As more youth move to cities, in Africa, but also in South Asia and Latin America, development experts worry about the future of rural communities. So, we can learn a lesson by taking a glimpse at a region where most youth left agriculture some three generations ago.
An American anthropologist, Brien Meilleur, studied farming in Les Allues, a village in the French Alps, in the mid-1980s. Meilleur was especially well-qualified for the topic, as decades earlier, his own father had left Les Allues for the USA.
Meilleur interviewed elderly farmers at length about the days of their youth, roughly back in the 1940s. Now retired, they painted a picture of an agriculture in balance with nature, where farm families worked in synchrony. They had large cereal fields, divided into many individual plots. Each year they agreed upon a time to plow, and each household would plow their own small plot, within the big field. By plowing and planting at the same time they avoided trampling each otherâs grain crop. The big fields were on a three-year rotation, beginning with rye, then barley and finally fallow-plus-pulses.
Folks made wine and hard apple cider from fruit they grew themselves. They wintered cows, sheep and goats in stables, moving them in the spring to montagnettes, cabins above the hamlets where the families made their own cheese. Then every year on 11 June, in a grand procession, the whole village would move their livestock to the high Alpine pastures, with cowbells ringing and dogs barking. The animals would graze communally, on named pastures, moving uphill as summer progressed to ever-higher grazing, until they were brought back down on 14 September. Outside specialists were hired to come turn the milk into cheese, mostly a fine gruyere, which they sold.
Barnyard manure provided all the fertilizer the farms needed. To save on firewood, neighbors baked their bread on the same day in ovens in the hamlet square. About 80 or 90% of what people ate came from Les Allues itself. The roots of this rural economy went back to at least the 1300s, if not earlier. But, as Meilleur explains, this farming system had collapsed about 1950, at least in Les Allues. He mourns the loss of this way of life, and as I read his moving account, I couldnât help but share in his sadness.
The collapse came about in part because of emigration. Young people were leaving Les Allues for the cities as early as the 19th century. But there were other reasons for abandoning agriculture. After the World War II, the villagers sold much of their farmland to the MĂ©ribel Ski Resort, established just above the highest of the villageâs hamlets. There were now lots of jobs for local people, on the ski slopes, and in the busy hotels, shops and restaurants. The vacationers even visited the beautiful village in the summer, for golf, tennis and mountain biking, so there was employment year-round. The youth of Les Allues no longer had to leave home to find work; the jobs had come to them.
The old agricultural landscape changed quickly, as the pastures became pistes de ski, and the fields grew wild with brush. The livestock were sold off and the apple trees were strangled by mistletoe, as people abandoned a way of living that (in todayâs jargon) was sustainable and carbon neutral, and the bedrock of their community.
It is easy to romanticize a healthy rural lifestyle, but the good old days had some rough times, too. The farmers of Les Allues managed erosion in their cereal fields by hand-carrying the earth from the bottom furrow to the top of the field every year, the most back-breaking soil conservation method Iâve ever heard of. For six weeks in July and August, people cut hay for six days a week from 5 AM to 10 PM, to feed their animals over the winter. To save on fuel, the families would spend winter evenings sitting in the barn, where the cows gave off enough heat to keep everyone warm. People ate meat once a week, maybe twice.
Given the amount of hard work, and the low pay, it is understandable that the young people of Les Allues left farming. It happened all over Europe. In England during the Industrial Revolution, many farm workers took factory jobs. While some moved to the cities, others commuted on the train, and stayed in their village (The Common Stream). Northern Portuguese farm laborers, who described their lives as âmisery,â did not have the options of working in industry or in tourism. So, after 1964 they left Portugal to take construction jobs in France. The farmers who remained bought tractors to replace their vanished workers.
Just as previous generations of rural Europeans sought paid work off farm, the youth in places like West Africa and South America are now moving to the cities, and quite quickly. Many development experts bemoan this mass migration, even though it is a pro-active way for young people to take their destiny into their own hands, especially if they attend university in the city, before looking for work.
If past experience is any guide, some of the young Africans and South Americans who are now moving to town would stay in their villages, if they could make a decent living, and if they had electricity and other amenities. Life in the countryside will have to provide people with opportunities, or many will simply pack up and leave.
Further reading
Meilleur, Brien A. 1986 Alluetain Ethnoecology and Traditional Economy: The Procurement and Production of Plant Resources in the Northern French Alps. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Washington.
