Help is at hand if pressure mounts
THE hidden face of Ireland’s farming difficulties haunts Lumena Walsh. Changes, mostly for the worse, are taking their toll on farming families.
Many feel mired in problems and can’t see a way out, but women like Lumena and others in the IFA’s Farm Family section are doing their best to enlighten dark days for beleaguered farm families.
During her secondary school years in Cork city, Lumena thought she and other farmers’ daughters were being well prepared for their farming lives ahead. “All of us had to do our shopping for various bits and pieces during our lunch time or after school, nuts and bolts, machinery or tractor parts or cattle doses, coupled with the work we as youngsters had to do at home on the family farm.”
But they reckoned without the changes of the past 14 years, which have turned farming traditions on their head.
“In 1993, we had to meet the challenges of Area Aid, with all its associated minutiae.”
“The Special Beef Premia came on stream then and, in most cases, much of the paper work was done by women. Everyone knows the heart of the home is the woman, but in all cases of self employed families and especially farming families, that woman, a mother in most cases, has to be extra special.”
Many farmers’ wives took on the huge administration workload which Area Aid brought to farmers. Endless complicated paperwork had to submitted each year, mostly for the country’s seven million cattle and 740,000 acres of cereals.
When the inevitable mistakes in the paperwork arise, it’s often the farmer’s wife who has to travel to the nearest Department of Agriculture offices to answer queries, and make sure the farm stays on the right side of the Department officials.
Falling out with the bureaucrats could result in a huge setback, due to the loss of premium payments.
Farmers have to live with this risk, but it’s too much for the old or uneducated, fears Lumena.
Records show that a significant number of farmers never claimed their share of premium payments. Many of these people are likely to be the old or uneducated, too scared to face the demands of bureaucracy.
The premium payments will be easier to handle in future years, converted into one annual payment. But the biggest problems will still be there for farmers - and falling farm profitability is the No 1. Even in dairying, for decades the only farm enterprise capable of offering a reasonable living from Ireland’s relatively small farms, profit margins have nearly halved in a few years.
That’s part of the reason why so many hardworking dairy farmers now find their children don’t want to know about the farming legacy their hardworking parents hoped to pass on to them. Children have also grown up missing out on the holidays their school friends enjoyed, because farming parents couldn’t get away from the farm.
Lumena Walsh says every farming mother now wants a good education for the children, first and foremost; the farming life which their parents looked forward to is now only a second choice.
But this situation leaves farming couples of a certain age on their own, facing huge decisions on their future and eventual retirement. In some cases, older farming couples have decided to sell off the farm unwanted by their children, and put aside the money for their expected retirement home bills.
But perhaps the worst off farming families are those with no-one to talk to, “stewing” in problems usually connected to the economic uncertainties of the farming career.
Constant worry and rural isolation can be a dangerous mix, and in the worst farming situations, communication between husband and wife breaks down, depression sets in, and without action, horror stories begin - like the spate of livestock deaths which hit the news last year when some farmers could no longer cope with their troubles, and just gave up.
Lumena Walsh is one of those who have rallied to the cause of people left behind by the non-stop changes in the farming sector.
“Today’s farm families are faced with a multitude of complex issues which include a wide variety of changes”, she says.
“Quite a lot of farmers have been forced out of farming altogether, or been forced to get off-farm employment for economic reasons. For the spouses and family members left behind on the farms, it can be very lonely, and this isolation is compounded by the decline in meeting areas like the local co-op shop. This isolation, lack of services, and social exclusion often lead to depression and other serious health problems, and occasionally the ultimate tragedy, suicide.”
With its broad brief to inform and educate members of farm families, IFA’s Farm Family section is in the front line of the struggle for survival for our worst-off farmers, and it was through the Cork Central IFA Farm Family group, of which she is chairperson, that Lumena Walsh, has been inspired to community action.
She also received vital encouragement from IFA’s Equality Officer, Mary Carroll, and was spurred into action by a Duhallow Integrated Rural Development (IRD) conference on Women in Politics and Decision Making which highlighted the low percentage of women in decision making bodies, and how to turn this around.
It also focussed on the work of Duhallow woman Hannah Sheehy-Skeffington, the militant suffragette and co-founder of the Irish Women’s Franchise League in 1908, one of the most important political activists of her day.
“To hear of all the good work being done by the IRD and hear the ladies at the conference speak of how they got to where they are today, was truly an inspiration to me”, says Lumena.
And when she attended EU Agriculture Commissioner Franz Fischler’s information meeting on the implications of CAP reform for Irish farmers, she realised quickly that huge changes were coming down the line for farmers, and that there were more and more problems, anxieties, and fears in store for farming families. Years of warnings of hard times in farming were about to come true.
Many women today have plenty of opportunities to get some relief, and weather the storm when faced with a sometimes crushing burden of life on the farm, with its growing economic pressure, says Lumena. But she’s worried about those in more isolated areas, or those for whom the farm income situation is worst. Farming mothers who don’t have access to childcare facilities also have it harder.
“There was one way that I thought I could help”, she says. “I applied for a grant from the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs and got part of it. Then I contacted IRD to get someone who would facilitate us with a personal development course, the object of this course being to empower the participants with new skills which would be of great benefit to them as they face the changes in agriculture”.
“On the high recommendation of IRD, the facilitator for the course was Ms Frances Lombard of Lombard and Associates, Personal Development Training and Consultancy Services. I was very happy to put this course on offer to our group, and had Ms Lombard in as a guest speaker at one of our regular meetings. The members readily agreed to do the course for eight successive mornings. Others were interested to do the course at night at a later date. A course is not everything, we know, but at least it’s one candle lit, and Farm Family try to light as many as possible”.
“Frances is from a farming background, speaks our language and so was well able to empathise with us. We all feel we’ve benefited greatly from it, not only us but our extended families.”
“The course is very relevant for farm families, as the empowerment bestowed is not some figment, but something real and tangible, some concrete help in facing down all the myriad and bewildering challenges and upheavals.”
“It is aimed at all levels of farming, no section is immune from change”, says Lumena.
She says that what farming women can learn from courses like this is that they have choices.
If things are going badly, they don’t stick with something, they need to let go of their fears, be assertive and do something about their situation.
She was impressed to see fellow farming women attending the course even at silage making time, one of the busiest times on the farm. She says the course’s message was worth hearing; if you’re dissatisfied with your lot, examine alternative courses of action and take action - which might be as simple as setting up a new business in the farm sheds, or finding some other way to make more money.
But what about the farm families out there suffering in silence, whose main problem may be isolation, who are less likely to get involved in positive initiatives like personal development courses? Lumena says, “I, on behalf of Farm Family, would like to reach out to anyone who feels isolated or in need of help or information, to join us as members. They will be assured of a Céad Míle Fáilte and a willing and sympathetic ear.”
You can contact Lumena at 086 1705768, or Frances Lombard at 022 47509.
