groups in their early stages of development.
I'm attempting to address first the private owner of rural land in western Virginia (a region of opportunity without clear borders). Most published forestry wildlife and recreational information is by public employees (international, federal, and state) and almost all of them have (appropriately) a governmental and public-land bias. If a public agency or corporate entity wants to be involved in the Rural System, then an assumption of a single general public person must be assumed. It is appropriate that this "person" or any landowner will say "on this hand I want x but on the other hand I want y." Nevertheless, there has to be present the assumption of one decision maker. This requirement is not an expression of the need for a single, consistent decision maker (rarely present on public lands today) with a distant planning horizon and a willingness to discuss making, not just spending, money. There must be a desire to create wealth, not just hold and create bureaucracy.
The competitive work for the Rural System managers will generally follow those of natural ecosystems:
Responding to the Nature of the Rural System Tract Owner
The private landowners with whom I imagine the staff of Rural System interacting are often new landowners, those seeking improved returns from their land, or those seeking generally improved satisfaction and quality of life for them or their families resulting from land ownership. Others are elderly and are in emotional pain, accompanying that of arthritis, for they are contemplating moving off of the farm they love and there are few guides and great uncertainty. The others, a grand mix, work off of the land in cities, drive long distances and only enjoy their ownership a little on the weekends amid hundreds of maintenance chores.
The system to be designed must serve at least the stated objectives of the user. I have seen many systems that are nearly right, but in addition they do x, y, and z. The Rural System designer serving the user well will make the system serve the user, and then he or she may throw in the extras. "Extras" imply that they are not directed at the owner's or decision maker's objectives. If they are genuine feedforward, they are misperceived as extra. If not specific to the objective, then they are costly action that needs to be avoided. The general system that does almost everything but not exactly what someone wanted them to do is a poorly designed system.
There is no quibble intended with the rule that the system analyst's most important job is to help the client articulate objectives and to see his or her needs clearly. I have seen many clients talked out of what they really wanted to do (because the designer did not see a way to achieve the objectives). The users of well-designed systems must experience significant net benefits and satisfactions. If they do not, the system should not have been designed. How many wildlife management systems have been designed and put in on the ground without a single measure of present production, citizen demand, estimate of how well the new system would achieve the demand deficit? How many state wildlife magazines exist to which no one would subscribe if they had to pay full costs? How many information data banks are unused? How many research projects have been completed for which there was no conceivable use of the possible conclusions? How many computer programs have been written for agencies and have never been used?
Some of the fear associated with computers arises because they are programmed by people who may not be sensitive to the real needs of the users. This is one reason why computer programmers with rural resource experience are invaluable. It is not jargon or what they know that makes their products so useful. There is no particular bridging function they fill. It is their awareness of the diverse needs of the users and how well their work satisfies these needs that is so important. Computers can be programmed to produce readable reports, to be responsive to the whims and quirks of users. They can check for errors which they themselves have produced or received instructions to perform. They can produce graphs to accompany data, calculate indices, and display rules of thumb. They do not have to produce volumes of paper reports but can produce decision-making alerts, information, and aids.
Desired production is easier said than achieved, because it requires a person who has once made decisions to outline what is required. Among architects there are designers of churches and designers of houses. There is a specialization that is not due solely to interest but to competence, experience, and involvement with the lives of people as they must live them. Successful designers of systems at least satisfy people, perhaps lead them to new opportunities and ideas. Such design will engage the fullness of many rural experts' professional knowledge and experience. I suspect a knowledgeable general practice medical doctor could do a commendable job at many types of surgery. It is true that certain managers can design commendable systems to achieve objectives in the parts of the great outdoors. The day is past, however, when people can afford to allow the general practitioner manager to do the sophisticated systems design now needed. There is no time to allow neophytes to experiment on the living land patient; there are too few patients. Those that are left are besieged with pollutants and over use that impair and threaten the land recovery potential. The role of the highly-educated, experienced designer of Rural Systems is tantamount to having a fit environment for people.
Unlike in past efforts to suggest improved forestry to landowners, Rural System owners are not assumed to be ignorant or to need education. Most owners, as everyone, can learn more about forests and forestry and other land use. They are moderately guilty for they are not applying what they now know. Besides, the majority of landowners are now college educated. There are other reasons (than information or knowledge) for not doing superior land management. Rural System addresses these problems on the way to developing a superior, modern rural tract under sophisticated management for the owner.
