Seeing The New To See The Old Again

Since the dawn of the human race man has earned his living from the land. Farming rather than prostitution is the oldest profession and is considerably more honourable. In the U.K. however farming is under threat. Rural communities have declined and so many blows have hit farming with the rise of supermarkets and various diseases that many farmers are trying to relocate overseas to find a way of earning a living.

The farmers who want to stay in this country are now fighting back. They are introducing new animals and crops with greater cash yields to preserve their way of life. Unfortunately however their efforts are further examples of insufficiently radical thinking. If only farmers would develop the traditional capabilities of existing animals and apply them to the modern world their lives would be a lot better.

Enormous sums of public money are spent on weather predicting equipment. The latest and most expensive technology is used to collect data which is then translated through highly qualified heads into weather reports read out by dolly birds with no metereological training. There are of course practical reasons for knowing whether it is going to rain or not. But as we all know the way to work this out is to see whether the cows lie down under the trees. This method has worked for centuries and has had great practical benefits for farmers. All farmers need to do now is test the prediction accuracy of individual cows and then breed the best ones to produce a herd of the most accurate animals. These can then be loaned at a high rate to all the government, news, business and military agencies that need to know what the weather will be. The income the best weather cow breeders can earn would far surpass their earning potential from a purely dairy or beef operation and would prove the basis of a viable twenty-first century alternative to the traditional modes of farming.

The same military agencies who want to know what the weather is going to be are always seeking new weapons and tactics. None of these are ever actually new as they are reinterpretations of the methods of ancient Rome. One key to Roman success was a band of soldiers advancing together behind their shields and forming an impenetrable wall of weaponry. The nearest thing we now have to this efficient killing machine is the behaviour of sheep. They will move as one wherever they are told to go. This is of no value if they are bred for meat or wool but there is a smaller and smaller market for these products. Armour plated sheep however would be invaluable in time of war. A group of animals which would move in a large solid mass wherever they were told to would soon clear enemy troops out of a town. They would also be easier to replace in the event of being killed. Once again the biggest and best sheep would be used for this purpose but the same farmers who once bred warhorses could easily undertake this task and the profits from producing these military sheep would enable any farming business to expand significantly.

Which brings us to poultry. Domestic hens lay eggs which fetch a small price at market. To do this they need to be serviced by a cockrel who needs to be fed and kept in good condition for this purpose. Such an inverted approach to creating economic return from these animals is plainly absurd. The hens should actually be employed to service the cockrel not the other way round. The most important gift of the cockrel is its uncanny ability to tell the time. Every morning it crows to announce that dawn is breaking and its sleep patterns invariably reflect the time of day. Once again if the most accurate cockrels were selectively bred there would be no need for other methods of telling the time. Furthermore we would all be able to work to a different sort of time. Now we organise our time around the numbers we give to hours which do not have any meaning in themselves. They are simply props to help us organise our day because our sense of organic time has deserted us through excessive reliance on these props. By following the cockrel we will live by real time which has greater practical effect. The cockrel knows the best times to get up, work, eat and sleep and if we work at optimum effectiveness we will obtain optimum reward. The owners of the most accurate and disciplined cockrels could charge what they like for providing the means of greater human happiness. Why is it that no one has yet taken advantage of this unique opportunity?

No one can carry on doing exactly what they have always done in exactly the same way if they intend to earn a living. They must adapt to the world around them and offer a new service. This is not so hard because the raw material is always there in tradition. It merely requires imaginative thinking. Farmers are often portrayed as slow and deliberate characters resistant to change. This is an inaccurate stereotype. But when non-farmers can work out exactly how they should run their businesses without setting foot on a farm there is more than a small grain of truth in it.