The theme of this conference provides an ideal opportunity to take this argument and the case I made for cross disciplinarity, a bit further. Last year I have argued that agricultural economists need to utilise the strengths of sociology, anthropology and political analysis in order to be better equipped to tackle the challenge of black empowerment in South African agriculture. This year I will show how we need these disciplines and also philosophy if we want to address 'ethics' in business. The point that was made throughout my earlier paper is that economic theory sacrifices far too much relevance in its pursuit of ever-greater rigour. Given the challenges in agricultural sector in Africa, we need to see much stronger efforts to integrate the building of theory in economics with the study of reality.