Rural Ireland is a very different place to what it was forty or fifty years ago and the ‘constructive programme’ of incoming settlers from Britain and the mainland of Europe contributed significantly to positive change. Here Garreth Byrne continues his consideration of some of the factors involved in a piece which is illustrative of some of the factors of change in Ireland.
By Garreth Byrne
Traditional farming practices predominated around rural Ireland in the early 1970s. Maybe they still do: cattle, sheep, pigs and poultry. In some areas, especially the Golden Vale, grain production, helped by massive inputs of fertilizer and assisted by pesticide usage, was a part of agribusiness. Farmers often grew wheat and barley on contract to the whiskey and gin distillers. In good summers when there was a balance between rain and sunshine the grain quality was high and brought high prices. Milk producers, using fertilisers to produce rich grass, sold the milk to big creameries which invested in R & D for food processing. Big co-operative creameries had been edging out smaller local co-ops and motorised systems of milk collection supplanted the more intimate methods. Co-ops, first set up in many places from 1904 onwards, lost the simpler vision of people like Horace Plunkett and the poet AE, George Russell, who had edited a popular magazine entitled The Irish Homestead.
The farming community, rich and poor, was set in its ways. Many rural parts of the south-west, the west and the north-west were losing population due to out migration.
How back to the land tendencies began
In an article in the online version of Nonviolent News in March 2005, I tried to trace the origins of back-to-the-land alternative tendencies:
“The second half of the 1960s in Western Europe and North America were marked by student radicalism, demands for educational changes, sit-ins, teach-ins and various manifestations against the Vietnam War. One dimension of that vanished period of youthful animation, introspection and protest was the focus, in San Francisco and elsewhere, on love, peace, the return to nature and alternative lifestyle. Some of it was faddish: Californian sunshine has seen artistic, psycho, techno, fashion and lifestyle fads come and go over the decades. Some of these tried-and-discarded social fads washed up on the shores of Ireland and other parts of Europe at later stages, where vanguard groups and opinion moulders tried them out, with varying levels of impact. A concern for nature, especially rural environment, was a beneficial long-term bequest from the love and peace generation…”
[The full article can be accessed here https://www.innatenonviolence.org/resources/ruralsettlers.shtml ]
Certain key books, booklets, institutions and research organizations influenced young people in the 1960s and 1970s to take an interest, and get involved in, the earth and its environment. The cultivation and conservation of the soil for ecological and agricultural benefits became a paramount concern. I list a few sources of influence; readers can probably think of other texts and advocates.
E.F.Schumacher: Small is beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered (1973)
“Schumacher’s philosophy is one of “enoughness”, appreciating both human needs and limitations, and appropriate use of technology. It grew out of his study of village-based economics, which he later termed Buddhist economics, which is the subject of the book’s fourth chapter.’Intermediate technology’ was urged for peasant farmers in third world countries.
“Buddhist economics” was coined in 1955 by Schumacher after a visit to Burma [now Myanmar] and discussion with economist Amaritya Sen.
Schumacher was a Christian and did not imply that the economics he espoused was possible only in the teachings and ritual practice of Buddhism. The people-centred subtitle of his book is important.
Rachel Carson: Silent Spring (1962)
The book was published in 1962, documenting the adverse environmental effects caused by the indiscriminate use of pesticides. Carson accused the chemical industry of spreading disinformation, and public officials of accepting the industry’s marketing claims unquestioningly.
The Limits to Growth, by the Club of Rome (1970)
Its main thesis was that the earth’s finite resources would limit economic growth measured by GNP/GDP.
John Seymour: Self Sufficiency, several editions & updates
This book was republished with additional data several times. Seymour farmed in Ireland for a while.
Resurgence magazine bi-monthly
“Resurgence & Ecologist offers positive perspectives on a range of engaging topics covering ecology, social justice, philosophy, spirituality, sustainable development and the arts – an eclectic mix that cannot be found anywhere else.”
This British magazine was founded in 1966 by John Papworth, who lived for some years in Zambia and took an interest in rural development and microeconomics with application to peasant farmers and their cultural landscape. He was a personal advisor to Kenneth Kaunda, first President of Zambia. He supported a Village Industry project. A city dweller, living in Lusaka, he never settled in the rural provinces. For some years he enthused about Kenneth Kaunda’s ‘Zambian Humanism’ social philosophy (deist inspired and not to be confused with the secular humanism of Auguste Comte or the British Humanist Association), although Kaunda’s ideology bemused many citizens who preferred improvements in living standards to philosophical discussion. Many renowned writers contributed to Resurgence. A leading editor in chief was Satish Kumar.
The Soil Association in Britain published many booklets on organic farming. Many British homesteaders who came to Ireland from the 1970s were well acquainted with this organisation’s eco philosophy and practical advice.
Some people read the above listed books while thousands of others became acquainted with key ideas through reading articles or hearing discussions on radio and television.
