Selecting the reserves is almost as important as selecting the players for the game. Reserves are the guys that sit on the bench and run on when exhaustion or injury reduces the potency of the team. Reserves are important, and they have to be as fit and as capable as any of the run-on team and need to be ready to perform at a moment's notice. A good reserve has to be flexible enough to play well in a range of positions on the field. Flexibility and versatility is therefore a key need for a reserve.
New crops are akin to reserves, waiting on the benches to run on into the commercial limelight.
That is the time to call on the new crop reserve. If the reserve bench has been depleted by official neglect the farming game may be irretrievably lost. Although selecting players has these similarities to selecting new crops, there is one big difference. The difference is time, that truly limiting resource. Whereas the skills of the football selectors are applied to footballers as they develop over a few years, new crops can take many more years to cross the threshold from curiosity to commercialisation.