My own mentor, Bob Netting, wrote a classic ethnography of the Swiss Alps. Like Meilleur, Netting was also impressed with the ecological balance of traditional farming.
Netting, Robert McC. 1981 Balancing on an Alp: Ecological Change and Continuity in a Swiss Mountain Community. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
For the changes in Portuguese agriculture, see:
Bentley, Jeffery W. 1992 Today There Is No Misery: The Ethnography of Farming in Northwest Portugal. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
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See this link for videos on business ideas for small farms.
Photo credits
Photos courtesy of Eric Boa.
Few people realize how our food system is structured and how we consumers have a crucial influence. Exercising our food rights is as important as being politically active.
My dad ran a successful grocery store on the village market square, just across from the church. I still vividly remember the day when he took out an advertisement leaflet from the letter box. A year earlier a supermarket had opened in the village, accompanied by aggressive marketing. âThey sell the same orange juice cheaper than I can buy it from the wholesaler,â my dad turned to my mum, âif this continues, I will have to close soon.â Customers from the neighbourhood suddenly started to pass by our shop on their way to the supermarket, heads down, embarrassed because they no longer dared to greet my dad, with whom they had joked and chit-chatted for over 30 years.
Local entrepreneurs are resilient and creative. I am still amazed when I think of all the different goods my dad had on offer in his small shop, from fresh fruit to ice cream, from birdseed and toys to stockings for women. Along with my mum, he paid special attention to making the shop window as attractive as it could be during special occasions like Sinterklaas (6 December), Christmas and Easter. It was real art that no supermarket could beat.
But shops need more than high quality goods and services, and loyal customers. One day, the wholesaler who had sold produce to my dad for years, bluntly announced that he could no longer supply us, as the wholesaler made more profit selling directly to the supermarkets and said it was not worthwhile continuing to supply independent retailers. By then, a second supermarket had already opened in the village. And so, dad closed his shop. That was in the early 1990s. Dad was also a skilled printer, so he found other work. But he had loved his shop, because he said it let him make other people happy. Now that was gone.
Currently, in Belgium 95% of the food we eat is purchased from supermarkets, which continue to put local entrepreneurs out of business. Supermarkets also harm local farmers by driving prices so low that farmers can barely cover their costs, as we described in an earlier blog Stuck in the middle.
Over the years, my wife Marcella and I have become good friends with Johan and Vera, who grow organic vegetables and fruits and sell them in a farm shop they started about a decade ago. Each time we meet, they have some interesting stories to share. âWe sell some of our produce to Biofresh,â Vera said, âbut they always pay the lowest possible price for our produce and prices have never gone up over the years.â I was already familiar with such practices that can really put the knife to farmersâ throats, but had not expected this to happen in the organic food system, which I thought was fairer.
In 2019, Biofresh merged with the Dutch company Udea, after which economics started to overrule its philosophy. âNow Biofresh no longer allows retailers to enter its premises to see what fruit and vegetables is on offer if the amount they buy each week is below 1,000 Euro,â Johan shared, âso many small farm shops like us have started to look for alternatives, but it is not easy.â Every Thursday, the day before their farm shop opens, Johan and Vera drive through half of Belgium to sell and buy fresh produce. Besides Biofresh, they now also buy from Sinature, BioVibe and directly from various farmer friends.
Thirty years after my dad closed his village shop, the nascent farm shops which are to be celebrated and nurtured for providing healthy, fresh and fair food, especially during these times of corona, are in the same stranglehold as the grocery shops in the 1990s. When profits overrule ethics, wholesalers decide under which conditions people can still buy from them, and may cut off sales to small shops, just because the wholesaler wants even more money.
As transaction costs to stock up are larger for small-scale retailers, supermarket chains have ousted local entrepreneurs. They are now buying up closed village shops to start specialty shops and as irony would have it âbe closer to the customerâ. Some supermarkets have even gone a step further, buying up organic farms and fishing grounds to gain full control over the food we eat. Supervised by managers, the real farmers and fisher folks with a passion for their profession risk becoming mere employees devoid of any decision-making power.
The European Green Deal provides an action plan to boost the efficient use of resources by moving to a circular economy, restore biodiversity and cut pollution. Yet it remains to be seen what measures will be put in place to support our small-scale farmers, farm shops and community-initiatives such as weekly boxes of fresh local produce procured through group purchasing associations.
