Farming And Baseball: "Wait 'Til Next Year!"

HBO’s Costas Now would seem an unlikely place to hear a farmer interviewed, much less profiled.

It’s a sports show. Granted, Costas Now is probably the most intelligent one every produced. But on the odd occasion when I watch it, host Bob Costas features people who are sports figures in their own right.

But the farmer in this case, David Robinson, has a deep and compelling connection to America’s athletic history. Robinson is the son and youngest child of the late Jackie Robinson, who broke pro baseball’s color barrier when he took the field in 1947 for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

David Robinson has spent the last 20 years in Africa growing coffee and developing a coffee cooperative, Sweet Unity Farms, located in the East African highlands of Tanzania. The cooperative’s goal is to produce a gourmet coffee that can be marketed in a way that puts more of the profits in the pockets of the native farmers who produce it. It’s the same fundamental goal of any farm cooperative, and Robinson clearly understood the basic thing every farmer wishes for as each new season begins.

“Farmers have to operate in a business where they might have a year with high yields or a year with good prices,” he said. “What they always hope for, of course, is a year with both.”

Robinson was featured in late October, and I’m quoting from memory, so my apologies if I didn’t get that wording quite right. The gist of that quote, though, stayed with me for a good reason. Robinson isn’t the first farmer I’ve heard make that same statement over the last 30 years. He won’t be the last, either.

Will 2006 be that kind of year, the one with strong yields and a lucrative market?

The stars haven’t been lining up in that direction, have they?

But, then again, you never know. The beginning of the year always brings at least a wisp of fresh hope.

Robinson also said that farming is a lot like baseball. To have a top season, nearly everything has to come together. In farming, it’s the right amount of rain, favorable temperatures, a lack of pests. In baseball, it’s enough hits, good fielding and a few lucky breaks. Both are games with an enormous number of variables. Preparation is important in both endeavors, as well.

As Robinson noted, Dodger fans had an unofficial motto that summed up baseball and farming: “Wait ‘til next year!”