Farm crisis threatens Methodism in rural Ireland

BELFAST, Northern Ireland (UMNS) - Irish Methodists living in rural areas report that suicide, marital breakdown and bankruptcy are haunting the farm community as the agricultural crisis of deepens across Ireland.

"If the church doesn't speak on farming issues soon, (the crisis) will decimate Methodism in three-quarters of the country," warned dairy farmer Norman Bateman.

Bateman, who farms in the west Cork region of the Irish Republic, spoke in one of the small discussion groups held during the June 9-13 Irish Methodist Annual (regional) Conference in Belfast.  Comments from these and other consultations on farming will be compiled and presented as a formal report to the conference in 2001.

Farmers say they are "running just to stand still" and feel that the "countryside is becoming a lonely place."  The suicide prevention charity, the Samaritans, reports an unprecedented number of calls from farmers and their families in recent years.

Agriculture is the largest single civil industry in Northern Ireland, providing 10 percent of civil employment and 7 percent of gross domestic product.  In the south, these figures are even higher.  And yet from 1995 to 1999, total income for farm families dropped 79 percent in real terms.  Fewer young people are training to be farmers, and small farm units are rapidly going out of existence.

The report will sound familiar to Americans, who have seen family farms across the United States disappear and give way to "big agriculture" in the last century.  Today, only 1 percent of the U.S. population is involved in farming.

"I'm lucky.  I have three sons who are going back into farming, but it's killing them," Bateman reported.

What is killing them are statistics like these:

• In the space of two years, the value of the entire northern Irish pig industry has been halved.
• Potatoes sold at the farm gate for $40 to $65 a ton sell at retail for $270 per ton.
• Farmers' incomes, at an average of $5,000 in 1997, are at the bottom end of the national range.
• In the south of Ireland, when one cow contracts Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), the entire herd must be destroyed.

Even one of Bateman's own sons, who had wanted to be a farmer his entire life, was actively discouraged from pursuing his dream by his high school guidance counselor.  He chose agriculture despite such pressure.

"I didn't realize until I read the (preliminary report) how bad the crisis was," confessed the Rev. John Brooks, who serves an urban congregation.  "This needs to be dealt with at the highest level of the church, immediately."

With the church's leadership focused so much in urban centers, particularly in the north of Ireland, Bateman also made a plea for the conference to send the "best pastors" to rural areas.

*  LaCamera is a UMNS correspondent based in England.