"Every inch of land is worth its weight in gold"

(Baonghean) - The other day I read about farmers in a commune suffering huge losses because of the chayote... bumper crop. Tons of chayote that no one bought had to be used as animal feed or left to fall right at the base to become garden fertilizer. After a few years of "shining" as the "savior" of farmers, the planting area was spontaneously expanded by the people, causing the supply to be so abundant that it was overwhelming...

Our grandparents often taught us "Too much of anything is not good", but the paradox is that our people like a lot of everything, sometimes to the point of excess. When eating, we have to have lavish feasts to show that we are well-off and hospitable. No matter what kind of food is nutritious, East or West, ancient or modern, yin and yang, the five elements,... as long as it is something new or precious, we will eat it all. In fact, that is a way of thinking and a way of living that is both unscientific and wasteful.

Not only in the matter of eating and consuming, the mindset of liking for numbers seems to have penetrated the subconscious of a large number of people. A very obvious example is that whenever there is a store or a product that is doing business effectively, immediately everyone rushes to do business with that exact product, with the same method, even under the same brand name. That's why there is a whole street where every store has the same name, and then, as if to distinguish and assert themselves, they add the words "genuine", "genuine", "original",... Even more tragic is the situation of brand theft: Seeing a store owner doing business successfully, the landlord decides to terminate the contract and then opens a store himself, under the signboard of the old business owner. Of course, after a while, customers will also be able to distinguish which is the "genuine" brand and which are the copycat versions. To see, passivity, laziness in thinking, and liking "ready-made food" cannot lead people to success.

Returning to the story of chayote, some people may say: what does it have to do with the above story of brand theft? In fact, in essence, spontaneously expanding the area of ​​chayote cultivation is also a form of stealing ideas. But it is not entirely bad, because it comes from the encouraging thought of wanting to learn and apply successful models that have gone before. However, due to the lack of planning thinking, not properly assessing the needs and scale of the market, it leads to a situation where supply exceeds demand, causing chayote prices to fall miserably, and even not finding a source of consumption. If instead of mechanically "copying" the chayote cultivation model, people would think of other vegetables, fruits or accompanying services such as transportation, purchasing agents, etc., it would protect the economic value of an agricultural product that is both easy to cultivate and has the potential to bring high economic benefits.

Mr. Ho Van Duoc (Hamlet 6, Quynh Lien Commune) collects chayote fruit to make fertilizer.

In the end, it is still due to a lack of dynamic, poor and mechanical thinking. Naively mechanical when thinking that a product's position in the market is immutable. But no, economic value is a function of two closely related variables: supply and demand. If the relationship between supply and demand is relatively balanced, the value of the product will be stable. Any difference between the two variables above will cause the economic value of the product to fluctuate, either increasing or decreasing, but certainly, it will reach a state of saturation. The same goes for people, changing and responding to the needs of a constantly moving society is the way to ensure their value and position in society. Being passive, lazy and lacking in creativity, there will come a time when our value will be saturated and forgotten like a chayote after a slow season. Where do you want to stand in this society? Everyone wants to choose a good piece of land, but too many people will exhaust any fertile land. Find the empty spaces, "reclaim" and "plan" them into "inches of land, inches of gold", that is the way to affirm your own value!

Hai Trieu