Resilience, Learning and Adaptation among Irish Farm Offspring

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Resilience, Learning and Adaptation among Irish
Farm Offspring

• Dr. Caroline Crowley
• IRCHSS Postdoctoral Fellow
• Department of Geography,
• University College Cork, Ireland
• 18 August 2009
• ESRS Congress

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Alternative Agricultural Pathways

• Development and diffusion of organic farming and
  artisanal food production led by back-to-the-land
  urbanites, foreigners, 3rd-level educated and
  well-capitalised famers
• Limited uptake by indigenous farm families in
  spite of growth in organic market, premium prices
  for organic and artisanal products, and
  government incentives
• Suggests inhibitory factors operating within
  conventional and/or traditional agricultural
  sector
• Presentation focuses on young people from Irish
  farms - youth associated with ability to learn
  new skills and adapt to change
• Explores farm offspring narratives on living and
  working on Irish farms to reveal how agricultural
  masculinities and social structures can inhibit
  adoption of alternative farm enterprises

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Research Methods

• Conducted interviews using a case study approach

• Responds to Shucksmith and Herrmanns (2002 39)
  call for research into farmers own way of
  seeing the world and Giddens (1976) call for
  methodologies that explore culture, local
  understandings and the lived experience

• UCC University College Cork students 11
  interviews

• SE Carlow, commercial farming, 27 interviews

• NW Leitrim, marginal farming 26 interviews

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Alternative Agricultural Pathways and Farming
Masculinities

• Peter et al. (2000 216) argue that the
  conventional masculinity of most male farmers
  hampers the adoption of alternative forms of
  agriculture among more industrial farmers
• Employ Peter et al.s (2000) Bakhtinian approach
  to understanding agricultural masculinities
• Monologic and dialogic masculinities represent
  Weberian ideal types of farmer positions along
  spectrum of masculinities

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Monologic Masculinities

• Monologic farmer characterised by
• farming centred on use of machinery and control
  over nature
• strong gender-based division of farm labour
• conventional understandings of masculinity
• specific definitions of work and success
• Farming to an Irish person is cows or cattle,
  sheep, pigs, cereals and maybe potatoes and
  carrots nothing else, thats farming, thats it,
  close the gate. Well put all them in that room
  and the other lads (the forestry, the salad
  growers, the daffodil growers)theyre not
  farmers.Here farming is very, you either are or
  you arent Jack SE

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Dialogic Masculinities

• Dialogic farmer characterised by
• more openness to change and criticism
• less controlling attitude to machines and
  environment
• acknowledges environment and needs of others in
  society
• broader understanding of what it is to be a man
• Dads very open-minded about farming and willing
  to take on opinions if he wasnt that sort of a
  person, he wouldnt be organic farming now Denis
  NW

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Locating Farming Knowledge
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From Local to Global Knowledge

• Productivist Model of Agriculture - ongoing
  adoption of technology facilitates
• consolidation
• specialisation
• intensification
• Implications for agricultural masculinities as
  alters location of farming knowledge and thus
  authority
• FROM
• Farmers with intimate knowledge of local natural
  and cultivated capital passed down through
  generations of family farming and their role as
  a teacher and transmitter of a craft (Commins
  and Kelleher, 1973 118)
• TO
• external scientific, engineering, sales and
  extension agents in private and public sector,
  with global expertise in farm inputs/practices,
  trained in universities and research centres
  removed from farm location

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Inhibition of Transition to Alternative
AgriculturalPathways
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Via Farm Family

• Agrarian ideology and farmer identities are
  reproduced and restrained in families through
• Patriarchy - the fathers direction of the
  enterprise coincides with his dominant,
  controlling role as parent and adult (Arensberg
  1937 56-57)
• Patrilineal inheritance - land ownership and thus
  power is passed to one usually male successor
  (OHara, 1998)
• Leads to performance of masculine identities
  often grounded in material interests (Ní Laoire,
  2002 17)
• Young people wary of embracing alternatives
  because change must be agreeable to older
  landowner with power to bequest land as he sees
  fit ? monologic masculinities
• a lot of my friends who are working on
  farmsseem to be over the barrel of a gun by
  their fathers saying to them oh, you be a good
  boy for the next couple of years and Ill give
  you the farm Jack SE

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Via Farming Community

• Deference to ancestral ways and tradition
  overseen by farming community and organisations
• Farmer agency kept in check by keen sense of not
  wanting to stand out among peers or be ridiculed
• Community social control achieved via formidable
  gossip networks that ensure effective spread of
  information (Salazar, 1996) and being judged
  through hedgerow farming (Burton, 2004)
• Choice between conformity to conventional
  agriculture or social isolation from farming
  community ? monologic masculinities

