Eureka = Termites, Crowns and Cement

Innovation is not a stranger to our business of agriculture, just look at the changes in the past decade.  Chemistry, education, tools and methods; all of these have changed and helped provide accretive value to the farmers we support.  But if we’ve learned anything, we’ve learned that more innovation is coming and it’s coming faster than ever before.  To thrive and survive, you must put yourself in a position to innovate and invent.

Rather than present a discourse on breakthrough thinking and problem solving, I’d like to tell you a couple of stories that may provide some insight into how to imagine the possibilities.

Let’s imagine you are an architect.  You have received a commission from Old Mutual Insurance Company to build an office building in downtown Harare, Zimbabwe.  Harare is in central Africa at about 17 South Latitude. This puts it about the same distance from the equator as Jamaica..  So far not a problem right?  Well Old Mutual had one more request, they really didn’t want to put in air conditioning – a little heating was ok, but that’s about it.  Most of us  upon hearing that last request would run for the hills.

Mick Pierce, an architect and amateur biologist took up the gauntlet and went to work.  It seems as part of his hobby, Mick had studied the termite mounds in Zimbabwe and other nearby countries. Termites, it seems, build gigantic mounds (10 to 20 feet high) inside of which they farm a fungus which is their primary food source. The fungus must be kept at exactly 87 degrees, while the temperatures outside range from 35 degrees (f) at night to 104 degrees (f) during the day. The termites achieve this remarkable feat by constantly opening and closing a series of heating/cooling vents throughout the mound over the course of the day.

His proposal was accepted and the complex was completed in 1996. Eastgate, was a mixed office complex and shopping mall covering half a city block in the busy business centre of Harare.  It is not only ventilated, cooled and heated entirely through natural means, but it works!  Its ventilation costs one-tenth that of a comparable air-conditioned building and it uses 35 percent less energy than six conventional buildings in Harare combined.  In the first five years alone, the building saved its owner millions in energy costs.

This kind of thinking isn’t all current day stuff.  Around 220BC, Greek King Hieron of Syracuse was concerned that the craftsmen who were sculpting his new crown were stealing from him.  He had suspicions that they were substituting silver inside the crown and taking the replaced gold.  So Hieron asked mathematician and inventor Archimedes to find a way of determining if one of his crowns was pure gold without destroying the crown in the process. The crown weighed the correct amount but that was not a guarantee that it was pure gold. The workers could have just made the size bigger to account for the lighter silver.  As days turned into weeks, Archimedes pondered how to measure the volume of the crown.  He tried detailed measuring, but the curls and crevices in the crown made accuracy impossible.  With the king becoming increasingly impatient, Archimedes thought he needed a break.  So like all good Greeks, he went to the public baths.  As Archimedes lowered himself into the full batch, he noticed that some of the water was displaced by his body and flowed over the edge of the tub. Then he lowered his arm into the water and a little more ran over the tub.  This was just the insight he needed to realize that the crown should not only weigh the right amount but should displace the same volume as an equal weight of pure gold. He was so excited by this idea that he reportedly ran naked through the streets shouting “Eureka” (“I have found it”).

The final story is appropriate for all of us in agriculture.  What if I told you that there is a company who can deliver their bulk product 200 miles for  less price than their competitors can deliver fifty miles.  This company also centralized customer service, and separated production and delivery from sales.  When they did this, they took the best production people and put them in production, the best sales people in sales, and so on.  They didn’t take away time from what the person did best.  Finally, by their efficiencies they took significant assets and costs out of their production and delivery cycles.

Because this company Cemex, is in the Ready-Mix Cement business does that mean we can’t learn from them? Let’s looks at the environment that they operate in, they:

1. Sell a commodity product.
2. Are a victim of weather.
3. Blends to custom formula for customer.
4. Have un-forecastable demand.
5. Deal with a bulk product.
6. Are difficult to differentiate.
7. Deal with a non-technical workforce.
8. Have to adjust for work stoppages.
9. Schedule delivery around traffic jams.
10. Have time critical deliveries.

Sounds pretty familiar huh?  The lesson is to not only look for ideas within your industry but look around at others – even a lowly termite might provide the inspiration you need.

And now for a personal note, this will be my last column. For nearly two years it has been my privilege to write for Crop Life.  While I usually took the road less traveled in terms of subject matter, I always understood my obligation to you the reader and to Meister Media.  I want to thank you, the readers, and the staff of Crop Life for making my visit a pleasant one.  I appreciate each and every email I received – I think we’re up to six now. 

Robert Paarlberg, agricultural raconteur, may be reached at rlpaarlberg@gmail.com