Avoiding Other Means of Failure
Regulations or policies on affecting production or practices will generally be opposed as unfair competition of government entities with the private Rural System enterprise.
Competition with timber and other corporations will be real. They want landowners to enter their corporate programs. Given their clear objectives of wood supply for their mills, their past liquidation of land holdings (allowing private land owners to bear all investments, risks, and taxes of land ownership), and limited service, Rural System would usually be assumed to be the preferred option to that of joining a corporate forest. We shall have to test that assumption after a few years.
Entrepreneurship may not be a means to relieve the perceived symptoms of distress in rural America. Activity such as creating and operating Rural System wll need to be grounded in an "understanding of how the demographic, spatial, sociological and economic realities of rural America work. Such need may be too great. It justifies every excuse for failure. Needs can be approximately met with expert guidance. Many have said that it is impossible to bring the benefits of an entrepreneurial economy to a lasting Rural System for the US and the world. Maybe they were right. I saw some examples, have heard stories, and still have an informed (however na&#iuml;ve) belief that they may be wrong. Competition means many things in biology and elsewhere. It can be dynamic and easily discussed as "symbiosis." I prefer for Rural System a special kind of competition, one of collaboration and cooperation for profit. It is competition with uninformed or reluctant or risk-averse buyers.
I have seen too many corporate "takeovers" or purchases that are the cooperative aftermath of deadly competition. The loser is bought and becomes part of the greater company. Some industrial groups join together as independent suppliers and manufacturers. Increasingly corporations are assembly centers, making no product themselves, only scheduling inflow and outgo from an assembly shell building. What we have in Rural System is a system of centralized service, not control; centralized assistance, not direction; a large support function for potentially-challenged units; a parent unit for healthy, vital, creative Groups. That center of collaboration, cooperation, and coordination we've called, temporarily, System Central or Q Works (Chapter 11).
The Devilish Details
I confess, I see weaknesses and threats. I am optimistic in sprit, probably too thoughtful and cautious in action. I think that I can and have countered each weakness and threat. Those counters are now part of the design. To the extent that we can do so, we reduce the risks of failing in achieving our objective, eventually of failing as an enterprise.
Here are the confessed weaknesses. Seeing them make them less ominous, more readily attacked:
The business concept is both new and old. It is new, very diverse and requires expertise on many technical and economic fronts. It also deals technically with many common topics (like hunting) in which many people have experience and hold themselves to be experts.
Pricing will be difficult for products and services will be poorly known. Many actions are taken to increase future profits and rebuild land function and thus increase future value. Multiple sources of income are planned to address this weakness.
Some aspects of the business are controversial (pest control; wildlife as disease vectors; wilderness preservation; clear-cutting; sustained yield; family farm preservation; waste disposal on farmland; vandalism and poaching; watershed management; animal trapping; and energy conservation). These require using research results, education, effective responses, demonstration projects, and legal action.
Optimization
Computer optimization is intensively used in industries but is hardly known by the general public or farmland owner, and if so, it is treated skeptically. Slogans like "garbage in/garbage out" persist. Skillful use of feedback, feedforward, and failsafe systems along with demonstrated gains from using the optimization- and expert-systems will reduce this weakness. Optimization may not be well known by people employed and so the essentials will have to be taught to them too.
Like many words loosely used, "optimization" sounds good but it has some hidden evils. It means (to me) a mathematical process of analyzing a system and finding a condition in which all of the variables, when in the right condition produce a state that perfectly achieves the stated objective. The procedures always require a very explicit objective, typically to maximize, to minimize, or to stabilize. (These three things are universal, all that any system design can do.) Suppose we want profit from bread. We know the ingredients. We solve the equation for bread-making, attempting to maximize the net gains from buying ingredients, mixing them, baking, and selling bread. The objective seems fairly easily stated. We can imagine mixing all possible combinations of flour, yeast, etc. at different costs to produce different loafs of bread. Some will be expensive, some taste bad, and some "flat." Each will have an approximate price, including zero for those that will not sell. We can study with the aid of a computer all of the costs and all of the "output" loaves and their selling price and state an optimum.
