Fewer farmers, but more progressive and optimistic
Market researchers in Ireland take a special interest in farmers. Ireland remains the only country in which farmers have their own class F, to go with ABC1 and C2, D and E social classes.
Social grade F consisted of 15% of the population 20 years ago — but now makes up just 7.4%.
For this survey, we interviewed farmers at agricultural shows, using a random sampling. Farmers are expensive and difficult to interview in person, and less guarded in a face-to-face interview than they are by phone.
Thus, we sent our interviewers to locations as diverse as Cappamore, Tullamore, Tinahealy, Dungarvan, Skibbereen and Athenry.
We wanted to ensure that the study was both robust and representative of the farming community, as well as considered and in-depth.
We didn’t just confine interviewing to farmers, but also interviewed other adults who live on farms.
In the main, these were farmers’ spouses, the vast majority of whom also work on the farm.
The first point of note is the optimism of farmers, with four out of five broadly positive, and a similar number feeling equally good about their own farm enterprise. This is reflected across dairy, livestock and tillage.
It is encouraging that more than a third of farmers would like to either buy or ‘rent in’ land, and a quarter anticipate that they will do so in the next five years.
Conversely, very few aim to exit farming or to reduce the size of their holdings.
Similar optimism is not shared so widely by the rest of the community.
Consumer confidence may be rising, but much of the rest of society is more guarded than farmers about Ireland’s short- to medium-term prospects.
Farmers have been forced to make cutbacks in recent years, but the scale of their cutbacks seems less pronounced than is apparent among other groups in society.
Large purchases have been postponed by 57% of farmers, in comparison with 72% of the adult population.
About a quarter of farmers are eating-out less, and a fifth are going to the pub less.
By contrast, two thirds of adults in Ireland say they are socialising out of the home less often.
In the Irish Examiner ICMSA farming survey, 21% of farmers have not taken a family holiday this year: this compares with 46% of the adult population.
Likewise, fewer farmers have cut their health insurance, or decided to take a car off the road.
The incidences in the general population are 12% for either, but just 8% and 5%, respectively, among farmers.
Nevertheless, it is striking that farmers have similar issues and concerns as the generality of the population, when asked about their political priorities.
Agricultural policies would influence the vote of six in 10, but the cost of living, unemployment and austerity or debt, as well as emigration and healthcare costs, are all significant priorities, too.
Farmers have become much less ‘single issue’ in their focus. Like many others, through the recession, they are seeing problems now from multi-perspectives: as parents, as consumers, and as service users, rather than just as farmers.
At a political level, farmers retain the guarded perspective they often exhibit when queried about their party preferences: 31% say that they don’t know how they would vote, while 37% would vote for Fine Gael and 18% for Fianna Fáil.
A substantial proportion of the farming vote has adopted a ‘wait and see’ perspective, and almost all such farmers voted for Fine Gael in the last instance.
Roughly a fifth of farmers voted for Fianna Fáil in the last election and the proportion committed to voting for them at present is just 18%.
Thus, Fianna Fáil appears to be down to its core support, whereas Fine Gael retains the lion’s share of farmer interest, although as much as half of the previous Fine Gael vote claims to be undecided.
Despite this, the claimed level of satisfaction with the performance of Simon Coveney, as the Minister for Agriculture, seems particularly high, with 53% saying he is doing an excellent or good job, and just 14% believing his performance to be poor.
The Irish Examiner ICMSA survey illustrates a more progressive perspective on social issues than one might have traditionally attributed to farmers.
Sixty three percent agree that women are undervalued in Irish society, and a similar proportion say that abortion should be permitted when the life of the mother is at risk, up to and including suicide.
Concurrently, more than a third (37%) doubt that the Catholic Church is still the dominant force in Ireland, although the survey does illustrate that more than 7 in 10 farmers remain weekly mass-goers.
This compares with a national average, for mass attendance, of 42%.
Farmers are among the most adherent group, from a religious standpoint, but are more free-thinking, or challenging of Church orthodoxy, than might once have been the case.
Farmers share quite similar views to the generality of the population, but in some respects stand apart.
The vast majority agree that “we have too many politicians and that they are overpaid and ineffective”.
Similarly, there is universal acceptance that “not a single person will be jailed following the banking crisis”.
Like everyone else, farmers are disappointed by this, and by the perceived inadequacy of action by the DPP and others.
However, in the context of the right to bear arms to protect themselves and their property, the vast majority, more than four in five, agree that rural dwellers should be allowed to protect themselves and their property with firearms. This, presumably, would be at odds with the general public, but is probably more a reflection on the paucity of rural policing than on any manifest desire to shoot trespassers.
As an observer of social trends, I predominantly take from this survey a sense of positivity and optimism, but conditioned by the recognition that half of farmers rely on a second income, and most need to work very long hours to get the most from their holdings.
The average hours worked for all farmers is 48, but almost 56 hours a week among dairy farmers, or eight hours a day, seven days a week.
Few others would be content to work at this rate and, as a non-farmer, one could only be impressed by the industry and dedication that the survey illustrates.
* Larry Ryan is a director of Behaviour & Attitudes, Ireland’s leading independent market research agency.
