IT WAS hard, listening to the small farmers on Morning Ireland complain about the Government's afforestation plans, to believe Ireland was once a land of trees. Their version of the world suggests from time immemorial their ancestors had worked the land, producing pails of creamy milk and finely muscled beeves for which the markets of Euro were pleading.
But of course, this was not so; the small farmers of Ireland for the most part came into their lands by the Land Acts of the past 100 years or so - acts which created a plenitude of uneconomic holdings which had to be state subsidised ever since. Those subsidies have created a culture of expectation that the state's purpose is to assist the small farmers to produce milk and beef which Europe didn't actually want, even before the BSE crisis. And as for now....
Subsidised Culture
Small farmers are not to blame for having this expectation. They have been told for generations that it was their right. If three generations of small diary producers expected the Government to untrouser a few quid for every column produced, no matter whether or not anybody wanted it, I too would expect the State to jingle shillings at me as a matter of right for writing this and that. The world is changing; as it is for the diary, so must it sooner or later be for the dairy.
The culture which seeks subsidy also seems to assume the small farmer working his field has done so since the era of the Tain, and the Irish landscape of today no doubt appears to fulfil that notion. But it is not so, as the place names of Ireland tell us. My A Book of Ireland lists 21 places beginning with Derry - meaning, as you know, oakgrove. (I know you are to a man and a woman Irish speakers: I offer what follows for the benefit of the odd tourist whose eye flickers over this unsubsidised column),
Trim in a place name, as in Meath, denotes that there once stood elder trees. Where you see kill, where it does not mean church it means woodland, as in Killenure or Killytassy or Killygarry or Kilmacthomas.
Fiodh in a place name betokens a wood, as does Garran. Leamhan stands for elm.
Glenfarne in Leitrim is a glen of alder. Glenveigh is a glen of birches. Rossbeigh is the birch headland. Roscrea is Cre's Wood. Roscommon his St Coman's Wood. Rathnure is ringfort of the yew. Ballynure is townland of the yew. Terenure is land of the yew. Rush was Ros Eo - headland of the yew. Kilrush was church of the wood. Fethard was high wood. Loghill was named after the elms - Leamhan - which once stood there and Sallins was named after its willows.
Hillside Holdings
And almost all gone, now. Where once we had forest, now we are the least afforested nation in Europe; and we hear that the IFA is opposed to the Government's afforestation plans. Well, we hear this. But frankly, I don't believe it - I don't believe that the IFA leadership yearns for a perpetual future in which it must defend an economy and a culture based on uneconomic hillside holdings, supported by an indefinitely generous central Exchequer.
And even if they do yearn for such a future, the central exchequer - Germany - won't. Germany will not continue to fork out money for the lunacies of the CAP; and the small farmers of Ireland will have to prepare for that future, no matter what they want, Ahead is the iceberg: now who wants to hear the life boat drill, and who wants to pop downstairs for a bit more free dancing?
Yet we hear Padraig Divilly of the IFA say corporate investors take profits out of rural areas, But to do that - if they do - they must of course first put their money into those areas. It is called investment. This State is ardently in favour of investment. We beg foreigners to indulge in it. Farmers are enthusiastic about State money being invested in unproductive pastoral farming, The one area to be excluded from investment incentive is, by IFA public statements, to be tree cultivation.
What stops the small farmers of Ireland getting into tree cultivation? Nothing. The taxbreaks for them are the same as for the rest of us. Separate rules do not apply. Some have the money. The most under utilised capital resource in the West of Ireland is probably the mattress. The second is the deposit; account, held in the name of P.
Murphy, and known only to the bank manager and R Murphy, about whom we can be certain of just one thing - his name is not P. Murphy.
Others have not the money. Either they borrow money and invest it wisely, or they go out of business. Ah yes. The B word. I should not have mentioned that. A bad word to use in connection with the Irish; small farmer, who does not constitute anything so much as A Way of Life.
A Way of Life
But all our ancestors had A Way of Life. Nobody is suggesting that the Germans should be paying out subsidies to keep the candlemakers or the tenters or the bleachers of old Dublin in business. Their daughters and their grandsons now live in Tallaght, or somewhere like that. Most of them on the dole yearn to be off it, preferring work in the productive economy, not subsistence off it.
Yet small farmers still appear to want special rules for themselves. "It is totally unacceptable to the IFA that forestry is being foisted on local communities without giving local farmers the chance to take up the land in question," says IFA president John Donnelly.
But of course, they have the right to take up the land - but on the same terms as the rest of us. Presumably they want special terms. Maybe that is why in Leitrim, 90 per cent of the afforestation schemes have been taken up by non farmers and by Coillte, Which leaves the 10 per cent, Well then: one step forward the gallant 10 per cent, Are you complaining? Probably not.
No doubt, policy could be more flexible towards small scale mixed forestry. No doubt Coillte occasionally gets things wrong. More certain is this. Ireland of the smallholder, dependent on virtuous uneconomicity and bottomless, ceaseless subsidy, has been steadily dying this century.
We must accept that the future lies in the past. Mayo might bloom again as the Plain of Yews.