The Farmer and the Merchant

A farmer knows their soil, the weather, what time of year to plant, and all that sort of thing. They're a craftsperson. They study the work before them and master all of it that they can. It's a process of wisdom, experience, some trial and error, and mostly staying within safe parameters to produce an expected result.

A merchant knows their people, the market conditions, pricing, what drives demand and what can heat up cooling desire. A merchant knows which stall in the bazaar has the best traffic and why, and how to get market conditions to favor their product over another lesser quality one.

One isn't better. One isn't more important. Farmers aren't great salespeople. They think that because they've worked hard, they deserve (a terrible word) the best price possible for their product. Merchants aren't wise in what it takes to create the farmer's product, but they know what it takes for someone to buy.

Know Your Neighbor

A farmer would be more effective if they knew what the merchant could easily sell, what was in high demand, and what yielded the most return for their effort. I remember reading a very long time ago about a small farm that tried selling flowers to middling responses, but sold DRIED flowers for 10x the money. Similarly, they found out that if they sold regular sausage, they made far less per pound than for selling cured sausage. Much higher yield. This wouldn't/shouldn't make sense. Wouldn't fresh be better?

A merchant would be so much better if they understood the harvest cycle, the capabilities of a farmer, all the ways in which they could convince the farmer to create derivative products beyond their primary crop. They'd have more material to sell and maybe even find some premium yields along the way. Think about how grocers suddenly sold "baby carrots" far more often than... what do we call them? Just full grown adult carrots? Carrots with jobs? This shouldn't make sense, but a merchant figured that out.

Doing your job is vital. Doing your job while KNOWING YOUR NEIGHBOR'S job is magic. You grow. You can thrive. You'll do better than the person just doing their own job.

The other day, I wrote a letter to you about what your boss wants. That's a similar concept. If you know your neighbor the boss (I don't know what to call her in this particular analogy - the mayor?), then you can better understand how the Mayor wants the farmer and merchant to get along.

You can be the farmer or the merchant. You can even be the person who brings better tools to the farmer or gives the merchant the chance to sell in more than one marketplace. There are lots of roles.

It all works better when we know not only how to do our job well, but how we can benefit the people around us and the people we serve.

Does this make sense?

Chris...