The knowledge trap…

By Kim Deans

I frequently hear in my conversations with those new to the regenerative agriculture path and also those who have been on the journey for a while that they don’t know enough.  They don’t know enough to take the next steps, don’t know enough to stop doing something degenerative, don’t know enough to speak about what they do, don’t know enough compared to someone else

I also frequently find that these same people have read lots of books, listened to many hours of podcasts, attended lots of workshops and spent time with experienced regenerative farmers.  If the feeling of not knowing enough was caused by a lack of information then surely the books, the podcasts and the workshops would have fixed it.  We have access to more information at our finger tips now than ever before in history so my sense is that information overload could be behind why so many people express feelings of not knowing enough.  

Believing we don’t know enough keeps us procrastinating, stuck in a loop of searching for and consuming endless information.  It also leads us towards guru worshipping others we see as experts who we believe know more than we do and who have all the answers.  When we focus outside of ourselves for answers the many options available can lead to paralysis by analysis or we can end up following someone else’s path instead of forging our own.  

When we look for the answer outside of ourselves we give our power away and stop listening to our own innate knowing about what is right for us (it’s there, you just need to be still and listen).  It is definitely useful to seek out information and outside input from others with experiential wisdom.  This additional perspective works best when it is able to be assimilated and synthesized with our own inner wisdom rather than replacing it.  

Instead of looking for someone with the right answers we can choose to find a guide for the journey to help lead us towards the answers that lie within us and within our landscape.  A guide may share with us information but this will be carefully chosen to be something we can make use of and put into action that is relevant to our situation and where we want to be.  

Information alone is not the problem.  Seeking information can be a common and useful response to uncertainty, however information can only improve our confidence to navigate uncertainty when it is relevant and we choose to put it into action.  We cannot change the fact that uncertainty comes with the territory in complex agricultural ecosystems.  Information is only useful when we apply it, applying information becomes experience, experience provides us with an opportunity to build wisdom.   

If we choose to use our experiences to grow in wisdom we will eventually realize that it is not about knowing enough, as no matter how much information we consume we are never going to have all the answers.  We will gain the confidence to navigate uncertainty and let go of seeking certainty through the one size fits all, copy and paste answer.  We may also realize we were using a lack of knowledge as an excuse rather than finding a reason to overcome discomfort and the paralysis of fearing change to take new actions.  

Wisdom helps us to see how questioning is the answer.  When we ask our brain a question it will always give us an answer.  If we ask a lousy question we will get a lousy answer.  The quality of our life depends on the quality of the questions we ask ourselves.  Reinventing agriculture requires us to ask quality questions instead of looking for all the answers.  

Asking questions along the lines of “tell me what to do” gives the power in your business away to an expert or brains trust external to your business.  This question can lead us down a reactive path of making profit for other people’s businesses who sell inputs instead of making profit in our own business.  This is the familiar treadmill of a high input system where debts loads continue to increase as the resource base on which our farm viability depends continues to decline.  All the while the wellbeing of our farmers, their families and their communities also suffers. 

Our questions have led us down a path where we have become trained to react to situations as if we have a pesticide deficiency and have completely lost sight of the complexity of the agricultural ecosystem.  We do not have an insect pest problem because of an insecticide deficiency.  We do not have a weed because of a herbicide deficiency.  We do not have a fungal disease in our crops because of a fungicide deficiency.  It is the questions we ask that lead to us to behave as though we do.  

Exploring and reframing our questions is a key component of reinventing agriculture to create regenerative outcomes.  When we reframe our questions we become empowered to access different answers.  

“Good questions inform.  Great questions transform.” Ken Coleman