Never Give In

If you were expecting to see a column here written by my colleague Rosemary Gordon, I apologize. But fear not, her column has simply moved to the inside back page. By way of introduction, I’ve been covering all things western for AVG for the past decade, and I will now — hopefully anyway — be providing “Seed For Thought.”

It’s appropriate, then, to kick off this column with some of what I learned at a conference I attended this past month on the West Coast. Though the Washington State Horticultural Association’s annual meeting centers on tree fruit, not vegetables, the conference keynote speaker is not even involved in agriculture. He’s an economic expert, but before you turn the page in disgust, thinking that the last thing you want to read is gloom and doom, you’re in for a surprise.

Ed Seifried, an economist at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, told the hundreds of tree fruit growers attending the association’s 104th annual meeting that now is the time to “buy, buy, buy.” Seifried said the 30-year-mortgage rate may soon dip below 5%, and it can’t get much lower because the prime rate, after all, can’t drop below zero. He said growers thinking of modernizing or expanding should go for it.

However, Seifried cautioned that what we are going through now is something that very few of us have experienced in our lifetimes, and he provided growers with specific instructions on how and where to stash their savings so they’d be insured. And he also said that it would be prudent for growers to check on their credit lines, just to make sure the money will be there if they need it.

Never, Never, Never

Seifried’s speech got me thinking of a concept introduced in a book I’ve been reading, Good To Great, about how some executives take their companies to a higher level. The book describes a phenomenon, the “Stockdale Paradox,” named for Admiral Jim Stockdale, the highest ranking officer in the “Hanoi Hilton” prisoner-of-war camp during the height of the Vietnam War. Stockdale, who was regularly tortured during his eight-year incarceration, said he made it out alive because he believed he would prevail in the end regardless of the difficulty.

But, and that’s a big “but” because this is where the paradox comes in, at the same time Stockdale unflinchingly confronted the brutal reality of his situation. Stockdale said it was the optimists, the ones who kept saying, “We’ll be out by (such and such a date),” who didn’t make it. Some companies operate — and often fail — with a similar belief.

So whatever you do, please don’t stick your head in the sand, thinking that things will work out soon. Keep reading those economic stories, no matter how painful, because it’s vital to know what’s going on. But couple that with an absolutely unshakable belief that some day, eventually, we will prevail. I’m reminded of a graduation speech British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once gave: “Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never. …”