Agriculture will survive turmoil unscathed
It’s times like these that Twitter really comes into its own. I was personally affected by the coronavirus outbreak early on, as my China trip was cancelled and almost every aspect of my startup has been affected.
But I wasn’t convinced we needed to be worried about coronavirus.
Twitter gives the average person access to experts around the world. My mind changed about coronavirus when I read a tweet thread by an Italian doctor.
This doctor explained how modern healthcare systems only have limited intensive-care beds with ventilators. They explained the scene in Italy, including that some sick people were simply not able to be treated as they didn’t have enough ventilators.
The doctor described how they decide who gets treated and who dies – a real-life version of the team-building exercise where you have four people in a lifeboat and you have to decide who lives or dies.
What determines the value of someone’s life?
When I’ve read about people having to make these sorts of decisions, they have always been during times of real strife, like war or shipwrecks.
I think we are at the start of another time of strife. There will be pain of both the medical and economic kinds. Naturally, we all start thinking about how this is going to affect us personally. What does the future hold for our work or jobs?
The natural inclination is to stop spending and wait and see what happens.
The problem is, our spending is another person’s income. We’re seeing the whole world just slow spending.
Tourism spending in New Zealand has practically stopped.
Already five of my friends have been told they won’t have a job next month. Another friend works for a car rental company in Queenstown. She told me they spent all weekend just taking cancellations.
All across the country, there will be similar stories.
Anyone involved in conferences, concerts or sporting events will be wondering what they will be doing for the next few months.
While many businesses will suffer, others will boom.
I have a friend who works for a software company that enables people to share their computer screens on video easily.
They are flat-out busy at the moment. Their new signups directly correlate to the areas of the world where coronavirus is spreading – Italy, France, Spain, Germany.
It would appear that the agricultural sector will get through this relatively unscathed. Farmers are basically self-isolated all year round anyway.
From an economic perspective, the world still needs to eat and it looks as if China’s demand will come to the rescue of our agricultural sector once again.
The agri sector typically has trouble attracting good staff. If unemployment from the tourism sector rises, which it surely will, there might be more people willing to harvest grapes, pick fruit or milk cows.
I suppose there are winners and losers in every situation.
Of course, we should be looking out for the silver linings and the positives that will come from this time of strife, no matter what industry we are involved in.
Maybe this time will remind us of what’s actually important in our lives.
When things get tough our priorities are refined and the frivolous or unimportant things get discarded.
In tough times our true characters come out.
Are we the people who fight over the mince and toilet paper at the supermarket or are we the ones who check on our neighbour who is elderly or who has lost their job?
Are we going to be selfish or selfless?
Patience is probably a good attribute to have at the moment. We should be patient with each other because not all of us will react well to our circumstances all of the time.
Patience leads to calmness. When we are calm we can be kind, caring and empathetic with each other.
Being calm enables us to work together and working together is exactly what we need to do in tough times.
However, you wouldn’t describe Twitter as a kind, caring or empathetic place. So I’d advise you to use Twitter sparingly as a tool.