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This week we have a virtual guest lecturer, Dr. Michael McDonald, an anthropologist here at FGCU. I have asked him to share his experience with farming with you on the week we are concerned with how humans get food. At the end of his letter, please click on the electronic bulletin board and post your response for the week.
Dear students, I would like to share with you a bit of my own experience as a farm hand in rural Ireland. In 1991-92 I lived for about 8 months with a family in County Wicklow in south central Ireland, while I conducted research for my doctorate. The farm was a mixed livestock (sheep, cattle, deer) and vegetable farm. While it was small by American or even Irish standards only 37 acres it was a very successful enterprise. The farmer was adding green houses and planning to acquire new land while I was there. There was nothing remarkable about the place. The land was both hilly and boggy and the weather in the Wicklow mountains is uniformly windy, damp and overcast. It was pretty to look at, but difficult to get around in even for sheep. My workday started around five AM; I would wake up in the dark, get dressed and tend to the animals with the other laborer. This entailed carrying bales of hay to the 6 cows, 50 odd sheep and the 12 deer, and filling their troughs with water. I would then have to muck out the cow stalls with a shovel and a rake and put fresh straw on the floors for their bedding. The mucked out cattle manure and straw mixture was composted and used to fertilize the vegetable fields. Around 6:30 we would be called in for breakfast which was generally a huge bowl of porridge and a chance to warm up before the long workday started. Most of the days' work was done in the vegetable fields either manually weeding, transplanting, thinning or harvesting a range of root crops; potatoes, carrots, turnips, rutabagas and vegetables and herbs. This sort of work is slow, tedious and real hard on the back. We would also spend several hours a day preparing vegetables for market by washing, grading and packaging them. A highlight of the work day was delivering orders of vegetables to customers' houses, restaurants, hotels or the food co-op. Going into town meant a chance to get a pint of Guinness and a break in the work routine. The sun sets early in Ireland during the winter months so work in the fields generally ended by four. We would have a family style meal that was always farm fresh. The farm supplied about 50% of the family's food needs, including lamb, beef and venison. We would usually talk about work or some broader agricultural topic for a few hours. Twice a week we were permitted to have a bath in the shared bathroom. Note this family had 6 kids plus two workers in residence, so things had to be done on a schedule. Taking a bath meant building a fire to heat the water; all other washing was done with rather cool well water. I usually went to sleep around 8:00 or 8:30. My room was at the top of a hay barn and while there was electric light, it was not heated. To keep warm, I had a hot water bottle that I tucked into my sleeping bag. This was a very rich and memorable experience for me and a description that should seem paradoxical to you. As you read in your text about food production there are certain points which make the above description peculiar. The authors of your text note that over the past 10,000 years, there has been a discernible trend in food production. Over the centuries food production has supplanted food gathering to become the predominant mode of subsistence. Furthermore, innovations in agriculture have tended to follow a general pattern of intensification to produce more food on a given area of land to feed a growing population. Mechanization has replaced manual labor to increase efficiency and productivity. The average farm size has increased remarkably to create economies of scale. Farms have become more specialized and commercialized, producing one thing only and exclusively for market sales. Specialized food processing has become an off- farm task. Inorganic and chemical fertilizers are widely used to stimulate plant growth. Pesticides and herbicides are used to control weeds and insects. Ireland is not caught in a time warp, these general characteristics also apply there. There are huge mechanized and specialized farms throughout the country. My farm family and others who farm like them are not holdovers from a time gone by either. In fact they are rather recent immigrants to Ireland from continental Europe. The type of agriculture they practice emerged only after Ireland joined the European Union in 1973. Your conundrum for this weeks electronic bulletin board is this: If the general trend in agriculture has been toward intensification and commercialization- how could a farm of this size and anachronistic operation be a success? Look for clues in the description and good luck!.
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