If you’re not growing, you’re dying.  This aphorism has annoyed me since I heard it in my first farm business management class twenty-two years ago at Cornell.  I heard it repeatedly in my entrepreneurship and human resource management classes, and again in the farm transition and business planning classes I took before we opened the cafe.  Bob and I have recounted it repeatedly on our morning walks, poking fun at it’s stupidity, unable to reconcile forever-growth in a world with finite resources. 

This particular morning, I’m eating a dish of fruit and a slice of three-cheese quiche, turning the idea over in my mind again as I talk to the hosts of the B and B where we’re staying.  

It’s April, and we’re on our way to spend our spring break in Washington, D.C. This stop on our itinerary represents one of the events I’ve most looked forward to. 

It’s a B and B.  Not an AirBnB.  We’ve grown quite fond of the latter, employing the app for our vacation and travel needs, delighted for the opportunities to continually find unique lodging options that let us cook and spread out.  Better still, we’ve discovered how much we enjoy the guests (and the revenue) from our own vacation rental on AirBnB.  

And that’s why I’m lingering over breakfast this morning.  We’ve enjoyed our AirBnB experience so much, I want to understand how the actual B and B’s are faring. I wander the halls, admire the old building and its history, and fantasize about operating a business like this myself.

“We’re hurting,” our hosts don’t mince words when I ask how things are working out with the AirBnB competition.  As a genuine B and B, they have higher overhead, more regulations, and they feel increasingly obsolete.

They talk about their lobby efforts to  slow down their competition, to protect their business, and I feel their pain keenly.

If you’re not growing, you’re dying.  The lobby efforts, to me, feel like an attempt to delay death.  I ponder whether there’s some way to make a shift in the business model instead, to adapt to the changing times and shoot out ahead. 

Their troubles tap into my own anxieties with our family business.  Sure, it was exhilarating to launch a new branch of the business a few years ago, breathing fresh life and energy into our work.  In that period of rapid growth we studied the art and science of coffee as though it were a new invention.  We got more sophisticated with our social media, reworked our branding, and  gave our business a whole new set of walls.  

But Dad sent me off on this trip with a trade magazine article warning about how the emergence of fake meat is threatening livestock farmers, that it’s being touted as truly better for the planet.  And one of my customers has just sent me a story about Blue Apron’s new forays into massive large-scale  chicken farming, with publicity claims about being truly regenerative agriculture.  The subtext in both stories is painful:  the community-focused efforts of thousands of pasture-based farmers like us nation-wide are irrelevant, invisible, and ineffectual.  

Like the hosts of this B and B, are we supposed to fight?  Lobby?  Or change our business model?  Was it a huge mistake to open a store and cafe, rather than develop an app and a delivery service?  Does the public truly feel that we should be on a trajectory for obsolescence with our arcane and barbaric practices of slaughtering animals for meat, rather than fabricating it?  

I thought our national sustainability movement had finished ingraining the powerful lessons of community centered agriculture – about the environmental, social and economic importance of local, small-scale farming.  I thought everyone understood the vital role that grazing and pastured livestock have in our nutrient cycle and carbon sequestration and human nutrition.  I thought we’d drilled the public  on the importance of connection over convenience.  I thought that as a movement, we’d collectively registered in the national awareness.  I thought this was all old news. 

I naively assumed our culture had out-grown the need for convenience and matured enough to comprehend and accept that life and death are inextricably linked.  But as I read the stories about how companies like Amazon Fresh and Blue Apron are hurting farmers’ markets, or about how fake meat can save the planet and correct the food crisis,  I realize we haven’t.  Our culture has adopted a lexicon that speaks to our hopes and fears, and we ask that certain magic words be emblazoned upon our packages:  “earth-friendly,” “green,” “cruelty-free,” “sustainable,” “organic,” and my personal favorite, “making a difference.” And then we’ve gone right back to demanding convenience and denying the life cycle once more.

But if you’re not growing, you’re dying.  When do we farmers make the shift?  When do we quit trying to sell our culture on the newness of our age-old practices, and adapt our businesses to meet these fast changing times?

By now, breakfast conversation at the B and B has grown more lively.  The coffee is flowing, and more guests are joining at the common table.  They’re talking about their families, sharing travel routes, swapping stories about journeys off-the-beaten path.  

“That’s it, isn’t it?”  My host looks up, startled.  I’ve rudely brought the room to a stand-still, but in my excitement, I can’t let my realization pass quietly.  

“What’s it?”  She gently asks from the kitchen door.  

“I don’t think the Inn or the B and B will ever die, because it’s a community of travelers.  Sometimes people crave privacy of a vacation home rental, but then there are times when we need to see each other.  We need to talk to each other.  I think it’s just in a different part of the business cycle right now.”  Connectivity can’t replace connection. The public needs to be reminded of the difference.  They can’t be allowed to forget.

I think about how independent bookstores are coming back, in spite of Amazon.  Or about how independent coffee houses are re-surging in spite of Starbucks.  The industries made sure that we didn’t forget their significance. They constantly taught us about what they could offer that the bigger models couldn’t.  They had to dig deep and examine their work closely.  They had to ask themselves why they mattered.  Why they would never be irrelevant. 

Sometimes growth is literally an expansion or a radical change in a business model.  But more often than not, especially in these sustainability endeavors, I think growth is more subtle.  It’s about deepening our understanding of how and why we do what we do.  It’s about examining our businesses constantly, forever questioning and challenging ourselves to find a way to do things better.   Growth is only occasionally external.  Daily, it’s internal, where we constantly allow our businesses to teach us new lessons.  Because when we can do that, every morning we can wake up and face our work with fresh eyes and renewed spirit.  That’s the kind of endless growth I can celebrate.