Coping with uncertainty

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) global pandemic has brought most of us face to face with great uncertainty. Not only is there still much that we don’t know about this disease, we also don’t know yet how severely the global and national economies will suffer due to the health impact and the effect of restrictions that lockdowns have placed on trade and movement. How many more lives will be lost? How many more jobs will be lost? How will societies support all those who have lost their jobs and livelihoods? When will things go back to normal? Should they? Perhaps, out of all the tragedy and frustration this pandemic has caused, it has been our inability to find definite answers to all these and many other questions, more than anything else, that has been the most difficult aspect of this crisis to cope with.

But we are not helpless against uncertainty. This is something we learn from farmers, for whom uncertainty is a way of life.

Farming is one of the riskiest types of business a person can choose to invest in. On a very basic level, farmers have to contend with the uncertainty of the weather. Markets fluctuate and even the most experienced and knowledgeable farmers are not always able to anticipate the price they will be able to earn for a product. Farmers have, however, developed ways in which they can improve the resilience of their businesses during times of heightened uncertainty. One of the most important ways in which they do this is to diversify. In the same way that farmers diversify their businesses by having different farming concerns, or by becoming active in more than one area of the value chain, workers in the other sectors can also diversify their income streams by opting to work for multiple employers on a contract basis (freelancing), instead of working full-time for one company, or by developing an additional income stream by using other skills or through investing in assets that can earn a passive income.

Farmers also prepare their businesses to withstand uncertainty by investing in technology and training that will increase efficiency and keep their overheads as low as possible. The lesson we can all learn from this is that we can never stop learning. Don’t expect the same skills that you possess today to be sufficient to ensure that you will still be employable 10 or even five years from now. The world is changing too fast; entire industries are becoming redundant.

Farmers know that, even if things are going well, at some point a drought, or a flood, or some other disaster will come. This doesn’t mean that they live in fear; instead, they prepare for possible misfortune. Still, some disasters are so large, like a drought that lasts for four years, that no amount of preparation will be adequate. And it is because of these times that most farmers have learned to have faith. For some, this is faith in a higher power; for others, it is their faith in the knowledge that nothing on earth lasts forever, not even the worst times.