Tough starts for pioneer incomers
I made these observations, trying to paint the painstaking efforts of pioneering incomers on a broad canvas:
“Organic farming, vegetarianism and, more rarely, vegan diets, were features of a new puritan ethic that coloured the sporadic back-to-the-land movement in the rural fringes of Ireland during the 1960s onwards. The puritans often bought derelict stone cottages at knockdown prices in difficult, isolated places. Some were on the sides of windy hills in the Beara peninsula or the Bluestack mountains of South Donegal. Counties including Leitrim, Sligo, Roscommon, Mayo and the flat, boring hedgerowed landscape of the midlands were also among the areas where incoming pioneers acquired their three- or ten-acre plots. Several of them arrived towing mobile homes in which they lived tenaciously over the first year of settlement, clearing away overgrown scrub, boulders and scutch grass.”
I could have mentioned fringe parts of Fermanagh and Tyrone where some settlers endured cultural and climatic obstacles.
Locals thought some incomers a bit offbeat
Blow-in settlers were often regarded as odd-bods by local farmers earning a living from mainstream farming methods. Somebody not keeping livestock or growing wheat and barley was not regarded as a real farmer. Trying to earn a living from organically grown vegetables seemed a hopeless enterprise. Many small and medium farmers had ceased to grow any vegetables apart from cabbage and potatoes. They bought other things like lettuce, scallions and carrots from supermarkets and greengrocers.
Since the pioneering frugal experiences of rural vegetable growers and organic cattle and sheep rearing many changes have taken place. Membership of the European Union has brought ecological consciousness to traditional farmers. REPs and other conservation incentives have made the farming community aware that they are custodians of soil, landscape and the built heritage.
The new settlers from the 1970s onwards made a difference – they and their institutions, like the Organic Centre in Rossinver, IOFGA, the Clare-based Seed Savers Association and think groups like Fr. Harry Bohan’s Rural Housing Organisation and Rural Resources Organisation, and smaller independent initiatives like the Rural Resettlement Organisation, which invited unemployed city dwellers to repopulate scarred localities. For promoters of such diverse rural initiatives the micro-economics of people has been more relevant than the statistical impersonality of macro-economics.
Macroeconomics is a dismal science. Just read a copy of The Business Post. This Sunday paper gives attention to SME enterprises, but the overall thrust of its regular writers is the macroeconomic dimension that underlines the thinking of power brokers in business, banking, international high finance and governing politics. Many of these writers probably have no farming backgrounds and wouldn’t know how to run a small town specialist shop or set up and manage a free range poultry project.
Alternative countrysides: Anthropological approaches to rural Western Europe today edited by Jeremy MacClancy https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9780719096846/
This book looks at rural initiatives in France, Italy, Spain, Ireland and elsewhere. On the internet is a site enabling the curious reader to download in pdf form selected chapters from the book.
Summarising alternative Irish rural achievements
In a letter to the Irish Examiner dated 20th December 2006 I responded to a journalist who dismissed the organic farming efforts of what he termed ‘dropouts’ from foreign countries.
Dropouts who changed things for the better
“Your columnist Malachi O’Doherty (Irish Examiner, December 8) makes the interesting assertion that fear of nuclear annihilation “explains the irresponsible ‘60s” more effectively than other social theories.
In this context, he mentions dropouts who bought “cottages and goats in Kerry and Donegal”. I think Mr O’Doherty is being flippantly dismissive of many people from Britain — and mainland Europe — who forsook foreign suburban surroundings in the 1960s (and the ‘70s and ‘80s for good measure) in order to make new, rugged and precarious lives for themselves on small holdings in the periphery of rural Ireland.
I have come across several rural settlers of this non-national kind during my professional travels in the west and north-west of Ireland. I believe the majority of them — from Britain, Belgium, Germany and elsewhere — made serious efforts to live creatively in their chosen localities.
Consider: 1. They rehabilitated derelict cottages. 2. They grew organic vegetables using polythene tunnels. 3. They introduced new varieties that locals had never dreamed of growing. 4. They participated in implementing group water schemes. 5. They helped to set up farmers’ markets. 6. They opened alternative food and commodity stores, organic farming education centres and initiated FÁS-supported training courses. 8. They promoted broadleaf afforestation among groups and individuals. 9. They sent their children to local schools that previously suffered dwindling enrolments. 10. They produced magazines and newsletters promoting practical ideas on agriculture, environment and rural resettlement. 11. They introduced arts and crafts to several localities. 12. They produced goats’ cheese — an important food substitute for certain people with food allergies. Garreth Byrne Co. Leitrim.”
Alternative rural initiatives since the 1970s have not been exclusively concerned with farming, ecology, biodiversity and landscape. In their leisure time people have aesthetic, cultural, social and spiritual interests. Initiatives in furtherance of these were taken by blow-ins and locals sometimes. It would be interesting to compile a detailed list. Understanding rural society and its relationship with big towns and cities is important, so too is having an insight into the dynamics of rural mobilization.