Without appropriate measures, organic farming risks becoming a variation of industrial agriculture with emerging opportunities captured by a few dominant food chain actors, who further consolidate their power, wealth and decision-making over what food we get on our table.
In the meantime, we consumers should not underestimate our influence. As Johan said: âconsumers have the market in their hands.â Buy local from farm shops, farmersâ markets and small-scale retailers as much as you can. The supermarketsâ claim that they are local serves the wrong purpose and pushes those with a passion for their profession out of business.
Further reading
https://allesoverbio.be/artikels/hoe-bio-uitgroeide-tot-een-professionele-landbouwmethode
IPES-Food (2016) From Uniformity to Diversity: A paradigm shift from industrial agriculture to diversified agroecological systems.
IPES-Food (2018) Breaking away from industrial food and farming systems: Seven case studies of agroecological transition.
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When experts say that a wine tastes of berries or has a floral scent, I believe them. When I hear of âtoffee notesâ or a âcigar noseâ I grow slightly skeptical. But when I read of a wine that comes on like âa street-walker,â I give up. Is there any objective truth to such descriptions?
A nifty set of experiments by Ilja Crojmans and colleagues suggests that naming a wine does not help to remember its smell. In one experiment, wine experts were distracted by being asked to remember some numbers while smelling different wines. Ten minutes later they were asked to sniff a larger set of wines containing the original varieties. When the experts were not given a memory task, their minds were free to give each wine a mental label, but they did not remember the wines any better than when their minds were distracted.
This study suggests that experts do not use language to recognize the aroma of wines. Yet, in an earlier experiment, Crojmans and Asifa Majid showed that wine experts can describe the odor of wine more accurately and consistently than novices, but only marginally so, suggesting that one can learn to recognize different flavors in wine and describe them.
This reminded me of my days as a volunteer novice in a wine tasting experiment in Tucson, Arizona, in 1983. Linguist Adrienne Lehrer invited me and 11 other graduate students, colleagues and friends into her living room to taste different wines. We were chosen because we liked wine, but didnât know much about it. We each got four glasses holding 50 ml (just enough for a taste), and a set of cards to write a short description of each wine.
A few weeks later Professor Lehrer asked us to come over again. We sat around the same tables as before with the same unlabeled wines weâd tasted previously. Each wine had a letter, which we were asked to match with the description we had written earlier. I recall reading my cards while sipping the wines and feeling no real connection between what I had written and what I was now savoring. Yet one person in four did correctly match each of their own descriptions with all the different wines. Just as important, those people were certain at the time that they were right. Wine can be described, if you have the knack for it.
Wine really is complex, with over 800 volatiles affecting its smell and taste, but oneâs skills at recognizing and describing these subtle differences may improve with training and practice. Lehrer points out in her book, Wine and Conversation, that the more florid descriptions are commonly found in wine magazines, and most new metaphors are only used once. (The Economist says that âgravelâ and âwet tennis ballsâ are recent offerings). Flamboyant descriptions are mostly word play. Wine scientists (vinologists) use fewer, but more accurate descriptors, like âvanillaâ.
Culture influences how we drink and talk about wine. There is the ritual of clear, stemmed glasses, only half full, accompanied by sniffing, sipping and pronouncing on the merits of the wine. But you can drink wine in completely different ways, as I learned while living among smallholders in Portugal, whose ancestors had been making and drinking wine for centuries. They had their own evolved wine etiquette and ritual.
Wine had to accompany food, and was usually poured into white, ceramic bowls, sometimes as large as half a liter. At a large lunch, sometimes two or four people would share a bowl of wine, refilling it from a ceramic pitcher on the table, replenished from a 500-liter wooden keg.
No work party was complete without wine, to thank the neighbors who had gathered to help with the big farm jobs. When we took a break in the field, we would hold a snack in one hand, and chug a bowl of wine as fast as possible. Other people were waiting to use the bowl, and they didnât have all day. There were potatoes to harvest.
When these hardworking folks talked about wine it wasnât the flavor, but the color that caught their imagination. Speaking of a wine that they had made themselves, the farmers would say with pride and deliberate emphasis âit leaves a rose in the bottom of the bowl.â
Why should a roundish red stain be so important? In northwest Portugal, farmers made vinho verde, a fresh, light wine. This community in Entre-Douro-e-Minho was on the edge of the designated zone, where it was difficult to make a superb wine. The dissolved solids in wine (and alcohol) make up what we call âbodyâ. The crimson stain in the bowl said âa full-bodied wineâ.
