Deep Dive

This quote came from an interview Prime Future founder, Janette Barnard, did with a large operator in the cattle business. If you haven’t read the full article, you should.

The context is the story of the lunatic farmer.

In his 1962 book, Diffusion of Innovation, Everett Rodgers explains it’s a theory that seeks to explain how, why, and at what rate new ideas and technology spread.

Key concepts of the theory include:

• Innovation: The new idea, product, or service being adopted.

• Channels of Communication: How the innovation is communicated (e.g., mass media, word-of-mouth, interpersonal networks).

• Social System: The group of people involved in the adoption process.

• Time: The length of time it takes for an innovation to spread.

• Adopters: Individuals who adopt or reject the innovation.

• Rate of Adoption: How quickly the innovation spreads.

• Adoption Categories: Rogers identified five categories of adopters based on their innovativeness: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards.

So what can we learn from this as it relates to the agriculture industry?

The Comfort Crowd vs. The Risk of Being The Black Sheep

Let's be real for a minute.

Farming and ranching aren't just businesses – they're identities. They're communities, and they're ways of life that have been passed down for generations. When your grandfather and great-grandfather did things a certain way, there's enormous pressure to follow suit.

And it doesn’t have to be something “revolutionary” or innovative. Just different.

Case in point: I was talking with a farmer friend last week who tried switching to no-till in a county where everyone still tills. He said the diner talk nearly drove him back to conventional methods. He told me:

“They were taking bets on how badly I’d fail.”

He didn't fail.

In fact, his soil health improved dramatically over just three years, and his input costs dropped by nearly 30%.

But here's the issue – five years later, not a single neighbor in that county has followed his lead.

Rodgers said it best:

The Risk Paradox

What's wild about agriculture is that it's inherently risky – weather, markets, pests, disease – yet there's this powerful resistance to trying new approaches that might actually REDUCE risk.

Think about that for a second.

Farmers will gamble everything on factors they can't control (like weather), but won't take smaller, calculated risks on innovations they CAN control.

This is what we call the "risk paradox," and it keeps so many good operations from becoming great ones.

The Invisible Success Problem

Here's why it matters so much:

When a farmer tries something radically different and fails, everyone sees it and talks about it. It becomes a cautionary tale that reinforces conventional wisdom.

But when that same farmer succeeds using unconventional methods? The success becomes invisible to the community. It gets explained away as:

• "They just got lucky with the weather."

• "Well, they have better land to start with."

• "It's because they have more money/equipment/labor."

• "It might work there, but it won't work here."

I hear these exact statements, or any variation you can think of, on a daily basis in my office.

This “success mirage” means that genuine innovation rarely spreads organically through ag communities the way it should.

Breaking the Cycle

So how do we break this cycle?

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and after studying the most successful farmers in my area alone, a few things stand out:

1. Focus on the money. Nothing speaks louder than financial results. The cattle operator Janette interviewed wasn't just doing things differently – he was making more money doing it. Eventually, this becomes impossible to ignore.
   

2. Find your tribe elsewhere. If your local community isn't supportive, find like-minded innovators online or in regional networks. Nowadays there’s a community for just about anything - and that’s a good thing!
   

3. Document everything. Keep detailed records of what works and what doesn't. Hard data is tougher to dismiss than stories.
   

4. Start small. Try new approaches on a small portion of your operation. This reduces risk and gives you a side-by-side comparison that even the biggest skeptics have trouble arguing with.
   

5. Be patient. Cultural change takes time. The first few years are the hardest.

Here’s a few others Janette mentioned in her article that are worth repeating:

• They ask questions. A lot of questions. They find smart people to ask questions. They find smart people in non-traditional places to ask questions.
  

• They read. Not just industry magazines, they look outside.
  

• They have a sense that what they are saying sounds half crazy, dare I say they know it might make them sound like a lunatic farmer.
  

• They surround themselves with high quality people, high quality teammates.
  

• They have a system they are building/running, a flywheel they are looking to spin faster.
  

• They have some insight that most of their peers don’t, some belief that isn’t widely held.
  

• They know new practices & ideas take time to implement correctly, so they allow margin (time, energy, $) to experiment.

The High Cost of Conformity

There's a hidden cost to this resistance to innovation that goes beyond individual farms.

As an industry, agriculture faces enormous challenges – climate change, labor shortages, water scarcity, volatile markets, and increasing regulation.

We simply can't solve these 21st-century problems with 20th-century methods. Yet that's exactly what happens when we stigmatize innovation and idealize tradition above all else.

I don't know about you, but I'd rather be a successful lunatic than a conventional failure.

The path isn't easy, but the alternative – slowly watching your operation become less viable each year while doing the same old things – seems far worse.

This percentage was nearly identical to the number of farmers earning an “upper-class” income from agriculture.

My mission is to help make that class larger, not smaller.

What's Your Experience?

I'm curious – have you tried breaking from conventional wisdom in your operation? How did your community respond? What worked and what didn't?

Hit reply and let me know. Us lunatics need to stick together.