(Part One of Six)

An entertaining poem of the old South written long ago by Benjamin Batchelder Valentine (1862-1919) was The King Corn Man.  It was about a rascal who went from one end of Virginia to the other stealing the best ears of corn from the best cornfields to enter in the big fair.  Proud of his entry, the hoaxer laid his superior ears of corn in triumph before the officials at the show.

The punch line came when he was told his entry didn’t count:  The corn had already been judged in the field!

Yes, they used to judge corn in the field.  There was a reason:  Farmers who bought seed corn from show winners would get better crops themselves.

But what if seed corn growers had won shows on the basis of a few hand-picked odd ears out of a field of bug-prone, drought-martyr, disease-friendly, bitter-tasting nubbins?

Shows might then hurt local grain growers by falsely implying seed corn sold by prizewinners was good.  Worse, if winning cornfields had the above faults, plus were crossed with pollen from a neighbor’s field, then expected yields and quality would be even more dubious.

Old-time corn contests really got going when Dr. Seaman A. Knapp (1833-1911)—originally a Merino sheepman—convinced politicians of the public and societal importance of better crops.  Knapp’s breeding stock selection methods raised yields, added quality and cut costs.

Those advantages made rural living easier, in the end making city people richer, too.  In a few short years his ag clubs and competitions hugely raised crop yields, mostly via selection based on conformation and on-farm testing.  Nearly all the increase was profit—5-fold gains in take-home pay for growers.

Extra income from improved yields allowed more trade, which meant more public revenues without tax hikes.

More tax money meant better roads, schools and public safety.  Happier citizens re-elected politicians far-sighted enough to support Knapp’s public ag shows and demos, which:

• Awarded prizes for the biggest, most profitable crops—judged at the farm
• Held shows with further prizes for top specimens from winners’ farms
• Publicized prizewinners’ husbandry methods

Marketing Seeks & Fulfills Customer’s Needs

Marketing flock products literally means matching a screened, probable customer to the exact product or service he or she needs.  That requires three things:

• Identify key characteristics of steady, high-paying buyers of flock products, whether live stock, chilled or frozen meat, fiber, pelts, dairy products, sheep manure, or property enhance­ment (grazing) services.
• Identify the special product traits that the identifiable segments of this group prefer—and the things they most avoid
• Supply the goods and services that meet the largest number of needs at the best profit margins.

Recently, promoters have been racially profiling in order to try to sell lamb.  The groups generally targeted are people of African and Levantine extraction, Asians, Latinos, and folks of southern European origin.  In fact, about the only group being ignored are so-called “whites,” who made up 80+% of the buying pool in days when America sold many times more lamb and wool.

Personally, I think racial profiling is a half-baked way to market lamb.  People’s race doesn’t make them any more likely to buy products of unreliably variable character.

Instead, let’s ask ourselves who needs breeding stock, and why?  Hint:  It’s not just show people; every breed has (or should have) at least one unique trait that makes it “the boss” of a special growing environment or consumer desire.

What business, age group, economic class, landowner type or community facility would benefit from lamb, mutton or wool in any form, pelts, cheese, manure, or property en­hance­ment?  What breeds could satisfy all or most local market sectors’ requirements and still adapt to local environmental conditions?

Suppose a prospect says, “But I don’t like lamb,” or “I don’t like wool,” or “I don’t want my land fenced….”  It doesn’t hurt to ask them why; and whatever their answer is you can then ask, “Suppose that problem were solved, would the other benefits be attractive to you?”  We then select, produce and supply products that solve the problems.

We need not be pushy to win long-term business relationships.  We just need to recognize (as we’ve seen numerous times now) that customers aren’t always right.  They’re just the ones with the money.

Lamb & Wool “Haters”

Let’s pause now to consider an interesting phenomenon:  Have you noticed lamb is the only common meat for which there is actually a substantial, taste-based “hater” category?

Americans who shun poultry mostly do so for health and/or what they perceive as “humane” or “environmental” issues.  With pork, it’s those reasons plus religious tenets.  Beef avoiders cite the same concerns, plus meat toughness.  Conversely, “lamb haters” rarely cite any of that; they most commonly cite flavor issues.

Sheep meat’s inconsistent but built-in flavor variability eventually imposes an annoyance on every lamb buyer, because sooner or later he doesn’t feel like he got what he paid for.  If he wants gamy meat, he gets stuck with mild.  Another wants mild meat, but receives gamy.  I’ve heard both types of disappointment over U.S. lamb because (a) “it’s too gamy,” or (b) “it’s never gamy enough.”  Both customers can’t be right.  But maybe both aren’t always totally wrong either.

Some official studies claim gaminess is all determined by a sheep’s diet.  I doubt these studies take endocrine factors into account, because many growers have tested carefully-controlled sheep diets, with a plethora of contradictory results.  The one thing they keep returning to is the reliability of pure breeds—a factor not entirely reliable either, but when coupled with seasonal endocrine factors and husbandry methods, it’s pretty close.

Wool has its “haters” too; it’s widely—but wrongly—known to always itch; to always get destroyed by moths; to always shrink when machine washed.

Here’s an irony:  These same “wool haters” buy tons of costly “stinkum” to hide their revolting body odor, caused by their beloved-but-nasty plastic garments.  Their obsolete opinions about wool are eating up their dollars while com­prom­is­ing their health and comfort.  Their chemical stench-fighting addiction gets reinforced by our own no-marketing promotion when we shout “wear U.S. wool—it’s all comfy and cozy!”  They buy the wrong stuff, think we’re liars and that they were “right all along.”  The customer is wrong again and so are we, to their hurt and ours.