701-566-9300One point about you and your business after reflecting on last week’s See For Yourself program to the Pacific Northwest is a new appreciation for the thousands of people who count on commodities flowing across the country and heading out to sea. My lack of true understanding about who these people are and the challenges they face had allowed me to undervalue or take those pieces for granted. Having had to suffer through being the oldest person on the trip, I have many times seen the wisdom in the saying “You never know what you have ‘till it’s gone.” Because you are reading this blog, I am going to assume that you are the type of producer or operator that probably tries to take little for granted and want as much knowledge as possible. Something for you to ponder while you are in the tractor or your office is that chain of people, what they operate in and on and the economic impact of just one worker of the railroads, the rivers, docks, elevators, trucks and tractors. The suppliers, mechanics, managers, laborers, tech workers. And those are the directly impacted. The affected extraneous economics hit housing, groceries, schools and, well, you get it. When I think of all the people you count on around home to get your value out of the land to begin with, it is pretty impressive in itself. The people of the railroad and of Oregon and Washington have built a lot of infrastructure to ship products all over the world but business has been down. Had not a lot of corn and wheat moved through last year, there would have been more of those folks finding out what they had taken for granted. If you can apply for next year’s trip, I would heartily suggest you do because there is nothing quite like seeing it for yourself. And by the way, I did not actually suffer at all – the North Dakota Soybean Council takes great care of all participants – it’s just that being the oldest person in every room all the time takes getting used to. Maybe I shouldn’t take it for granted.
