Opinion: Owning your mistakes in farming leads to learning
© Jack Frater We all make mistakes in farming – it’s part and parcel of the complexities of our industry. But how we learn from those mistakes determines how we progress.
I have certainly made more than my own fair share of cock-ups. I have overfed ewes before lambing, resulting in large lambs and even larger vet bills.
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I have taken out gateposts and shed roofs with grain trailers.
I have missed a tup lamb and ended up with a very early lambing, bent a top link (still not sure how I did that one) and even burst a water pipe with a digger bucket.
I have sold grain a week before a spike in price and bought fertiliser at its most expensive. The list could go on.
Every time I made one of these errors I would shout and swear, go off in a huff with myself, and prepare for a telling-off in one way or another.
There is a tendency to keep mistakes to ourselves to avoid the inevitable embarrassment of being the butt of the joke at the mart.
However, holding your hand up and admitting such mistakes, and then owning them, is a much better way of learning from them.
Ever since I was given this piece of advice, I have had numerous conversations with friends and farming clients about our various failings.
I have found that I am not dwelling on them any longer – as you can almost guarantee that, whatever the mistake, someone else will have made it before you.
I am not saying I have stopped shouting and swearing – nothing can be further from the truth, but once I have thrown a brief tantrum, I can now take a pragmatic look at what went wrong, and how I might avoid doing the same thing again in future.
Perhaps the single most compelling argument for learning from others, rather than making mistakes yourself, is when it comes to health and safety.
Thankfully the odd black fingernail and bruised ego is the extent of my injuries, but people are seriously injured and die in this industry every year – and we need to stop that happening.