By René Hardwick, National Onion Association Director of Public and Industry Relations
After the most bizarre year anyone could have ever lived through and appreciated, I sometimes wonder how much luck, or lack thereof, was involved when it came to major situations in the country.
Luck is a funny word. Many believe you make your own luck with hard work, talent and ambition. Still others believe luck plays a major role in success. In 2018, Scientific American magazine wrote, “The Role of Luck in Life Success is Far Greater Than We Realized,” revealing some interesting findings from various published studies that indicate luck or randomness indeed plays a role in success. Consider these thoughts:
- About half of the differences in income across people worldwide are explained by their country of residence and by the income distribution within that country.
- Scientific impact is randomly distributed, with high productivity alone having a limited effect on the likelihood of high-impact work in a scientific career.
- The chance of becoming a CEO is influenced by your name or month of birth.
- The number of CEOs born in June and July is much smaller than the number of CEOs born in other months.
- Those with last names earlier in the alphabet are more likely to receive tenure at top departments.
- The display of middle initials increases positive evaluations of people’s intellectual capacities and achievements.
The article concluded that “luck and opportunity play an underappreciated role in determining the final level of individual success.”
As an industry, was it luck that per capita U.S. onion consumption rose every year from 1980 to 1993? Was it bad luck when consumption dipped in 2019 after record consumption?
Was it luck that allowed onions to escape a massive recall for decades, while other vegetables’ troubles turned into screamer headlines only to have the rug ripped beneath our feet last summer?
Was it luck that the feds finally intervened on Canada’s unfair onion trade practices that put U.S. onions at a competitive disadvantage?
I often think that something in the universe is on our side, but we shouldn’t take that “luck” or good vibrations for granted when we are in good times. You never know when that will change. I used to cringe when I’d write that onions had never experienced a recall because of foodborne illness. I knew that one day, our number could come up, as if it were a huge game of chance. Flash forward to summer 2020.
These days at the National Onion Association (NOA), while we feel lucky to be in a business full of smart, talented, prepared and industrious members, we leave nothing to chance. Our leaders work consistently to ensure that onions are a part of the national conversation when it comes to food safety, fair trade, labor and wage regulations, immigration reform, pesticide regulations and water quality, you name it. Our guys are on the ground, making the calls, inserting onions into the conversation.
That’s how onions were included in the Farmers to Families Food Box program to help hungry people during the pandemic. That’s how U.S. trade officials intervened on growers’ behalf to ensure that all onions coming into the U.S. were inspected, meeting our high standards so as not to undercut our domestic product.
With these successes, lucky or not, we can’t rely on luck to ensure the market will always be bountiful for onions. It takes consistent persistence.
Now, with trade issues heating up with Panama, and potential new trade markets overseas, the National Onion Association is taking a seat at the table, leaving reliance on luck to the mystics and chance to the gamblers.
Our leadership will be there to talk to our nation’s new leaders to advocate for issues that affect the onion industry. Their efforts not only help our membership, but all in the onion industry. It’s up to all onion growers and ancillary industries to be persistent.
The NOA is your trade organization fighting for you. No other larger umbrella lobbying group is going to solely focus on your livelihood like the NOA.
Would you look at that? In that last sentence, this column hit 666 words. I prefer to see that as good luck. In Chinese, for example, 666 is a tonal equivalent for “things go smoothly,” according to Time magazine.
Let us not only hope – but work – toward a smooth rest of 2021, and let luck favor the prepared.
P.S. Join our ranks. Go to our member center at www.onions-usa.org. You can join online for a fraction of the cost of other lobbying organizations.
