Prosperity and the Universal Law of Increasing Complexity (ULIC): Success Is Not Enough

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“Success answers questions. Discovery changes the questions we ask.”

 

Intervention

Some of the most intriguing scientific questions arise not when an intervention fails but when it succeeds.

One such question began for me in 2015, when Biofeed's proposal to address a severe fruit fly infestation using non-spray technology was selected in the Grand Challenges Israel competition, an initiative established by the Israeli government to support innovative solutions to major challenges facing developing economies. Two years later, after extensive development, I made my first professional visit to India’s mango-growing regions to apply the technology under its dedicated protocol in selected orchards.

The challenge was immediately apparent. Across many fruit-growing regions, farmers relied on repeated pesticide applications to protect their orchards from fruit flies. The consequences extended well beyond crop losses. Frequent spraying increased production costs, exposed farmers to hazardous chemicals, and left high levels of pesticide residues in the fruit. An effective non-spray solution that could protect the harvest while replacing much of this practice would therefore deliver benefits far beyond the orchard itself.

Standing in the middle of my first mango orchard, I found every reason to believe that applying the novel technology and protocol would deliver the rapid, positive change expected. The trees were vigorous and heavily laden with fruit. The farmers knew their orchards intimately and worked tirelessly to care for them. Water was often abundant, the climate highly favorable, labor plentiful, domestic markets enormous, and the fruit itself exceptional. Everything suggested that removing this major biological constraint would move these orchards substantially closer to the level of performance their natural conditions appeared capable of supporting.

Several months later, I returned.

The atmosphere had changed. Farmers greeted me with broad smiles because the technology had exceeded expectations. Fruit fly infestation had declined dramatically; far more fruit had reached the market; pesticide use had been substantially reduced; and farm incomes had improved accordingly. By every measure that mattered, the intervention had succeeded.

Only when our conversations gradually moved beyond fruit flies did something unexpected begin to emerge. We discussed yields, productivity, marketing, labor, and overall farm income. The improvements were easy to see, genuine, and economically meaningful, yet they fell far short of what I had expected. When I compared the results with the orchards where I had grown up in Israel, and even with the fruit-growing systems my father had described from the 1940s and 1950s, when Israel itself was still a developing economy, the remaining gap was astonishing. We had solved one of the system's most important biological constraints, dramatically reduced pesticide use, and improved both biological and economic performance. Yet even after these improvements, the overall performance of these smallholder orchards remained far below what I knew comparable commercial orchards in Israel and elsewhere could achieve under similar biological conditions.

My first instinct was not to question the intervention. On the contrary, I assumed that other important improvements still remained: better irrigation, improved varieties, stronger technical knowledge, access to finance, or simply more time might eventually close much of the remaining gap. The explanation seemed entirely reasonable because it aligned with the way I had learned to think about improving farming systems. Rather than questioning that way of thinking, I continued searching for the next important factor that might account for the differences I still observed.

Years later, as Biofeed's work expanded across Africa, I expected the Indian experience to be a particular case shaped by local conditions. Instead, I encountered the same contradiction under entirely different circumstances. The countries, growers, orchards, crops, climates, and market conditions differed in countless ways, yet every successful intervention produced essentially the same outcome. Important improvements consistently followed, but they still explained only a small part of the much larger performance gap between smallholder farming systems and comparable commercial farming systems in developed economies.

How could solving one of a system's most important problems explain so little of its overall performance?

Unexpected Pattern

At first, I assumed that what I had observed reflected India's particular circumstances, since every country has its own history, institutions, farming traditions, market conditions, and natural constraints. It therefore seemed entirely reasonable to conclude that the contradiction I had encountered was primarily India's rather than something more fundamental.

That explanation became increasingly difficult to sustain as Biofeed's work expanded into Africa; I expected to encounter different challenges, constraints, and ultimately different explanations. Instead, I found myself returning to the same question: the countries differed; the growers differed; the crops, climates, regulations, and market conditions varied widely, yet beneath these differences, the same pattern observed earlier in India persisted.

Wherever successful interventions were introduced, meaningful improvements followed. Farmers harvested more marketable fruit, biological losses declined, export opportunities expanded, and farm incomes improved. The interventions consistently created genuine value. What surprised me was not their success but the limits of their explanatory power. However successful an intervention proved to be, it explained only a small part of the much larger performance gap I continued to observe between smallholder fruit-growing systems and comparable commercial production systems in developed economies.

As the observation repeated itself, its significance gradually shifted. What had first seemed an interesting observation in India became increasingly difficult to dismiss as a local phenomenon. I found myself comparing neighboring orchards under similar natural conditions, growers who had adopted comparable technologies, and regions that had implemented many of the same production practices. The circumstances varied, but the contradiction remained remarkably consistent; every successful intervention improved an important part of the system, yet none came close to explaining the persistent performance gap.

By then, my confidence in the observation was growing, while my confidence in the available explanations (technical, financial, corruption, etc.) was weakening. As the evidence accumulated, it became increasingly difficult to find answers in the specific circumstances of each country. For the first time, I began to wonder whether the persistent contradiction was telling me less about the countries I was visiting than about the way I was trying to explain what I was observing.

Doubts

Looking back, I now realize that every new observation sent me searching for another missing factor because I never questioned either the nature of the question I was asking or the way I had learned to solve problems. As a fruit grower and agronomist, I had learned to improve performance by identifying limiting factors and addressing them, one by one. That way of thinking had served me well throughout my professional life, and I naturally carried it with me when I began working with fruit growers in India and later across Africa.

