Not Only Humans Care

Pearl S Buck wrote in her great story The Good Earth “Out of the land we came and into we must go”. It seems the same applies to plants as well. They love to be buried where they came out. Banana peels for example may be thrown away, but if we care to cut them into pieces and bury them in soils they shall reward us by enriching the crops. Chopped banana peels shall decompose in the soil and enrich it with magnesium and other nutrients, which help crops, grow healthily. Not only will that as banana peels keep pests away. They are wastes because we tend to throw them in the waste baskets. If we care enough to send them back to the land they came out they shall be of great value. The decomposition of one plant is the life for another plant.

Our neglects might be our fertilizers to grow new ideas
Ali Anani, PhD

The use of agricultural leftovers and neglects in combination might create a synergistic effect that compounds their value in increasing the yield of crops. You may take ground eggshell with banana peels and wonders shall happen. The eggshell is a good source of calcium. We have to remember that leftovers have some values in their crusts and peels.

Organizations aren’t different. Neglected employees may have their value in enriching the soils of organizations. Even truer is that a group of neglected employees may exercise synergism so that the out of the group may exceed the summation of their overlooked potential. We extend our negligence of the value of waste fruits to what we consider “waste employees”. The irony here is that the peels of fruits have the maximum nutritional value than the rest of the fruit. We peel of the fruits and throw the nutrient-rich peels instead of enjoying eating them or feeding them to the soil- their homeland.

Juan Imaz published recently a great buzz on “10 Coconut products you should try out”. I may add to this buzz the significant values of the shells and husk of coconuts in stabilizing the soil and giving it structural strength.

We need to know the strength of each type of fruit wastes to identify its value to the soil. We may “peel” employees, but we should be aware of the value these peels extend to hold the structure of the organization rather than weakening it. The 17th most unusual task in the list of 50 unexpected jobs involved peeling the pith from individual satsuma segments of mandarin. For what reason this task was given to employees I don’t know, but at least I hope to use the pith for enriching soils and not throwing them away. Are we peeling the employees this way?

We need to remember that peeling the skin of some fruits are skin irritants, but in these peels we have the highest nutritional value. Your irritating employees might be your major source of nutritional ideas.
Ali Anani, PhD