And, some of our vecinos have become compadres. One of our neighbors, Phil, brought me some delicious, homemade tomato soup a couple days ago and it got me thinking on my morning walk as you’ll see in this video.

How do farmers know what consumers want? They need to make their seeding decisions long in advance of knowing a global pandemic is on its way. We have our own “farm to table” garden on the MEA grounds, but we’re also surrounded by some of the world’s finest basil, strawberry, and chile fields.

Yet, here’s this farm nearby us full of decrepit pepper plants that have died on the vine (restaurants aren’t ordering many peppers these days) right next door to some delectable tomatoes that are about to be harvested. My initial thinking was the pepper farmer misread consumer demand, but an ag-savvy friend of mine from the area told me it’s less about the quantity of demand and more about the quality of supply. A certain bug ravaged pepper plants this year while the tomato plants have loved our spring weather.

How might this apply to your life? Given our modern workplace’s obsession with DQ (digital intelligence), an increasing number of mid-lifers are retraining to become software developers because of the demand. Yet, they’ve spent three decades in the workplace becoming “soft skills developers” (improving our EQ, emotional intelligence) so the quality of your labor supply may have more to do with the mastery you already have inside of you. Same seed, different soil. You just need to cultivate the environmental mastery to find the right habitat.

If this subject is interesting to you, you might check out my interview with Arthur Brooks from a few weeks ago.