From that perspective, the next step always seemed obvious; if fruit fly control explained only part of the remaining difference, perhaps irrigation explained another part. If irrigation could not account for the gap, perhaps the answer lay in improved planting material, fertilizers, mechanization, technical training, access to finance, or better markets. Each possibility represented an established area of agricultural knowledge that had repeatedly demonstrated its ability to improve farming performance. Under those circumstances, searching for the next missing factor seemed not only reasonable but inevitable.

Years of field experience continually reinforced that conviction: wherever I encountered growers who had adopted better technologies, more advanced production practices, or improved market connections, meaningful progress followed. Yields increased, fruit quality improved, losses declined, and farm incomes often rose accordingly. Every successful intervention reinforced what I already believed: improving important components genuinely improved farming systems.

Yet another pattern gradually became impossible to ignore: every successful intervention explained something important, but none seemed able to explain more than part of the larger phenomenon. Each improvement narrowed part of the performance gap, yet the remaining gap consistently exceeded what the cumulative improvements could explain.

For a long time, I interpreted these observations in only one way that seemed reasonable. If an important difference remained, I assumed that another important factor had simply not yet been identified or sufficiently addressed. The search therefore continued from one country to another, from one production system to the next, and from one intervention to another. I was not merely searching for better answers. I was repeatedly asking the same kind of question, assuming that enough correct answers would eventually explain the whole.

Gradually, however, and only after I had exhausted the familiar explanations I carried with me, the repeated observations began to change something more fundamental than the answers I was considering. They began to change the question itself. For the first time, I found myself wondering not only whether I was simply missing another important factor, but also whether the way of thinking within which I was searching had an explanatory boundary of its own.

Success’s Boundary

Looking back, I now understand that my approach to these observations was neither unusual nor accidental. It had been shaped by decades of practical experience, during which the continuous improvement of individual components repeatedly increased efficiency and produced better outcomes. As a fruit grower, I found that every improvement I introduced into an orchard created measurable value: better irrigation improved water-use efficiency; better nutrition strengthened growth and productivity; better crop protection reduced biological losses; and better harvesting and post-harvest handling preserved the quality already created in the orchard. Together, these improvements had transformed modern agriculture and justified the confidence growers placed in the continuous optimization of their production systems.

Decades of experience made a broader conclusion seem almost inevitable. If improving one important component consistently improves a farming system's performance, then progressively improving all its important components should move the system toward its full potential. I had never consciously formulated this reasoning as an explicit assumption because it did not feel like one. It simply described how successful systems appeared to improve. Looking back, I also came to recognize that this logic extends far beyond agriculture. Governments strengthen infrastructure, education, healthcare, and innovation. Businesses improve production, finance, marketing, and human resources. Engineers optimize individual subsystems before integrating them into larger designs. Across remarkably different fields, progress is commonly understood as the cumulative result of progressively improving a system's important parts.

Nothing in my experience suggested that this way of thinking was mistaken. On the contrary, every successful intervention reinforced it. Wherever important constraints were reduced, farming systems became more productive, fruit quality improved, biological losses declined, and growers generated greater economic value. Repeated observations across countries never contradicted these improvements; they reinforced them. What they gradually called into question was something entirely different. Although every optimized component contributed genuine value, the cumulative improvements consistently failed to close the persistent performance gap between smallholder farming systems and comparable commercial farming systems in developed economies.

This realization was difficult precisely because the underlying reasoning had earned my complete trust. The success of progressively optimizing individual components had made its explanatory boundary almost invisible. For the first time, I found myself considering a possibility that had never occurred to me: perhaps the remaining differences persisted not because another important component still awaited optimization, but because I had unconsciously assumed that progressively improving the parts was sufficient to explain the behavior of the whole. The question was no longer whether optimizing individual components created value; it clearly did. The question had become whether the way I was framing the problem possessed an explanatory boundary of its own - the assumption that progressively optimizing the parts was sufficient to explain the behavior of the whole.

The Question Changed

By this point, I no longer questioned the importance of technology, knowledge, investment, or the countless efforts to improve agricultural production; years of practical experience had demonstrated their value beyond any doubt. Every successful intervention solved a real problem, delivered measurable benefits, and improved the lives of growers who adopted it. Nothing I had observed in India, Africa, or elsewhere diminished their importance. On the contrary, those observations strengthened my confidence in them.

What had changed was something far more fundamental. I had gradually come to realize that the repeated contradiction was not pointing to another missing technology or overlooked component; it was pointing to the limits of the question that had guided my search. For years, I had assumed that if enough important components were progressively improved, the remaining differences would eventually disappear. The observations did not invalidate that reasoning. They simply revealed that, by itself, it could not account for everything I continued to observe.

Looking back, I now recognize that this realization marked the end of one investigation rather than the beginning of another. I had not found the missing explanation, but at least I understood why it had remained beyond my reach. The question I had been asking belonged to a way of thinking that had taken me remarkably far, but not far enough to explain the persistent differences in agricultural performance that had first puzzled me in India's mango orchards and later across Africa.

That realization brought an unexpected sense of clarity. I no longer felt compelled to search endlessly for another optimized component that might finally complete the puzzle. Instead, I found myself asking a different question: if the persistent differences could not be fully explained by progressively improving the individual parts of a system, what determined whether those parts could produce fundamentally different outcomes when combined?

I still did not know the answer. But I knew I had reached the end of one journey and the beginning of another. For the first time, I believed I was finally asking the right question.

For any matter, contact me at +972-54-2523425

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See you soon,

Nimrod

The author: Dr. Nimrod Israely is the CEO and Founder of Dream Valley and Biofeed companies and the Chairman and Co-founder of the IBMA conference. +972-54-2523425 (WhatsApp), or email nisraely@biofeed.co.il

P.S.

If you missed it, here is a link to last week's blog, “Prosperity and ULIC - Energy“.