Why bother?

"Excuse me," I ventured, "Can I help?"

"No."

I pointed out that she was nowhere near the footpath and was in our field. Her reply made me think that she was ignoring me or had misheard what I said.

"I'm a doctor's wife." (!)

I hesitated, through a combination of surprise and the realisation that the need for a doctor could occur at any time. I then emphasised the fact that we tried to eke out a living and it would be helpful if she removed herself to the footpath and went.

Her reply was: "The day for your kind of farm is over. Why don't you give up?"

Being asked the question again - but from a less surprising angle - I thought it would be a good idea if I put pen to paper and tried to answer the question. Why don't we give up and why do I bother? There are two ways of looking at agriculture; economic and biological.

Most of our enjoyment in life comes from a biological background. The list is endless but I wonder if sometimes it is forgotten. Flowers in the spring, bird song, the bond with our own children (or parents), eating, drinking, sexual, the warmth of a spring day, the smell of wood smoke. The list is infinite.

Money can provide a limited number of these but the pleasures are still biological. In farming most of the pleasures are natural and not the size of the cheque - in fact, recently definitely not the size of the cheque!

Small farms and holdings enable a large number of people to be in contact with and understand the natural world. They enable children to learn about the natural cycles of the seasons, birth through to death, the earth, the law of return, sex and communities. The list is almost as long as the list above.

Collecting eggs and counting them into a tray for a four-year-old is about as educational as it gets. The youngster is in an environment conducive to learning about numbers, food, work, cleanliness, being careful, not to mention the joy of chicks hatching from a stray nest. Then watching the development of a ball of fluff through to a laying bird. Does this happen on a multi-million bird battery farm where it is an "efficient" egg factory?

Will someone please come forward with the amount of money and other resources that are not used to support farm children? My suspicion is that farm children:

Use less police time

Use less time being counselled and mentored

Commit less vandalism

Have fewer teenage pregnancies

Are less likely to abuse drugs.

There are those who measure everything in terms of finance. Could they please put a financial figure on the above?

If they cannot, I would like to suggest the following: "The advantage of having a large number of people closely connected with the soil is good for these people. It is also beneficial for society in every way imaginable."

Over the last 50 years, agriculture has been a "food producing industry".

Government after government of all political colours have encouraged increased production and increased "efficiency". This has resulted in larger and larger farms and the associated reduction of numbers of people connected with the soil.

Not only has the number of farmers plummeted but the number of farm workers has also fallen dramatically. When larger farms have swallowed up the land of the smaller ones, the farmhouse of the smaller one is sold separately. It is often, though not exclusively, sold as an executive home or a holiday cottage. The country people or the next generation cannot afford to compete. As a result, the skills, traditions and knowledge are all eventually lost.

All the above can be justified in economic terms - "Those that can afford, get".

However, we also live in a democracy. I cannot remember voting for:

Farming to become an agribusiness

The associated loss of environment, hedgerows, flowers and birds

Agricultural communities being destroyed and the poor being driven out

Agricultural communities being destroyed by non-participating empty homes.

The increased size of farms and the reduction in the size of the workforce have combined to produce the need for larger and larger machines. These larger machines, in turn, have resulted in not only the destruction of the soil but also the need for larger and larger fields. These have been created by the removal of hundreds of thousands of miles of hedgerows. Governments have even paid farmers to remove these hedges.

Various governments have started paying millions to these agribusinesses to reverse the damage done over the last 50 years. Grants are being paid to farmers to plant hedges. This is in the right direction but there is, of course, a large inequality. The agribusinesses were paid enormous sums to destroy the environment. Now they are being paid enormous sums to attempt to reverse the process.

Meanwhile, the small farms in general were not paid to destroy the environment. They kept their hedges and did much less damage to the environment over the decades. They were paid nothing for this proper approach to agriculture. Now, of course, they cannot be paid to replace hedges they haven't removed. Exacerbating the irony is the fact that they have had continuing maintenance costs throughout the preceding decades.

The Government is paying farmers to stop polluting the land, water and air and go organic. Organic farmers who didn't pollute the land, water and air cannot go organic! They, of course, are not eligible for support payments for converting to organic.

The above may not fully answer the question "Small Farms Association? Why bother?" It certainly doesn't fully answer the doctor's wife. It may, however, explain why she was surrounded by cowslips and orchids rather than just ryegrass.

JOHN CLARK

Updated: 10:03 Wednesday, October 09, 2002