Even a simple problem of profits from good bread can become very complicated if profit is an objective. My experience in natural resource optimization is that the formal computer-aided process can usually suggest a 10 to 20 percent better solution than a human's best guess. In bread-making, a 10% difference in profits can attract attention from investors. I'm convinced from personal studies as well as reports of others that improvements of greater than this magnitude are waiting within natural resource areas. I know of reports that managed lands can produce twice the profits of unmanaged lands. That is an enormous amount, but too gross to be meaningful or convincing. I do not know why aids have not been sought but I can list reasons: unaware of the potentials, the methodology of optimization is difficult, there have been few demands, many variables (e.g., flour for bread making), all variables not easily quantified, and there is no expressed objective. I think the last reason is dominant. What exactly shall we maximize? or minimize? …and in the same breath, diverting attention from the importance of that simple question … what of the risks, and startup capital, and who will supervise, and what's a reasonable planning or investment period?
Gaining and stabilizing the employment of experts to guide each of the more-than-50 units will be difficult. Schools now point students to government agencies. The typical forestry school graduates,
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We shall have to compete with short-term profit-maximizers - resource-miners, cut-and-run and quick-buck specialists - for we must develop a system with dispersed managed land units that collectively, over time, provide sustained profits.
We may not be able to start without major grants or support from government or foundations. (Our desire is to demonstrate that improved modern resource management can be achieved on private lands for a very long period operating in a capitalistic society, without government support. I prefer operating from a line of credit. We shall have to compete with those groups and individuals subsidized by taxes until we can provide alternatives, education, financial incentives, and engage in litigation to achieve a new free-market in these goods and services.)
The first target region, southwestern Virginia (and areas of North Carolina, West Virginia, and Tennessee, and Kentucky) is notoriously short of African Americans. Achieving desired numbers of minority participants or employees may be very difficult. There are few African-Americans entering natural resource fields. We shall sponsor education for such people and recruit effective workers actively for computer and more conventional roles within the conglomerate.
Individuals are now brought up in competitive systems, limited discussions before the TV, and large university classes with competitive grading. This company has incentives for cooperation and teamwork for the collective good, but that may not be enough to overcome individualism and to build the collaboration needed. Expert assistance will be sought.
Landowners are independent. Landowners just may not bocome Rural System Tracts! (Some people have said "no" in preliminary conversations (others have said "maybe.")) Few will listen long enough to gain reasonable comprehension. Others have never had an option presented; none have been able to hold their land and gain annual profits and tax relief. Some will not participate because of the risk that short-term or unstable increases in income or land value may jeopardize their stable state or federal health, child care, or other benefits.
Nevertheless, it needs to be noted that half of the proposed Rural System enterprises are "indoors" and can operate effectively entirely on public lands and on one or two large private tracts. There needs to be the famous "hybrid-corn-success demonstration plot" and profit-sheet demonstrated Then the perceived major risk of landowners not joining may pass. Tax advantages, direct annual payments, improved land value, reduced risks from fire etc. and improved land values may not be sufficient. The desire for widespread land improvement, perhaps 500,000 acres within 6 years (perhaps only being achieved on a few tracts), may have to be discarded.
Major fires and continuing drought and crop changes can dampen enthusiasm and cause project failures but overcoming these is part of the service to be provided. Maintaining enthusiasm is a hidden part of the service to the land owner. Increasingly, as more and more people experience these problems, pay the costs, they seek control and bang heads into private property rights. A person ought to be able to do anything he or she wants to on their own property! What is a more clear-cut expression of freedom? As changes occur, it becomes clearer that everyone cannot do anything they want to do, even on their property. The reasons are fairly conspicuous, but at least there are parallels: you cannot drive on either side of a road, make excessive noise, and spread contagious diseases. It is a mall extension to say you may not poison my well or befoul my air. In some places you may not make my street scenes ugly with your signs. The progression is conspicuous as we see people, land, and landowners all existing within a context. You are free to do anything… within constraints, the context (Chapter 6) and action space of Chapter 2.
We shall have great diversity of topics (e.g., the name of each of the over-90 considered groups) but also of financial contributions to the corporation. Some units will be high-profit producers; others will not make profit and be recognized as a "cost." Assuring cooperation and balanced performance within the conglomerate will be a persisting challenge.
