Mother nature's boom & bust
You can't help from feeling a little guilty.
The beautiful summer days just keep on coming, and we're heading into the fall foliage season, the signature event for New England tourism. Yet, elsewhere in the country residents and businesses are taking on real body-blows from mother nature. Hurricanes bringing extensive wind damage and flooding have wiped out whole neighborhoods, knocked out power to millions and slowed businesses to a crawl. How many of us are ready to absorb that kind of catastrophic event at our workplace? Do you have robust backup power system, or a reliable IT infrastructure for employees to work remotely and be productive while the office is out of commission?
If you're in the construction trades, you would not be able to work enough hours to meet the post-storm demand, but a lawncare business may find few flooded property owners worried about their underwater grass or shrubs when the house needs rebuilt. There are all kinds of winners and losers when it comes to the cards mother nature deals out, and more wild cards keep being added to the deck every year.
Staff Writer Zachary Comeau's cover story is on the region's bumper crop of apples after a horrible 2016 when none of the growers made any money. And it's not just apples that are doing well this year – peach trees are delivering a bumper crop, and last year there was nary a peach in New England as the bud freeze was even more severe than it was for apple growers. The feast-to-famine change in this year's apple production in Massachusetts is projected to be up 59 percent over 2016, and 19 percent over the five-year average. We've seen weather-dependant businesses like Wachusett Mountain ride the wave of snowy and not so snowy or cold winters for years. In Wachusett's case, the business has stabilized its weather-dependent revenue swings with a big investment in snowmaking equipment. But for most farmers, that ability to mitigate many of the seasonal ups and downs is just not feasible.
So what can we all learn from the farmers in the region? When the crop is great – make hay – focus and do whatever it takes to get them all picked and sold, maximize your sales and margins, and, most importantly, put money aside for next year. Farmers, more than most businesspeople, know there is no guarantee everything will go according to plan. Businesses with direct exposure to mother nature are living in a less certain environment, and planning for the long game is more important than ever. The ups and downs of the region's weather patterns is one thing, but taking the hit from a major hurricane is a whole different level of hurt. Let's hope we can continue to dodge the catastrophic weather, but we can learn from the hardy survivors who have the discipline to save for a rainy day.
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