From our very
first issue we’ve focused on those areas we feel are most important to the
long-term success of your business, chief among which are safety, regulatory
compliance, technology, and human resource development. Partly because it is the
nature of the medium but also because it’s the way we’ve approached information
throughout our lives, the majority of our articles present these elements as
separate entities, only occasionally ganging two or three together under the
same banner. In general, this approach is effective in terms of passing along
information, but it worries me that the process leaves something on the table …
the knitting together of the big picture.
It starts with
the fact that despite all the machinery involved, dirtworking is not merely a
mechanical exercise. If it were, we could go immediately to robotics and spend
our time shuttling back and forth between our favorite fishing hole and bank
while legions of little black boxes do all the work. Instead, machine
productivity starts with the operator’s underlying knowledge of dirt, without
which all the skill in the world at video games doesn’t mean squat. This brings
us face-to-face with the human resource element.
Some fundamental
changes have been taking place to our entire society ever since the start of
World War II when roughly two-thirds of our population was rural. The
transformation of so much of our population and production to the wartime effort
introduced changes to society that continue to today, one of which is that we
are approaching the point where two-thirds of our population is urban. An
immediate upshot is that with fewer family-owned and -operated farms, our access
to people who know dirt has dwindled to a trickle over the years. So while there
are millions of Game Boy wizards out there, dirtmanship in the US is fast
becoming a lost art.
Additionally, as
well you know, a decreasing number of those entering the workforce (1) have
English as their native language, and (2) bring with them cultural and
educational backgrounds similar to those of their predecessors. As we’ve pointed
out numerous times in the past, while this is surely a challenge, it carries
with it the seeds of opportunity.
What machine
control systems are great at is making good dirtworkers better and more
efficient, but while they can give a novice a hand up, they can’t give him what
those with a rural/farming background bring with them their first day on the
job. Even less so can they supplant the years of experience enjoyed by those who
have grown old in the profession.
So what was the
epiphany? Simply that faced with a looming crisis in the skill sets of people
entering the workforce, we have an opportunity with many of those coming from
south of the border to build on the agricultural background many of them bring
with them to put our wonderful technologies to better use than ever. It seems to
me that investments both in training and technology are the surest path to
future success.