There are many ways to imagine and discuss wine, some earthy, some refined and some pretentious. You can do worse than to drink wine from a bowl in the shade of a grape arbor, sitting on the ground with fellow workers, washing down a roasted sardine and a chunk of sourdough corn bread.
Related blog story
Further reading
Bentley, Jeffery W. 1992 Today There Is No Misery: The Ethnography of Farming in Northwest Portugal. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Croijmans, Ilja and Asifa Majid 2016. Not all flavor expertise is equal: The language of wine and coffee experts. PLoS ONE. e0155845.
Croijmans, Ilja, Artin Arshamian, Laura J. Speed, and Asifa Majid 2020. Wine Expertsâ Recognition of Wine Odors Is Not Verbally Mediated. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xge0000949.
Lehrer, Adrienne. 2007. Can wines be brawny? Reflections on wine vocabulary, Chapter six. In, Barry C. Smith (Ed.) Questions of Taste: The Philosophy of Wine. Oxford. Signal books.
Lehrer, Adrienne. 2009. Wine and Conversation. Oxford, UK: University of Oxford Press. Second Edition. See page 169 for the tasting and writing experiment.
Wine and bottles. The Economist. 17 October 2020.
Vea la versión en español a continuación
When Columbus dropped anchor in the Bahamas that October day, he actually had Arabic interpreters on board, because he was so unsure who he would meet on his trip. The people he came across actually spoke Taino, an Arawakan language. The Spanish soon learned the Taino words for New World devices, like hammocks and canoes, but also for American crops, like maize (maĂz, in Spanish, from the Taino mahĂs).
Thirty years later, in Mexico, the conquistadores learned about a bean that made a nasty, but uplifting drink. The Aztecs called it xocoatl, from xoco (bitter) and atl (water). The word became chocolate, first in Spanish, and then in dozens of other languages. The language of the Aztecs, Nahuatl, was also the source of the words for tomato (tomatl) and chili (chilli), also funneled through Spanish (tomate, chile) into most of the languages of Europe.
In South America, the Spanish learned the names for quinoa (Spanish quinua, from the Quechua kinwa) and for sun-dried meat, jerky (charque, from châarki).
Two hundred years after the Taino discovered Columbus lurking off their coasts, the words for Native American crops and foods were still finding their way into English, through the Spanish connection. In 1697, a British pirate with a flair for writing, William Dampier, published the bestseller A New Voyage Round the World, which introduced his readers to the avocado, from the Spanish aguacate, from the Nahuatl ahuacatl (testicle), named for its shape. For good measure, Dampier also passed on the first recorded recipe in English for guacamole (Nahuatl ahuacamulli, or âavocado sauceâ).
The Native Americans gave the world so many of our favorite crops and foods. Itâs fitting that some of the names for these crops are also Native American. It also makes historical sense that some of these terms were filtered through Spanish, a bittersweet reminder that these crops arrived on the global stage through conquest and colonization.
A word about jerky
Just to set the record straight, Iâve read in two books recently that châarki is freeze dried. Itâs not; itâs just sun dried. You can make it in warm or cold weather, as long as the sun shines.
Further reading
Preston, Diana & Michael Preston 2004 A Pirate of Exquisite Mind. The Life of William Dampier: Explorer, Naturalist and Buccaneer. London: Corgi Books. 512 pp.
For the etymologies I have generally followed the spellings in the 22nd (2001) edition of the Diccionario de la Lengua Española, by the Spanish Royal Academy. Although published in Madrid, this outstanding dictionary also respectfully documents the various Latin American versions of the Spanish language.
Related blogs
Watch videos in Spanish
Access Agriculture has 109 videos in Spanish on farming, gardening and food. You can watch them here.
CHOCOLATE ESPAĂOL
Jeff Bentley, 8 de octubre del 2020
Cuando ColĂłn echĂł el ancla en las Bahamas ese dĂa de octubre, tenĂa intĂ©rpretes de ĂĄrabe a bordo, porque no sabĂa con quiĂ©n se toparĂa en su viaje. Resulta que la gente que encontrĂł hablaba en taĂno, un idioma arahuaco. Los españoles pronto aprendieron las palabras taĂnas para los artefactos del Nuevo Mundo, como hamacas y canoas, pero tambiĂ©n para los cultivos americanos, como el maĂz (del taĂno âmahĂsâ). Del español, el âmaĂzâ pasĂł al inglĂ©s, alemĂĄn, francĂ©s, italiano, holandĂ©s y varios otros idiomas europeos.
