With our long history of working with smallholders in Africa and South Asia, we tend to forget that
rural poverty can also be disastrous for farmers in Europe and the USA.
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Dust
storm, Spearman, Texas, 1935.
Photo: U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration |
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Buried
machinery on a farm in South Dakota, 1936.
Photo: USDA |
This
has been brought home by the excellent TV series on the US dustbowl in the 1930s,
when years of expanding wheat production in the Southern Great Plains were
brought to a halt by prolonged drought, and the inappropriate technology in use
caused massive wind erosion of the soil. Combined with the economic depression
of the time this led to a vast displacement of people.
Closer to home and
more up-to-date, it was a shock to read that Oxfam, better known for their work in famine
zones in Africa, were working on poverty among upland farmers in Upper Teesdale
in northern England. The UK uplands are areas, sometimes remote, of high
rainfall, cold weather and poor soils, where traditional farming methods largely
depend upon the rearing of livestock for later fattening in more fertile
lowland farms. Their report
has some startling conclusions.
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Typical
upland pasture at Harwood
in Upper Teesdale.
Photo: © Copyright Gordon
Hatton and licensed for reuse
under this Creative Commons
Licence
|
Farmers’ incomes
fluctuated, largely due to circumstances beyond their control, and relied upon
government support as well as sales of livestock. This resulted in situations
when bills could not be paid, farmers could not afford food, or had to reduce
the inputs such as fertilizer and livestock feed, and were unable to invest in
improving their farms. Average farm incomes were about ¾ of the minimum level
needed by an adult to live in a rural area, and some were only half this.
Farmers in poverty had no insurance, no pensions or savings, and depended on
off-farm income for survival. They felt vulnerable to landlords and to the
banks, and some had developed mental health and well-being issues as a result
of the poverty. Farmers were becoming older as younger people left for
(better-paid) jobs in towns and cities. The report noted that the problems were
becoming worse.
These would all have
been recognised by the dustbowl farmers of 1930s USA, and by smallholders in
developing countries the world over. They are all situations our group have
become familiar with over the years, but we did not expect to see them in the
UK which, despite the recession, is still one of the world’s largest economies.
The question is “what is to be done?” The Oxfam report recognised three key
issues: raising awareness and increasing take-up of available State benefits;
improving skills development and generating off-farm income; and addressing
exclusion from mainstream services, in particular healthcare, and suggested
half a dozen action areas to address them. These included the transfer of livestock
skills to the next generation; encouraging young people to remain in the hills
by providing training and employment; and thinking through the unique features
of upland farming environments.
Upland farmers in the
UK are fiercely individualist, and want to carry on making a living from their
traditional livestock raising. Historically, this has been recognised by
government, who also recognised that this was not easy in harsh hill
environments, and provided subsidies to guard against low prices and funded
research organisations to develop technologies for improving production.
However, times have now changed, and there is a greater focus on using
subsidies to maintain biodiversity and on the provision of a more general range
of ecosystem services. That is not to say that livestock production is
unimportant, it is and must remain so if the character of the hills is to be
maintained. The challenge is to develop a means of funding farmers to produce
what the nation and its people want from the hills and uplands, while
maintaining biodiversity, protecting the environment and sustaining communities
in times of austerity. Whether the government has the will to do this remains
to be seen.
