Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/407782
68 Potato Grower | NOVEMBER 2014 Christopher Columbus: A Study in Information Avoiding the information vacuum UNITED POTATO GROWERS OF AMERICA by Jerry P. Wright, CEO CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS' NEW WORLD adventure is an interesting study. Once his fellow Europeans dis- covered how much pepper added to the taste of a pot roast, they not only demanded the spice but were willing to pay handsomely for it. At the same time that the demand for pepper shot up in Europe, the Mongol who controlled the shipping lanes used to bring spices from East to West decided to increase his prof- it margin. This inf lamed the Europeans, and in stepped Christopher Columbus. Since Ptolemy had determined the earth to be round some years earlier, Christo- pher was convinced that by sailing west he could get to the East, directly pur- chase the coveted spice, and return home to a handsome profit. Everyone now knows that Columbus' plan was full of unintended consequences mainly result- ing from incomplete information. Columbus made four trips to the New World and back. His first trip revealed a native population with whom he could not communicate. By the second trip, the captives he had taken back to Europe on the first trip had learned to speak Span- ish, injecting translators—information gatherers—into his business plan. Now he could get to the bottom of things. Where were those spices, exactly? While Columbus never found the spices, he did discover enough gold and silver to easily repay his financial back- ers, not to mention opening up the New World for discovery and exploitation. Key to his probing about the Caribbean, What should your farm produce to profitably fit into your "local supply" and "national supply?"