wfn.org | Disheartened Scots farmers pull up roots

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Note #7027 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

24-January-2002
02037

Disheartened Scots farmers pull up roots

Decline of small-farming way of life is a challenge to ministry 

by Alexa Smith

LOUISVILLE - Although many younger farmers are restocking their barns with sheep and cattle after last summer's government-ordered slaughter, Alastair Patterson, a Presbyterian, is going to retire.

He plans to give up his lease on the family land, where his father and grandfather farmed before him, and move to the nearby town of Lockerbie.  

"I've been here all my days," he says, "but it is a case of facing facts. You've got to be philosophical about it, I suppose, and it can't be done."

He's calling it quits.

"I'm 70 years old," Patterson says. "If I were 10 years younger, I would have carried on, but all of this has caught me at an awkward time."

In Scotland, 3,000 to 4,000 farmers have left their fields in the past six years, many complaining about lower government subsidies and stricter government regulations. But the exodus began in earnest in 1996 when the spread of so-called 'mad cow disease' shut down Britain's export market for lamb and cattle overnight.

The diagnosis of foot-and-mouth disease last summer was another financial catastrophe, especially in the border country in southern Scotland. Sheep were systematically killed on more than 300 farms in Patterson's area alone. Although his flock wasn't sick, it was slaughtered because the disease had been detected nearby.

Patterson's son managed to hold onto the family's cattle, and intends to keep farming as long as he can. But Patterson isn't optimistic, because hired labor is expensive. He expects his son to wind up working as a truck driver or as a hired hand on someone else's farm.

"It is just too soon to quantify the results of foot-and-mouth disease," says Patterson's neighbor, Roy MacGregor, also a Presbyterian who plans to retire. "Some are hanging on because this is what they've done all their lives - farm.  The younger generation is seeing things through different eyes, and they're quite optimistic. Older guys are wishing (these changes) would all go away.

"We're all saying we'd love to get back to normal," MacGregor says. "Whatever normal is."

It's getting harder for Scotland's small farmers to define "normal" in an ever-changing global market. Some are seeking out niche markets for items like organically produced Scotch beef or lamb. But those opportunities are limited. There is new competition from the formerly communist countries of Eastern Europe. And huge, corporate agribusinesses make it impossible for small farmers to compete, especially in a tiny country like Scotland, where it's costly to even ship goods off the island.

So while at least 11,500 farmers are sticking with it - at least part-time - few feel very secure.

"A lot of the young men (were already) drifting out of farming instead of taking on their father's role. ... They're thinking twice about that," says the Rev. Alex Currie, who has been pastor of three parishes near Whithorn for the past 12 years and has seen the farming population dwindle. "A number of cottages are holiday homes that were once homes of farm workers, maybe a family of eight to 10.

"Plus, it is a job that is isolated and stressful. You may sit eight hours a day on a tractor and never speak to anyone else," says Currie, noting that a number of folks near Whithorn farm as they did a century ago, with horse-drawn plows.

There was a club for young farmers that met once a month, but last summer's epidemic temporarily put a stop to that, worsening the isolation.

Kevin Pearse, of the National Farmers' Union of England and Wales, says the lonely drudgery of the job was putting people off even before the back-to-back crises.

He says the United Kingdom is importing food that doesn't have to meet the expensive government standards that apply to British farmers: "It's not a level playing field."

The Church of Scotland is holding "listening sessions" around the island, giving farmers a chance to speak with their ministers, and the denomination's Church and Nation Committee is drafting a report that will go to its General Assembly in May on what should be done to protect Scotland's farmers financially and to care for them pastorally. 

The Rev. Richard Frazer of Aberdeen, who was appointed as the denomination's liaison to farmers during the foot-and-mouth crisis, is a member of that committee. He says the report will recommend adaptation.

"Farmers who've always done the same thing keep doing the same thing," he says in an interview with the Presbyterian News Service. "And the issue here is: Adapt or die. If you're not prepared to adapt, you're going to be in terrible trouble five or 10 years down the line."

The Scottish government and the National Farmers' Union issued a document recently advising farmers to begin developing new strategies to survive the tougher competition. They urged farmers to join together in cooperatives and study the system of supply and demand. In other words, to produce what the market wants rather than sticking with traditional products and trying to find markets for them.

"We're looking for the kind of future that Scottish agriculture might be able to survive in," Frazer says. "Supplying McDonalds? (Our farmers don't) have a hope."

But not everyone is in such dire straits.

Fordyce Maxwell, the rural-affairs reporter for The Scotsman, Edinburgh's daily newspaper, says it is too soon to assess the impact of the recent losses. More farmers are restocking than not, he says.

"After four or five bad years, there's a steady flow of farmers going out, for various reasons, but the vast majority are hanging on," he says, noting that he once farmed himself, and understands the ups and downs of the business.

Maxwell observes that farmers are quick to "cry wolf."

"Farmers have an amazing ability to shoot themselves in the foot," he adds, observing that neighbors are offended when a farmer drives to town in a new four-wheel-drive truck after getting government aid to replenish his stock.

Farming advocates say that doesn't diminish the harsh financial reality of farm life.

In Pearse's words: "Things are very tight now ... and the reason you Americans come to Scotland is to look at the countryside, the small flocks of sheep and cattle. But we are losing farmers because they cannot sustain themselves. There are plenty farmers who are 65 and older, but the youngsters don't want to be in it, to have to work this hard, to put in such long hours.

"It is an industry that is dying out with the older farmers. And that is quite worrying."

MacGregor agrees. "Farming in a small way, there's not a great deal of financial return," he says.

MacGregor is master of hounds for 26 farms, but no one seems to have time for fox-hunting these days. 
"There's just not the same community spirit that there once was," he says. "The village schools, the village (shops) are closing. People are traveling anyway these days, so they go to the city." Where prices are lower.

MacGregor himself is planning to spend part of his retirement in France, where he's bought a house.
After 12 years in ministry in one place, Currie is circumspect about the future.

"The (stock crises were) such a major body blow that people's confidence is lost, and to my mind, that's something that can't be put on paper," he says. "People worry that, when all this is over, what guarantee do they have that something else is coming down the road? You can't get any guarantees.

"There really is anxiety for farming people now. And that brings a challenge to the church."
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