A Modest Member of Parliament [Bert Kelly], “Farmer Fred takes it all in his stride,” The Australian Financial Review, March 9, 1973, p. 3.
Reprinted in Economics Made Easy (Adelaide: Brolga Books, 1982), pp. 25-27, as “Going Against the Tide.”

Recently, I attended the Agricultural Outlook Conference, in Canberra. This was the third one, and I have attended them all.

I have to go, because Eccles is always there, full of foreboding, and I know he wouldn’t like it if I wasn’t there to listen to him.

And this year I persuaded Fred, the farmer, to come also.

The previous two conference were indeed sad occasions.

We all sat around beating our breasts and listening to various prophets of doom spelling out their dire warnings of imminent and inevitable disaster.

We were told how we would all be forced to walk off our farms, how it would be foolishly optimistic to expect the market for wool to rise above 90c a kilo, and so on.

This year, everything was different. Wool is now bringing about three times more than we were told we could expect; the world is clamouring for wheat and, indeed, all cereals, and there seems to be no end to the demand for meat from many countries of the world.

There were some commodities for which the outlook was not so rosy, such as sugar, dairy and fruit products.

And there were many farmers who were unable to supply the products that are in such great demand, because of drought conditions. So it was not a happy picture for everyone.

But it was a much improved situation to that which confronted us at the two previous conferences.

I thought Fred would get excited at the good prospects that were presented this year. But he received the good news with the same equanimity as he received the bad news of the past few years.

I got quite cross with him. I complained:

Look, Fred, why don’t you let yourself go for once and be happy? Here you have a picture of unrelieved optimism with all the wise ones telling you how strong is the demand for everything you grow and all you do is look as mournful as a dyspeptic bloodhound. Why not try to smile, at least?

He couldn’t bring himself to do it. He told me then that when things look blackest he always expected them to get better. But when they looked well, he expected them to get worse!

You have heard me talk of “Eccles Law,” which says that prices must rise if money wages increase faster than productivity.

Well, now we must introduce “Fred’s Feeling.” Fred feels that, in farming, things will shortly be different from what they are expected to be, and certainly will be different from what they are now.

I have mentioned before how I used to keep myself poor by chasing after each hopeful hare that got up. Then an old farmer friend took me aside and said:

Look, my dear boy, don’t do it. You will never make any money if you listen too carefully to too many people. You will find that you are doing what everyone else is doing.

And he spelt out his golden rule, which was:

When everyone else runs, you walk. But when they walk, you take off like blazes.

Fred’s philosophy is similar. He listens with respect and appreciation to the advice he receives from the Bureau of Agricultural Economics and from other experts.

He is particularly attentive when they are spelling out what has happened in the past and what is the position now.

It is only when they start telling the future that his attention begins to wander. He is glad to get their opinions on the future but he’s a little sceptical about them.

He knows from past experience that there is only one certainty about market prophecies, and that is that they will always be wrong in some degree.

The only uncertainty is how far they will be wrong.

So at this conference, Fred received with lugubrious calm the news that everything was going to be perfectly splendid.

“Fred’s Feeling” — (you couldn’t call it a law) — teaches him that if things are bad they will soon be better, and if they are good, they will soon be worse.

It is advice worth keeping in mind just now.