Unavailable fossil fuels for travel and typically-high, agricultural-system uses may become a real barrier in the future. Early efforts in energy conservation and developing alternatives will be a gain for the enterprise as well as for its customers.
We may not be able to hire the people with the expertise that we need, and the high costs and diseconomies of gaining expertise from consultants (there are few) will be great.
There are current being experiments by federal agencies to contract for national park and forest action (e.g., fire fighters) from private groups. Companies responding to these conversations and suggestions may emerge and expand, and become competitive, at least for some Groups. Private consultants exist for forestry and a few other activities of the company. We shall hire superior consultants, but we shall have to compete with these narrowly-focused consultants by using profitable forest inventory and accounting technology, providing dynamic planning, selling wildlife and land analyses and maps, and providing income incentives from the general financial welfare of the entire conglomerate.
The public has had free access to and gains from resource experts. We propose to charge for similar (but better and more specific) services. We shall have to create products and services that the public will buy, compared to asking for and getting cooperative extension service tax-supported advice and that from county, state, and federal natural resource agencies.
Drought, air pollution, massive forest fires, extended war, and long freezing periods can have region-wide negative consequences on resources, people, and the corporation. Diversification is somewhat responsive to this perceived weakness, but insurance and contingency tactics will be needed. The 150-year planning period, sliding forward (Chapter 7) requires continual insightful work on this problem.
There may be disruptions in services and vandalism from the people strongly opposed to our philosophy, work, or project outcomes. We will work for some companies (e.g., a gas company to supply computer maps; a fishery on a power-generating lake) with whom many people may be very angry and opposed to the client's proposed action on the land or waters.
I believe that there are real threats to the success of Rural System. The concepts described in the previous chapters and our plan for action seems to allow substantial building and eventual success. The scope, details, and magnitude of some of the threats are so variable that the only appropriate response is in planned diversification of the Groups where their actions will include:
Other elements of design, in part, address the negatives and find means to suppress them.
Incentives
I may be able to double-back greed on itself through profit incentives within Rural System. The more profit we collectively make, the more each individually makes because of the proportionate distributions. Incentives are planned through memberships, awards, direct payment from shared profits, newsworthy praise, and salaries based on performance. Trouble will come when changes in proportions are required to retain profitability and reduce formerly unperceived inequities. Other trouble will come as pressures increase for salary increases that seem competitive with investments in the lands under contract. Run-away "executive" salaries and advantages, the "disproportionate distributions" will surely signal unfairness and eventually destroy the system (as it has tended to do with other corporations and works its evil within US society in early 2000AD). The collective-rationale may never match well with other rationality. (How can $10 per hour workers demand an increase to a $15 an hour wage, know that competitors can do the work for $5 an hour, and close a factory and lose their jobs and local economic base because they could not get the demanded wage raise?) I am instructed about "the principle of the thing" but am full-to-over-flowing about principles of modern capitalism, free-market economies, and social advantages of globalization, fair competition, the common good, and "an honest day's work."
The Market
"Rural entrepreneurship." has the potential scope of farming, ranching, logging, mining, energy production, and fisheries but all of the aspects of outdoor recreation and tourism (Chapter 18). The hard questions before readers (and me) about what kinds and amounts in what places. There are powerful forces reducing the rural base. Does Rural System suggest the proper types of potential sales? Within Rural System distinctions about rural and urban are blurred on purpose to retain and expand a potential customer base. That base is needed to achieve the volumes of sales and services needed for profitability within the current economy. The international base connected by the Internet and the e-catalog are needed for security and an expanding but diverse market. Conflicts arise daily as rural land is treated as a barrier or as a challenge for use for corridors for transportation, utilities, and communication between urban areas. But land itself does not constitute a market, only the people, and for Rural System, that is owners as well as all real or potential users. (See Marketing Chapter 17.)
Rural System moves along an unproven path, almost the definition of "new." Perhaps it is infeasible, an irrational pursuit. It would seem reasonable to use the paradigm to see if it works or to assess an equally powerful one to achieve the much-desired human condition. I expect more skepticism about the paradigm than about the several that are now being tried. Jests are frequently made about those who would "save the world." The limited objective is very large and believably impossible to achieve. I advocate that it be tried in trial situations, with feedback.
In the next chapter I explore other aspects of the system design emphasizing observations and rationally robust work.
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