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Effects of Opinions of Other Farmers

• Going away to a market sale and you have good
  quality livestock with you, its a good
  feeling, and then you meet the farmersfrom other
  countiesand they talk about your good quality
  Sean NW
• and they tell me that were not farmers
  becausewe grow flowers. What? Flower
  farmers? Which disappoints me. Farming is
  farming and you should respect somebody whos
  doing something well and grows good cropsits
  sad that some farmers in the area wouldnt
  respect you because of what you do Jack SE

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Via State Agents Agricultural Education

• Adherence to conventional productivist
  agriculture overseen by agents of state e.g.,
  farm inspectors, agricultural advisers and
  educators
• Resistance to change and institutional inertia in
  conservative farm sector ? monologic
  masculinities
• The following organic farmer had to do a
  conventional farming certificate to be eligible
  for farm grants
• I had my complete different opinions to some of
  the thingsI would challenge agricultural
  educatorsbut Id still have to answer the
  questions in the fashion they wanted them
  answered in. They have right and wrong and thats
  it Denis NW

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Via State Agents Farm Inspectors

• This farm family encountered state resistance to
  risk associated with change when they tried to
  produce their own milk product
• unpasteurised milk was a no go area according
  to our Department of Agriculture inspector. She
  didnt want to hear tell of it and she wouldnt
  let us batch-pasteurise, which is what were
  doing at the moment.I think she just didnt want
  it in her area because its kind of a high risk
  product
• One year later
• we tried a raw milk hard cheese and that was a
  no go area.she was out here every 2 or 3 days,
  stuck into it, doing tests, testing every bit.
  She didnt like it at all
• you cant challenge it. Its like being in
  school at 8 years of age you cant challenge the
  teacher or the teachers going to be right Denis
  NW

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Potential for AlternativeAgriculture
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Seeds of Alternative Masculinities

• Farm offspring interviews reveal interest in a
  variety of farm diversification options such as
  wind energy, direct farm sales and farm
  recreation can be combined with conventional
  farming
• But they are wary of organic farming because
• Lack of knowledge and acceptance in family and
  community
• Risk aversion and lack of knowledge among state
  agents
• Related to monologic masculinities and the
  hegemony of global knowlege

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Conclusions

• Strong interest among farm offspring in farm
  diversification and partnerships with non-farming
  investors
• Most Irish farms operating under the productivist
  model of agriculture not economically viable
• Sustained via off-farm income masks
  unsustainability and prevents real change
• Inertia in adopting alternative agricultural
  pathways underpinned by authority of global
  knowledge from state and sectoral experts
  powerful architects of agricultural change
• Adherence to global productivist model of
  agriculture through associated hegemonic
  monologic masculinities ? resilience of an
  unsustainable model of agriculture
• May be undone by economic crisis
• Loss of off-farm jobs
• Loss of farm income supports from government
• ? Challenge sector to undergo real change

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References

• Arensberg, C.M. (1937) The Irish countryman an
  anthropological study. Macmillan and Co.
• Burton, R., 2004, Seeing through the 'good
  farmer's' eyes towards developing an
  understanding of the social symbolic value of
  'productivist' behaviour. Sociologia Ruralis,
  44 195-215.
• Commins, P., and Kelleher, C. (1973) Farm
  inheritance and succession. Macra na Feirme,
  Dublin.
• Giddens, A. (1976) The new rules of the
  sociological method. Heinemann, London.
• Ni Laoire, C., 2002, Young farmers, masculinities
  and change in rural Ireland. Irish Geography, 35
  16-27.
• Ni Laoire, C. (2005) 'You're not a man at all!'
  masculinity, responsibility, and staying on the
  land in contemporary Ireland. Irish Journal of
  Sociology, 14 94-114.
• OConnell, P., Clancy, D., McCoy, S. (2006) Who
  went to college in 2004? A national survey of new
  entrants to higher education. Higher Education
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• O'Hara, P. (1998) Partners in production? Women,
  farm and family in Ireland. Berghahn Books,
  Oxford.
• Peter, G., Mayerfeld Bell, M., Jarnagin, S., and
  Bauer, D. (2000) Coming back across the fence
  masculinity and the transition to sustainable
  agriculture. Rural Sociology, 65 215-233.
• Salazar, C. (1996) A Sentimental Economy
  Commodity and Community in Rural Ireland.
  Berghahn Books, Oxford
• Shucksmith, M. and Herrmann, V. (2002) Future
  changes in British agriculture projecting
  divergent farm household behaviour. Journal of
  Agricultural Economics, 53 (1) 37-50.

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caroline.crowley_at_ucc.ie