Political fights and comment wars on #AgTwitter have put Heinlein’s Razor on loop in my head lately. The aphorism says you shouldn’t assume someone is trying to harm you when their actions could be explained by simple stupidity.
I like the idea, but I think “stupidity” misses the mark. Stupidity is a lack of mental capability. Ignorance—a lack of relevant knowledge or information—on the other hand, is far more common. As ever-growing technology allows for hyper-specialization and efficiency, some professions (like rancher) are becoming extremely rare. That gives rise to a special form of ignorance I call honest ignorance: a lack of information or knowledge that someone has no reason to have based on their experiences.
For example, I had a professor in undergrad who—after I apologetically explained I milked cows and cleaned pens on the campus dairy immediately before his class without time to change or shower—asked me if we sat on stools and milked into buckets like he’d heard about.
This question blew me away at first. But his lack of knowledge about modern dairying made sense—if you considered his background. He spent almost all his life in major cities; why would he know the first thing about modern U.S. dairying? When would he have encountered a dairy farmer to learn?
I think honest ignorance like this, rather than either malice or stupidity, is probably behind a lot of the threats facing U.S. cattle producers. Why? Because ranchers are very rare and engaged in a highly technical, unusual activity.
The 2017 Census of Agriculture was released Thursday, April 11 and details the rarity of agricultural producers quite precisely; 3.4 million people. That is just over 1 percent of the total American population of 327.2 million. Beef ranchers are rarer still. Out of the 2.1 million ag operations, 729,046 were beef cattle operations.
So, I’ll repeat: You—the cattle producer—are a very rare American minority.
On top of the rarity of ranchers, what you do is exceptionally specialized. Even among cattle ranchers, there can be massive differences in necessary knowledge based on location. Nothing drove this home to me more than watching a Western public lands rancher talk water rights with an unbelieving rancher from the East. Or seeing a fescue-country cattleman casually explain that managing cattle on technically toxic forage was just part of his day while his audience of non-fescue grazers marveled. Same job, but still vastly different knowledge needed.
So, not only are you a rare minority, what you do is very complex. You see now why I think most of the industry’s woes stem from honest ignorance in the rest of the country?
Simply put, the vast majority of Americans—roughly 81 percent of whom live in non-rural counties—likely haven’t ever met a rancher and have no reason to know about ranching. They are likely honestly ignorant about everything you do and are.
The downside is, they will speak, act, and vote based on that honest ignorance.
This brings me back to Heinlein’s Razor. There are a lot of threats facing the ranching world today, mostly in the form of regulation and skewed public perception. But are those threats the result of actual malice or a preponderance of honest ignorance?
The answer doesn’t change the fact they are threats—because they certainly are!—but it does change how we as a community should react. If we react to every threat as though it is motivated by malice, we will come out swinging.
That might be appropriate in some cases, but if we meet threats motivated by honest ignorance with aggression, people who might have been allies with a little education are going to get pummeled. And it’s a lot harder gaining the support of someone you’ve just attacked.
Cattle ranchers are a tiny minority engaged in a highly-specialized activity. We need allies and the support of people who aren’t in the industry.
I know it’s annoying when someone online makes an asinine claim about ranchers, or when politicians blame cattle for climate catastrophe. But instead of assuming malice and attacking, perhaps first assume honest ignorance and engage with them. Reaching out with your experience and efforts to improve their knowledge will win more supporters to your side and make fewer enemies. —KERRY HALLADAY
