16/08/2026
WHEN DID WE STOP ASKING WHY?
Sometimes I wonder whether agriculture became so modern that somewhere along the way, we forgot something very basic.
Go back far enough.
Before fertiliser factories.
Before herbicides.
Before fungicides.
Before foliar programmes.
Before soil conditioners.
Before consultants and laboratories.
Plants were already growing.
Forests didn't receive bags of NPK.
Nobody corrected a yellow leaf.
Nobody sprayed micronutrients.
Leaves fell.
They decomposed.
Nutrients returned to the soil.
Fungi, bacteria, insects and animals played their roles.
Roots searched through the ground.
Water moved through the landscape.
Plants died and new plants grew.
Nature was never perfect. There were droughts, floods, pests and diseases.
But somehow,
the system kept going.
Then humans learnt agriculture.
And we became very good at it.
We selected better plants.
We bred for higher yields.
We learnt to control water.
We supplied nutrients.
We controlled weeds.
We controlled pests and diseases.
Then came machinery, chemistry, genetics, sensors, drones and all kinds of modern technology.
Agriculture became incredibly productive.
That is progress.
But somewhere along this journey, I wonder whether our thinking slowly changed.
Perhaps we started with:
“How does this system work?”
Then moved towards:
“What can we add to make it produce more?”
And eventually, very often:
“What product can solve this problem?”
A leaf turns yellow.
Apply something.
A frond dries.
Apply something.
Disease appears.
Apply something.
Yield falls.
Look for another solution.
And quite often those solutions work.
So naturally, we continue.
Then another problem appears.
Another solution arrives.
Then another.
And another.
Until today agriculture is surrounded by an enormous industry of solutions:
fertilisers, herbicides, fungicides, pesticides, micronutrients, biostimulants, microbial products, soil conditioners, foliar products, special blends and new formulations.
Many are useful.
Some are excellent.
I am certainly not against them.
But perhaps we should occasionally stop and ask:
Why do we need so many solutions in the first place?
And there is another uncomfortable question worth asking.
Who carries the greatest risk?
The farmer or plantation owner carries the land.
The development cost.
The roads and drains.
The machinery.
The workers.
The weather.
The disease.
The crop failure.
The labour shortage.
The commodity price.
And for perennial crops, years of waiting before knowing whether many of our decisions were correct.
Then we purchase a product to solve a problem.
The product arrives.
The invoice is paid.
If it works, fantastic.
But if it doesn't perform as expected under our particular conditions?
Maybe the dosage needs changing.
Maybe the timing was wrong.
Maybe another formulation is needed.
Maybe another product should be added.
Maybe another supplier has a better design.
And we try again.
Who carries the cost of that experiment?
Usually, the grower.
That doesn't make suppliers bad.
They are businesses. Businesses have to make money.
But there is a difference worth understanding:
**A supplier's business grows by selling products.
A grower's business improves by producing more with less unnecessary cost and less risk.**
Those interests can work together.
But they are not automatically the same.
And recently, something in the field brought this whole question back to me.
I was looking at oil palms with fronds showing deterioration and desiccation.
One explanation given was water-table instability.
Maybe.
Water certainly matters.
But then I started looking around more carefully.
I saw other palms with strong green new growth.
I saw healthy crowns.
I saw productive palms carrying good bunches.
I also saw otherwise healthy palms naturally carrying some old drying fronds.
And suddenly the question became more interesting.
Because perhaps:
**A dry frond is not the answer.
It is the evidence that something happened.**
The same applies to a yellow leaf.
Or a nutrient deficiency.
Or poor bunch production.
These things tell us what we can see at the end of the process.
But what happened before that?
What happened at the roots?
What happened in the soil?
Was there enough oxygen?
What was happening with water?
Were the nutrients actually available?
Could the roots reach and absorb them?
What was happening biologically?
Was the palm simply ageing an old frond normally, or was it losing productive fronds prematurely?
Those are very different questions.
And this is where one thought keeps coming back to me:
Instead of spending all our time studying the sick palm, why don't we study the healthy palm?
The palm surviving conditions under which another is struggling may contain more useful information than the struggling palm itself.
Maybe that healthy palm is telling us:
“Something here is working.”
So why not investigate it?
Dig around it.
Look at the roots.
Look at the soil.
Look at the biology.
Look at the water.
Look at its history.
Then compare it with the struggling palm.
Maybe the answer is nutrients.
Maybe water.
Maybe roots.
Maybe soil structure.
Maybe biology.
Maybe disease.
Maybe several things interacting together.
I don't know yet.
And that's precisely the point.
Don't assume. Investigate.
For many years, farming has also carried an unfortunate stigma.
"Cannot study? Go farming lah."
As though farming doesn't require much thinking.
Yet a farmer has to deal with biology, soil, weather, water, diseases, machinery, labour, finance and markets — often at the same time.
And unlike many businesses, he controls very few of them.
Perhaps agriculture never needed less thinking.
Perhaps agriculture needs more people willing to keep asking WHY.
Not simply:
What deficiency is this?
But:
Why is it deficient?
Not simply:
What product should I apply?
But:
Why does the plant need me to apply it?
Not simply:
What caused this symptom?
But:
What happened before the symptom appeared?
We have become very good at fixing problems.
Perhaps sometimes too good at compensating for them.
And compensation is not always the same as fixing the foundation.
That doesn't mean abandoning fertilisers.
It doesn't mean abandoning chemicals.
It doesn't mean rejecting genetics, machinery, science or technology.
Quite the opposite.
Before we keep adding another solution, understand how the original system was able to function in the first place.
Then use modern knowledge to strengthen those fundamental processes rather than continuously compensating for their deterioration.
Use chemistry.
Use microbiology.
Use soil and leaf analysis.
Use sensors.
Use drones.
Use genetics.
Use AI.
Use whatever works.
But use those tools to help us understand the system, not simply to give us another thing to apply whenever something goes wrong.
Maybe healthier soil creates stronger roots.
Maybe stronger roots create a more resilient palm.
Maybe a resilient palm handles water and nutrient stresses better.
Maybe it needs fewer corrective interventions.
Maybe fewer unnecessary interventions mean lower cost.
And maybe more of the value created by agriculture then remains with the people actually carrying the risk of producing the crop.
That isn't agriculture going backwards.
That may be agriculture finally moving forward.
For generations we have asked:
“What else can we give the plant?”
Perhaps we should also start asking:
“Why has the plant become so dependent on us giving it so much?”
And when one palm struggles while another thrives, perhaps our first reaction shouldn't always be:
“What should we apply?”
Maybe occasionally we should walk over to the healthy palm and ask:
“What are YOU doing right?”
Then dig.
Observe.
Compare.
Measure.
Question.
And follow the evidence.
Because the answer may not always be waiting inside the next bag, bottle or formulation.
It may have been underneath our feet all along.
Take care of the foundation.
Everything above it depends on what happens below it.
