wfn.org | Farm crisis threatens Methodism in rural Ireland

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG>]

June 20, 2000  News media contact: Linda Bloom·(212)870-3803·New York
10-21-24-71B{286}

NOTE: This report is a sidebar to UMNS story #284. For more related
coverage, see UMNS stories #285 and #287.

By Kathleen LaCamera*

BELFAST, Northern Ireland (UMNS) - Irish Methodists living in rural areas
report that suicide, marital breakdown and bankruptcy are haunting the farm
community as the agricultural crisis of deepens across Ireland.

"If the church doesn't speak on farming issues soon, (the crisis) will
decimate Methodism in three-quarters of the country," warned dairy farmer
Norman Bateman."

Bateman, who farms in the west Cork region of the Irish Republic, spoke in
one of the small discussion groups held during the June 9-13 Irish Methodist
Annual (regional) Conference in Belfast. Comments from these and other
consultations on farming will be compiled and presented as a formal report
to the conference in 2001.

Farmers say they are "running just to stand still" and feel that the
"countryside is becoming a lonely place." The suicide prevention charity,
the Samaritans, reports an unprecedented number of calls from farmers and
their families in recent years.

Agriculture is the largest single civil industry in Northern Ireland,
providing 10 percent of civil employment and 7 percent of gross domestic
product. In the south, these figures are even higher. And yet from 1995 to
1999, total income for farm families dropped 79 percent in real terms. Fewer
young people are training to be farmers, and small farm units are rapidly
going out of existence.

The report will sound familiar to Americans, who have seen family farms
across the United States disappear and give way to "big agriculture" in the
last century. Today, only 1 percent of the U.S. population is involved in
farming.

"I'm lucky. I have three sons who are going back into farming, but it's
killing them," Bateman reported.

What is killing them are statistics like these:
·	In the space of two years, the value of the entire northern Irish
pig industry has been halved.
·	Potatoes sold at the farm gate for $40 to $65 a ton sell at retail
for $270 per ton.
·	Farmers' incomes, at an average of $5,000 in 1997, are at the bottom
end of the national range.
·	In the south of Ireland, when one cow contracts Bovine Spongiform
Encephalopathy (BSE), the entire herd must be destroyed.

Even one of Bateman's own sons, who had wanted to be a farmer his entire
life, was actively discouraged from pursuing his dream by his high school
guidance counselor. He chose agriculture despite such pressure.

"I didn't realize until I read the (preliminary report) how bad the crisis
was," confessed the Rev. John Brooks, who serves an urban congregation.
"This needs to be dealt with at the highest level of the church,
immediately."

With the church's leadership focused so much in urban centers, particularly
in the north of Ireland,  Bateman also made a plea for the conference to
send the "best pastors" to rural areas.

#  #  #

* LaCamera is a UMNS correspondent based in England.

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United Methodist News Service
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