From The Dublin Review of Books:
Down With Cows!
Maurice Earls writes: Micheál Martin was in Washington for St Patrick’s Day and caught Covid, or perhaps he brought it with him. Either way it was bad luck. The unfortunate man had to confine himself within in the Irish embassy. One would imagine the gilt wore off the gingerbread inside the embassy quick enough. The Taoiseach might even have begun to feel an increased sympathy for Julian Assange.
But what was Micheál doing in Washington in the first place? Why wasn’t he down in Cork clapping his heart out as the parade made its way along Patrick Street? After all, that’s where his votes are. Well, we all know the answer to that: the Irish diaspora and the annual pass into the White House ‑ the world’s power centre ‑ which Irish-Americans provide.
The multiple waves of emigration to the US from the early nineteenth century were part of a process that saw the population of the Republic fall to below three million by the early 1960s. Had it followed European and UK norms it might have been somewhere between fifteen and twenty million. This calamity is usually and, in the present writer’s opinion, oddly attributed to a short-lived period of potato blight in the 1840s rather than to the more obvious explanation: the absence of political autonomy.
Both the diaspora and demographic collapse are reflected in the decline of tillage and the dominance of pasture in recent Irish history. We now have 7.3 million cattle and counting. At present Irish agriculture is dysfunctional ecologically and economically. It has become clear that livestock crowding out other possibilities is not a great idea and also that it is not a great idea for us to be massive importers of calories.
It is possible that the emerging European food crisis, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, could be used to reduce the harmful social and environmental effects of monocultural and industrial practices in Irish farming. If the EU pursues an environmentally friendly route to food independence, there would be clear opportunities for this country to reverse the serious environmental damage that has taken place while at the same time producing food products calculated to serve the 300 million-strong market on our doorstep.
The government, presumably not wishing to have to deal with bread riots in addition to its other worries, is encouraging farmers to switch to tillage in the national interest. During the Second World War de Valera, facing a similar problem, introduced a programme of “compulsory tillage”. Compulsion does not, at least not yet, appear to be on the cards and the farming organisations have argued that financial incentivisation would be the best route to follow. Presumably, in extremis, the de Valera measure could be taken out of the drawer. Indeed it could be argued that we are already in an extreme situation.
Pasture, which in an environmentally positive future would continue to play a role, was always a big part of Irish agriculture. It was established from the time St Patrick was minding sheep on an Irish hillside – and probably well before. Grass grows almost all year round and our mild climate means that animals can be kept outdoors most of the year. In Gaelic Ireland cattle were the currency and the chief indicator of status. It was, however, a fairly primitive form of agriculture, low on methane and nitrate-free, quite divorced from today’s industrialised approach, and one which did not do much environmental damage. As the centuries passed, agriculture became more sophisticated and by the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, while pasture retained a considerable presence, tillage was widespread and supported a greatly expanded population. It was especially practised by the poor, whose subsistence depended on tillage crops, particularly the potato. By the 1840s a third of all land tilled was devoted to the potato. Many peasant families, such as that of William Carleton, enjoyed a basic level of comfort on the back of steady labour. But it was a society with very little in the way of surplus profit. Faced with his son’s dreamy aspirations, Carleton’s father declared that if William would not lift the spade he should move on. This he chose to do, to the great benefit of Irish literature.
But in the second half of the nineteenth century a strange thing happened, tillage was abandoned and pasture became generalised, supporting a much reduced population – thus Irish emigration, the diaspora and the ritual mid-March journeying of our politicians....
....MUCH MORE
If interested see also:Ireland Is Becoming a Nation of Renters (again)
Ireland seems to be leading the way to the WEF's broad sunlit uplands.*
