Women in Farming

Kerryman_1973

My cousin is an 18 year old female and is thinking of becoming a farm manager. I think she is crazy given the way farming is going. Id say there isnt a bob to be made in it as well as being a tough profession.

How come so few females get into farming? there are probably women who love farming but alot of people think it an odd choice for a woman.

any comments?

fastrac

Half the farms are being ran by women as the husbands take up off farm jobs and labour becomes harder to get and pay .How many farmers rely on the wives to tackle the reams of bookwork that is involved?If she is good and motivated there are opportunities as most 3rd level farm courses are half empty because of the bad impression people have got from negative pr over the Celtic Tiger years .Irish farming is paying a lot of bills and has transformed itself over the last decade to a modern world class industry that will continue to develope in the future.

The_Conductor

I'd hazard a guess that just over 1/3 of students in UCDs B.Agr.Sc. course are women, so its by no means a totally male dominated area any longer.

With the reform of the CAP, farming has been totally transformed and all but the larger of the farms in Ireland are now commercially unviable in their traditional forms. This has however opened a lot of new doorways, and encouraged many farm families to explore alternate ways of supplementing their farm income (and I do not mean solely by men/women taking off-farm jobs). As such the role of a good farm manager is even more important now than it ever was. Someone knowledgeable of modern farming practices and willing to explore farm enterprises that may once have been shunned- would therefore be a very valuable addition to a farming team.

One of the reasons that farming was not traditionally seen as an attractive profession for women, was the perception that it involved a lot of hard labour and very antisocial hours. While this is still true to some extent- many modern enterprises are up there with the best of commercial enterprises and deserve to be viewed as such by men and women alike.

Some particular forms of farming obviously are going difficulties- especially those that once had a safety net of intervention that they could rely on.

As with any profession- the young lady in question should carefully examine what exactly she is seeking, where her capabilities lie and where she sees herself in the future. Perhaps speaking to some of the Agricultural Advisors in the Teagasc county office and organising to assist in some of their visits to get a better feel of the industry might be something to consider?

AidoCQS

smccarrick wrote:

all but the larger of the farms in Ireland are now commercially unviable in their traditional forms. This has however opened a lot of new doorways,
QUOTE]

I absolutely do not understand this statement. Farming has become commercially unviable - but that's opening new doors

Do you know what the genisis of statements like this is? It’s the spin doctors who now run most of the political parties and the media who co-exist with them. Farming has had the rug pulled out from under it. When you consider costs we now get less for our milk than ANYWHERE in Europe. And the silence is deafening, look at Bertie at a Mart during the week - looking out at all the white haired farmers, and the cows were all that was to be heard, all except for the sycophantic applause and grins.

If these spin doctors spent even one tenth of the time showing people what is actually happening on the ground, showing how food security has been forgotten, even trying to explain why all the farmers at the mart had white hair then maybe people would wake up.

When people do realise what has happened it is going to cost alot more to put it all back together. Nobody will remobilize a farm on today’s milk prices. This is more than economics, the Yanks, the greatest capitalists of them all even wrote food security into the homeland defense bill.

I don’t mean to pick on your well meaning advice about that other issue, but its shocking to see, the wages of the nurses that are on strike are €60k/pa and Bertie saunters into a room full of people who are not even making industrial wages, a bunch of people who should have cashed their chips in along time ago but cannot find airs to take over, and the only one who says anything is the limousine in the middle.

http://www.channel4.com/blogs/page/fourdocs?entry=molly_dineen_s_latest_doc

The_Conductor

Your comments are fair enough. Food security has taken the back seat to open trade with multinationals dominating here. Where once every town had its market day, and it was a simple task to get good fresh wholesome food, in season, now- its nigh impossible. The prices supermarkets pay to farmers are paltry- in most cases below production costs- driving more and more farmers out of business, and forcing other farmers to compete with each other in stupid "beauty parades" to get the best looking produce on shop shelves. Speaking from personal experience- its cheaper in some cases to allow produce to rot in the fields than to harvest it when the cost of harvesting it exceeds the price supermarkets are willing to pay. The prices supermarkets charge consumers have nothing to do whatsoever with the production costs of the goods being purchased. It wouldn't kill supermarkets to pay a few pence extra per litre of milk or a couple of pence more per kilogramme for soft fruit- in order to guarantee the supply of Irish produce. Unfortunately they simply don't give a damn. Milk is a case in point- in Ireland and the UK its almost impossible to cover your costs from milk production. Vast numbers of dairy farmers are closing up shop. At current trends it will be necessary to import fresh dairy produce from Russia and Poland on a daily basis into Ireland and the UK by 2012- even while our own fields are being left fallow through impossible political decisions.

We are a small open economy- but there is no recognition there of the necessity to secure our food chain. Most of the chicken used in our restraunt sector is South American or Thai fillets that have been legally injected with proteins and hormones (in some cases your chicken in your local chinese can actually be impregnated with beef proteins). 40% of the beef bought by Irish consumers is now imported (Tesco/M&S etc encourage this trend). Cultivation of malting barley, hops and many other raw materials for our once vibrant brewing industries have all but ceased. Hell- even 30% of potatoes retailed here are imported.

All it would take is a fuel crisis or a political shock (not necessarily even in Ireland) for the whole house of cards to come tumbling down.

I go out of my way to visit farmers markets and purchase Irish produce whenever possible. Most consumers don't though- they just look at the price tag

pjbrady1

Is the solution then to tax food imports. Food bought abroad sends money out of our economy. Charlie McGreevey would probably choke on his hotel breakfast out in Brussels, but competition, competition, competition in the food sector does not fit in with the EU's bill on climate change for example.

As for importing Milk from Russia and Poland, I doubt they will have the capacity to expand their milk production by the necessary volume. Polands grasslands crop pretty low in comparison to Ireland/UK and their is a water supply issue as it rains far less over there. Most of their land is traditionally put to spuds/cabbages/cucumbers.

People are right though, impossible for us to avoid an energy crisis. That will really hit the large retailers.

P.J.

AidoCQS

Before there is a political solution it has to be the will of the people. My point is the people don’t know. I did not know.
I was home last weekend and one of the top Fresian breeders was selling his herd. It was shocking. He was one of the first in our area to have silage, the first with slats, the first with Maize, he has always been an innovator, as was his father & grandfather before them. Last month he just packed it in.

I was ready for the horses & cart farmers with the few tanks from my youth to go, ready too for the lets say 'less ambitious farmers' who have been propped up for years by subsidies, but when you see somebody like this, there really is a death knell ringing.

People don’t know, in town and city's the people say, ah sure the farmers are at it again. It sounds simplistic but its real Peter and the wolf stuff. People don’t care, Macra & co are incompetent, Teagasc puppets, and the plc's (some of the local farmers still call em 'co-ops' would you believe) have everyone by the throat.

There is not a decade left in all these white haired farmers, a lot of people are going to wonder what happened? Spindoctors dont inform, they misinform.

Rubber Johnny

Interesting career choice. The one thing I would ask is has she experience of the job at hand e.g. farming background, work placements. I know of a few people who considered it as a profession and were amazed at the type of work involved. Also, has she a farm in mind to manage such as that of a family member. Much easier career path this way