ARE HI-TECH COLLECTION METHODS ALWAYS THE BEST ... ?

Has modern technology really assisted in improving the way farmers do things these days? It could certainly be argued that it has, but maybe there are pockets of resistance even now. The story below, which recently came across our editorial desk, would seem to indicate that. The story itself might be a little dated in its technological references, but the intent of the tale remains the same ...

Way out in the far reaches of the west of New South Wales, old Norm the farmer was leaning on a fence surveying his animals scattered across the wide brown paddocks. As he watched, he saw a shiny new BMW SUV emerge from a cloud of dust along the road and pull up right alongside him.

The driver, dressed in immaculate Armani suit and tie and wearing gold rimmed Ray Ban sunglasses, slides out of the car and says to Norm "If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, will you give me one of the calves?" Norm summing up the young man immediately, slowly looks first at his animals grazing quietly nearby and then back at the man and answers "Sure ... why not?"

The young man gets out his notebook computer, connects it to his mobile phone and surfs to a NASA page on the Internet. He calls up a GPS satellite to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another satellite which scans the area in an ultra high resolution photo. The young man then opens up the digital Photo Shop and exports it to an image processing facility located in northern California in the USA. Within seconds he receives an email via his Palm Pilot that the image has been processed and the data stored.

He then accesses an MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with email on his Blackberry and in just a minute or so, receives a response. Finally he prints out a full colour, 5 page report on his hi-tech miniature laser printer, hands the copy to Norm the farmer and says " You have exactly 1538 cows and 467 calves".

"That's right" said Norm " I do have that many cows and calves, so I guess you can take one of my calves". He watches, somewhat bemused, as the young man selects an animal, runs around after it, finally corners it and wrestles it into the back of his SUV and closes down the hatch.

Norm says to the man " If I can tell you exactly what your job is, will you give me back my calf?" The man, eager to show up this apparent country bumpkin, says " Sure ... why not?"
"You're a political advisor from Canberra" says Norm. "Wow" says the young man, grudgingly impressed " how did you guess that ?"

"No guessing required" drawls Norm " You showed up here even though no-one called you; you wanted to be paid for an answer that I already knew, to a question I never asked. You used thousands of dollars worth of equipment trying to show how much smarter than me you are; and you don't know a thing about how working people make a living .... and you know nothing about cows for that matter. This happens to be a flock of sheep ...
oh and by the way ... let my dog out of the back of your car!"