OxBowBusiness

Alternative views of business

I watch BBCWorld at the moment, given that I am living and working in Bucharest for a while. BBCWorld is generally a nightmage because the tape of news they use is only around half an hour long, meaning that I can see the same story over and over and over again in the course of any one day.

However, they do show other films and programmes in addition to the news and one of them is something that I find sometimes really useful from a business studies point of view: Earth Report.

In Laos there is an area where rice farmers found that their centuries old tradition of growing rice and then leaving the land fallow was breaking down due to the pressures of an increasing population. Crop yields were falling, life was becoming hard ...

In the UK and much of the rest of the world, the solution would be to fertilise everything back to life. We know that this strategy has failed in the UK and elsewhere and in any case is a very expensive solution.

In Earth Report on BBCWorld, they showed how the farmers changed the way they worked and prospered as a result. Rather than using fertilisers, leaving the area and moving to the cities or any other solution, they chose to work with their rice crops as before and also to learn how to manage their livestock better. They took part in a buy skinny, sell fat programme initially proposed and designed by an international consultancy.

All they needed to do was to take the animals they already owned and they grow forage crops for them. This forage comprised only seven different plants and it would feed the animals to make them big and healthy (one buffalo trebled in size under this scheme, for example). They would then sell the animals as a cash crop and move on to the next phase of their lives. That buffalo was sold for US$980 ... in context, a massive injection of much needed cash.

So, they kept their rice, they managed the land by crop rotation as before and they managed their animals as cash crops and raised large amounts of cash. All of this being done in a highly sustainable way that needs no major injection of resources from outside and that was entirely environmentally and culturally friendly.

The lesson for us? Just look at any business problem you face and see whether the answer to it is obvious or whether you need a fresh pair of eyes. For example:

• many companies see a cash flow crisis and borrow money: changing the way way they do business is often a better approach
• some companies produce and sell the wrong products so they close factories and shops and lay off their employees: a better solution could be to carry out better market research in the first place and redesigning products and services can be an even better solution

And so on. Open your eyes and think straight: there may be simple solutions to apparently impossible problems!

An excellent web site to accompany Earth Reports is Television Trust for the Environment (TVE)

Duncan Williamson

posted by Duncan Williamson @ 7:32 AM