Going, going … gone
Matriarchal Society
Point Based Solutions
By Stephen L. Wilmeth
Mr. Patrick McGinty, an Irishman of note,
Fell into a fortune and bought himself a goat.
Says he, “Sure of goat’s milk I’m goin’ to have me fill.”
But when he brought the nanny home, he found it was a
bill!
~ traditional
and ribald Irish ballad, ‘Paddy McGinty’s Goat’
The actual real-life
Paddy McGinty was the war hero, Major Roy Farran, who adopted the Paddy McGinty
moniker as his nom de guerre (war name). As many who fought behind enemy
lines in World War II, Farran used the name to hide his identity to the extent
he could from his enemies, the German oppressors.
Those men
(and women) were a different sort of mixed characters. Largely at Winston
Churchill’s urging they were assembled, trained, and inserted behind enemy
lines to lend support to the native partisans who were trained and armed to
raise havoc in the rear and ultimately support the eventual Ally breakthrough
in the push to rid Europe of its cloak of contrived darkness.
Very few
individuals were cut from the cloth that constituted one of these warriors.
Their
selection was based largely on being known by the network of the brothers Stirling
who became famous in the North Africa campaign as leaders of what became known
as the Desert Rats, the British 7th Armoured Division. They
were an independent lot crowding on antisocial, risk takers, adrenaline
junkies, loyal to their cause, self-starters, brave beyond the pale, inventive,
and nearly always sigma type personalities who demonstrated little concern
about climbing any social ladder.
If there
was a counterpart today in our industry, it could well be the modern dairyman
and … certainly the rancher of yesteryear.
Going,
going … gone
I view the
departure of the participants within dairy row south of Las Cruces along the
I-10 corridor with great sadness.
Last year,
2021, witnessed the departure of two more of those long-time operations with
nary any concern or sympathy from local government. In fact, a quick review of
news records will reveal a continuum of antidairy sentiment. They stink, they
pollute, they use too much water, and they do this, and they do that to the
point of ad nauseum. These enemies of a real world and the implications of food
and fiber services have little idea on what thin ice they are treading.
It takes
more than fortitude to run much less own one of those milk factories. The
constant demands and the intensity of daily responsibilities would leave the
tenured professor, the schoolteacher, the government official, the retirees,
the trust babies, the casual passersby, and the leftist environmentalists who
now govern Dona Ana County speechless. So would signing million-dollar hay
checks for keeping the operations viable.
Another
hint of the pressure these operators face is the review of the dairy wage
orders that are heaped upon them. There is no leap to recognize it’s not what
they can do to keep their businesses viable it is what they can’t do to satisfy
the social implications of their existence.
There is
little wonder that they are closing. The downside is huge. Gone are the
millions of dollars inserted into the local economy. Gone will be the product
itself. Gone are the entry opportunities of young managers, and gone is the
mindset of assuming the helm of these cow pen, symphonic behemoths.
Ranches are
no different, and farms face a similar and yet expanded set of growing concerns.
Labor has become the overpowering constraint. Indeed, there are people, people
everywhere, but no citizen wants to report to work. His societal endowments are
too bountiful and cosmopolitan.
Several
years ago, we did a survey to review the status of young managers waiting in
the wings of Dona Ana agricultural operations. It was revealed that only 17% of
current operations had a young steward ready to assume the responsibility
overseeing management. Less than one in five operations had a planned path of
succession.
The most
common response among the various operations was that there just wasn’t enough
margin to allow opportunities. Likewise, the mounting bureaucratic and social
constraints on the operations were being manifested by departure from the
businesses. The modern Paddy McGinty is serving notice he’d rather go to the
pub and share a brew with the lads.
The fight is no longer worth the
odds, and Paddy is getting tired.
Point Based Solutions
There remains the theory the Mimbreno
people of our Southwest up to about 1280 had become a matriarchal society much
like our own, growing tendencies. Theirs was a society in the clouds of localized
docility. Civilized is a word that can be inserted. Something happened about
that time, though, and they disappeared. Drought (global warming?) could have
had a hand in the departure, but so could the arrival of the Athabascans, the
Apaches, who were operated very much like the Germanic invaders of WWII.
The pincer movements of those folks
were executed with zeal and civilized standards in their surroundings weren’t
necessarily high on their list of essentials. They were undeniably successful,
though, and filled the vacuum of the departing Membrenos.
History will never know what would have happened if a group
of partisan warriors would have been inserted to stem the tide. Likewise, our
society has yet to recognize the condition of sigma oriented and dominated men
and women who strive not for grand societal control but for resolution and
discovery of point based solutions.
Their
presence and usefulness may well be the key to continuity. They could well be
the supremely important component of perpetuity, but enough of that. Another
verse of McGinty’s ballad is probably more pertinent for the insightful.
The Germans retreated, hurriedly they fled.
Holding their noses they tumbled over dead.
‘Ach’, says the Kaiser, ‘There’s poison gas afloat.’
But it was only the effluvium from Paddy McGinty’s goat!
Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New
Mexico. “A little stink never hurt anybody.”
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