FAO

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FAO

Let us say that you are an agronomist, what are you expected to know ?

It is a good idea if you can distinguish oat from wheat (I cannot).

Not confusing a bull and a heifer can save your life at milking time.

Driving a $100.000 tractor without coming back to the farm on foot (I did) is definitively an advantage.

Not confusing the red little nasty bug with the green little nasty bud is less costly when blending the herbicides.

Being able to know which knob to turn so that the blender will spread 200 pounds per acre of fertilizer and not 2000 is to be considered a good point.

So you have spent 5 years learning about strange looking plants, nasty grinning bugs, complicated looking economic calculations, dismantling and reassembling tractors and standing there holding in your hand three tractor parts which apparently have no function in the tractor, you have become an agronomist and you get a job.

For instance, let us be modest, you got a job as Technical Officer at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

On your first day you are shown which part of the desk you can use, the other Technical Officer grumbling about that Organization that packs Officers tighter than laying hens, you find your way to the cafeteria, you are shown your “IN” tray, you are advised to urgently fill your “OUT” tray, you are shown the phone and told that you cannot use it for personal communications, then you sit down and you look at your end of the desk, at your colleague (he does not look back) at the phone, at the empty “IN3 tray, and that will go on for one week.

Suddenly one day a woman who claims to be your secretary (what are you supposed to say or do?) dumps on your desk a pile of files and walks away. You stare at the files wondering what your normal reaction should be and whether a hidden camera is watching you.

One month later you are down to your neck in processing of request for the allocation of referential (paragraph a 2482) for project UF.096768, sending a reminder to the Procurement Office concerning you previous reminder about the International Tender concerning the distribution of Fertilizers (FOB or CIF?) to the West Region, attending the Staff Management committee for the selection of a Junior Expert to be appointed six months ago, preparing a document for the General Manager about the change of the Indian Ministry of Agriculture concerning the bore depth of water projects in Central India. At leisure time (there is none, you could have wondered what happened to the nice smiling bugs, the gently rolling tractors, the fertile crops, all this is just a memory, something you will never again see in your life.

Considering my very respectable background and considering that I had never in my life seen a computer nor a computer programme, I became within 6 months the Computer Specialist of the Section. As my German after 7 years of training was not sufficient to order a bier, I was mostly working with non English speaking German specialists.

As I had due to the respect I had for the subject, side tracked the subject of Statistics, I found myself running canonical analysis of the distribution of yield data and pronouncing respected statements concerning the reliability of the economics of our recommendations (I had also side tracked the subject of Agricultural Economic)

However I must not be ironical about the wisdom of the FAO and its great ability to perceive a gift when it saw one. I rapidly became a Training Specialist, which considering that I had been working as cow-boy and pig handler for more than 2 years was a subject where I really felt at home and my acquired skills rapidly proved to be applicable to the subject. If you want to catch the attention of a cow, banging her head with the milking stool is quite recommendable; getting one hundred pigs to move out of you way by using generously the hosing pipe is quite efficient.

I became a recognized authority on

Computer Analysis

Statistical Reliability

Economics of Fertilizer Use

Training of Staff in Human Relationships

Training Staff in the Organization and Management of million dollar projects.

A consequence of this system is that it guaranties that any International Civil Servant has no previous experience of the subject he is in charge of and is thereby not biased.

Should the International Civil servant in spite of these precautions be able to carry out a good work, he is promoted and as it is rather difficult to be promoted vertically, they use the crab promotion system, if you were working in the Plant Production Division you will be promoted to a higher position in the Staff and Economics Division.