Just another bloody idiot
By Kayla Evans
I was on the phone this morning with my Mum chatting about the plight of some farmers in South East Australia trying to run their farms across closed borders. It’s a frustrating time for many as the industry comes up against challenge after challenge in the midst of COVID; people are separated from loved ones, livestock, are unable to source feed and chemical. She exclaimed “the problem is these decisions get made by some idiot behind a desk in the city”. It’s something we hear a lot in our industry, that bureaucracy and red tape often make our jobs near impossible. But it got me thinking.
How often do we see animal welfare activists get torn down on social media for being “a greenie”, “too sensitive”, or “unrealistic”? Or the pollies in Canberra “out of touch” and “a bloody city slicker”? We see the knowledge gaps of people outside our industry (our audience) as fatal flaws. As if it is the responsibility of that audience to have the innate understanding of our industry that we do. But is it?
What is it about opposing views that confront us so much? Why is that we cannot separate a challenge to our industry from a personal attack? And sometimes it’s not even a challenge, it might be a simple question asked or an inconvenience caused.
Don’t misunderstand me. I am not flattening the issues that COVID is causing farmers. They are real and important issues that have an increasing impact on a business’s bottom line the longer they go on. And not just the bottom line, there are families and loved ones involved here too. I get it.
What I do question is our reaction in times of adversity. One of the greatest pieces of advice I’ve ever been given in my life is that people don’t know what they don’t know. If you just skimmed over that, read it again. People don’t know what they don’t know. The paper pushers, the vegans, the climate change activists, and person on the end of the phone when you call some government department DO NOT know. They don’t know how vital it is that you go and check on your 3,000 sheep. They don’t know that as an industry, red meat has cut its emissions by more than 57% in my lifetime. And even more than that, they don’t know that they’re even missing that information or that that information is even out there to be missed. Just think about that.
We can argue all day about whose role it is to fill those gaps (another post on that later), but the fact is that they exist. Your frustration with that bloody idiot behind a desk is so wildly misplaced. Because actually, that idiot behind the desk is likely not an idiot at all. They’re possibly university educated, and surely passionate about helping people – why else get into public or customer service?
So, if there is one thing that I hope you take from this, it’s that we STOP ASSUMING KNOWLEDGE. And stop carrying this righteous chip on our shoulder that because we put three meals a day on people’s tables, everyone needs to “get it”. They don’t. We need to realise that our audience don’t know and take a big breath in to swallow our frustration and begin helping them understand. And trust me, that will never happen if we don’t lay down our proverbial pitchforks.
