Interesting subject on BBC about farming

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-29082091

this is a story about a farmer trying to grow Wasabi.

land values

http://www.knightfrankblog.com/ruralbulletin/farmland-market/which-uk-prime-minister-was-best-for-farmland-values/

Interesting to be able to find out a bit more on the secretive world of land values in Britain.

an interesting thing about a boring thing

Met page on rainfall http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/releases/archive/2013/2012-weather-statistics

only just caught up with FWAG

FWAG rises from the ashes http://ccriuk.wordpress.com/2012/12/07/re-launch-of-fwag/
also on this site http://loddingtonestate.blogspot.co.uk/2012_12_01_archive.html

There are so many blogs and I simply don't know how to follow all the stuff. Whya are there so many people bashing away on keyboards across the planet and no connections.

Anyway all I can say is this blog enables me to do these links service if I can remember my passwords. Which I can with HMRC and I expect I will get a fine but at least I can look the world in the eye and say I pay more tax than google.

Leadership course

It has been sometime since this blog has updated (this is an old draft from 2010).

We put together a leadership course, a five day event for early january (2010) and there was insufficient interest to make a real go of it. However it was the weather that really stopped things in the tracks.

Having spent sometime in the organization of this course it was a bit of a let down. The challenge now was to keep the fellowshiop work going.

On talking things through with my tutor we decided to go for a reduced level of education time and set up a couple of workshops to do some work on leadership, as a part of the course to evaluate leadership education.  The nub of the leadership education is there is a limited uptake in agriculture in Britain with plenty of activity on offer. The best leadership education for farmer/agricultural managers is to go on a course that is aimed at Leadership with a diverse intake from other sectors as opposed to the more incestuous farmer only leadership, because farming is not as different as farmers like to think it is.

The problem is management is a young discipline and has been through various stages of fashionable developemnt. Agriculture has only recently industrialised and so is only now receptive to concepts of business and decision making analysis. Added into this framework is the rise of systems approach. The synergy between systems, agriculture and management is more harmonious that the previous concentration on reductionism, and a business ethos driven by the dismal science that suggests that 'all other things being equal' we can address these two parts of the decision. However complexity has driven that solution procedure out the door.

The weather however is different now with water, water every where (nor a drop to drink?).

Been looking for a link to history/development of management came across this http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/01/the_next_big_thing_in_managing.htmlon management innovations overtime

The joined up world, it's wonderful

Found agronomy man blog, very excellent and he wrote good piece on the diploma minefield in agriculture coming out of a do that the old boys in the US of A have in regard to agricultural teachers. I think there would be value in doing this in these little isles as agricultural teaching is rapidly moving up a cul-du-sac due to demographics, the fact that industry can pay better salaries than teaching has at it's disposal. This is the link

http://www.naae.org/teachag/about-ag-education.php

How to organise information into knowledge

Working on a project that seeks to use video linking theory into practice and found this blog How to organise information into knowledge



http://literacyadviser.wordpress.com/tag/digital/

Looks to have a very useful connection. The secret in web clatter appears to be finding the main points that enable connection to turn information into knowledge.

It has been sometime and still the only person interested is nil

The point of this blog is to capture some data in respect of sustainability. This area of activity is fraught with complexity of language and political hijack.

In regard to communication and understanding a most useful tool is the n gramm tool developed by google. http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=chemical%2C+agriculture%2C+&year_start=1700&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3

What can we say

The role of a log is for personal use. The thing we have now is too much information and too little knowledge

To day I went on to google and looked for some old papers, and they are there, which is wonderful. These old papers are often viewed as old and out of date but they are not so. There is much to commend there renewal.

linkedin

It would seem that through the web and grafting we can connect, but when at my appraisel my manager said: How can we make money out of this network of yours?

I don't know.

How

Is a blog a dairy?
I don't like the work blog.

But I do like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKIqGhqMv60&feature=related

Why have only 166,000 viewed this but 212,000,000 want Gaga?

my linkedin profile is http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/neil-ridley/11/a01/287

Leadership up date

We have decided to undertake some sessions that are brief and punchy to meet with farmers availabity to undertake leadership development

leadership course

Have approval from grant funder to run course.

Seeking out folk to come on course, trawling the e mail and snail mail addresses to get hits, but it is not rich mining at present.

There seems to be resistance to the course offering. Is this a good course?

what has been established

We have had a meeting at Harper Adams and have developed the ideas from the research to formulate a course.

• Leadership is to be looking at leadership of or within the industry
• couirse will be punchy and practical
• Leadership needs to include other sectors tan farmers alone
• key words in leadership
• Put something in place that enables a type of progression, there are many courses and to often they are from nothing to 2 or 3 week residential courses

Grist defines leadership

The division between management and leadership is rooted in the distinction between known and unknown, belies the complexity of the relationship between problem and response.

Key words

1. Values (is about Integrity, moral Authority)
2. Influence
3. Information (about communication, understanding, use of media)
4. Change (about situation)
5. Vision
6. Flexibility
7. Effectivenes (about networking)

leadership education and leadership traits

A read through of the replies to e mail survey shows that the farm community is derivative of an authoritarian type of leadership probably not receptive tp the new ways of working. Farming is often small in business terms for leadership education activity.

Problems in the ruarl community and problems in farming are often described as intractable and condensed around communication problems. The development of leadership skills with new technologies would help, but HOW?

muckerty mapping

I came across this web tool, muckerty mapping. This sets out connections of people, place and networks. Here is a connection to a map of Norman Borlaug

http://www.muckety.com/8019CB55741E9F8CFF3AC2B64B53312F.map

While this tool is only available on license should you want to do your own, this particular individual's map (Borlaug) is intersting from the agricultural leadership point of view. How is Borlaug connected to Sachs? Well I didn't know they were, but they are through Earthscan.

To use the map open uip in full screen and double click on boxes, boxes can be moved by holding on box with mouse and move.

e mail 143 contacts for information on leadership

Yesterday I sent out 143 e mails to various folk i know to get their feelings about leadership training/courses in agriculture/farming.

I had 8 bounced back with 3 on maternity leave, which I found interesting, the others were on out of office reply.

To this moment I have had 23 comeback, which I think is very good. 3 or 4 have not understood my request which demonstrates my communication is not top notch.

put out e mail to collect data from Landex

Sent out via landex e mail to various colleges to find out what is happening in the landex syndicate. Have had three replies since the request was sent on 3rd september

grassland conference

this confence provided the opportunity to talk with 40 different folk associated with putting agricultural research out to farms.

The role of leadership is to influence, most of these people seek no influence. There is a desire to stay in the comfort zone.

Are we undertaking the correct thing when trying to put a leadership ciourse out to farmers?

Farming has a 'tradition' of inflexibility and conservatism, which has served them well as a survival mechanism for those who remain in the job. However it fails to support those who leave due to their failure to adapt tp a changed world. The reality is they do not leave the farmhouse, just the land, which in turn is turned over to someone else in a cmtract obligation. The farmer who leaves becomes a landloed of sorts.

I have recently embarked on a fellowship to investgate, and then produce a course on leadership for agricultural and farmers