Treinta años despuĂ©s, en MĂ©xico, los conquistadores aprendieron sobre un grano que hacĂa una bebida con sabor feo, pero con efecto agradable. Los aztecas lo llamaban xocoatl, de xoco (amargo) y atl (agua). La palabra se convirtiĂł en âchocolateâ, primero en español, y luego en docenas de otras lenguas. La lengua de los aztecas, el nĂĄhuatl, fue tambiĂ©n la fuente de las palabras para tomate (tomatl) y chile (chili), tambiĂ©n canalizadas a travĂ©s del español hasta la mayorĂa de las lenguas de Europa.
En SudamĂ©rica, los españoles aprendieron los nombres de la quinua (del quechua kinwa) y del charque (ch’arki, en quechua), que terminĂł como jerky, en inglĂ©s.
Doscientos años despuĂ©s de que los taĂnos descubrieran a ColĂłn acechando en sus costas, las palabras para los cultivos y alimentos de los americanos nativos seguĂan entrando al inglĂ©s y los otros idiomas de Europa, a travĂ©s de la conexiĂłn española. En 1697, un pirata britĂĄnico con talento para la escritura, William Dampier, publicĂł el bestseller, Un Nuevo Viaje Alrededor del Mundo, que introdujo la palabra avocado al inglĂ©s, de âaguacateâ en español, del ahuacatl (testĂculo) nombre que pusieron en nĂĄhuatl por la forma del fruto. AdemĂĄs, Dampier dejĂł la primera receta escrita en inglĂ©s para el guacamole (el nĂĄhuatl ahuacamulli, o “salsa de aguacate”).
Los indĂgenas
americanos dieron al mundo muchos de nuestros cultivos y alimentos favoritos.
Es apropiado que algunas de los nombres para estos cultivos tambiĂ©n sean indĂgenas.
También tiene sentido histórico que algunos de estos términos llegaron a los
demås idiomas europeos gracias a los españoles, un agridulce recuerdo que
algunas de las contribuciones mås valiosas de las Américas eran frutos de la
conquista y la colonizaciĂłn.
Sobre el charque
Solo una aclaraciĂłn, he leĂdo hace poco en dos diferentes libros que el châarki es liofilizado, o sea que es secado en frĂo, congelado. Pero no es cierto. El charque es secado asĂ no mĂĄs, a sol, en tiempo frĂo o caliente.
Para leer mĂĄs
Preston, Diana & Michael Preston 2004 A Pirate of Exquisite Mind. The Life of William Dampier: Explorer, Naturalist and Buccaneer. Londres: Corgi Books. 512 pp.
Para la mayorĂa de las etimologĂas he usado la ortografĂa en la 22a (2001) ediciĂłn del Diccionario de la Lengua Española, de la Real Academia Española. Este magnĂfico diccionario es publicado Madrid, pero tambiĂ©n documenta el vocabulario y usos latinoamericanos, con amor y respeto.
Previamente en nuestro blog
Desenredando la historia del khipu
Videos en español
Access Agriculture tiene 109 videos en español sobre el agro, el huerto y la comida. Los puede ver aquĂ.
Many farmers in Europe and North America are burdened with debts due to the heavy investments they have made over the years to buy farm machinery. A new tractor easily costs 100,000 Euro or more. New agricultural policies often force farmers to change as well. When environmental policy outlawed the spread of liquid manure on the surface of the field, manufacturers quickly adapted: manure is now directly injected into the soil. But this may oblige farmers to get rid of machinery that still works. What solutions can research offer to repurpose farm equipment? These thoughts have gradually come to my mind, living in a farming village in north-eastern Belgium and observing the various changes.
Farmers creatively adapt in many ways. Our friend, Johan Hons, uses a leek planter to transplant sweet maize seedlings on his organic farm to reduce the need for weeding. Like many farmers, Johan has his own workshop where he adjusts equipment to suit his needs.
American and European farmers see the soaring prices of equipment as one of their key challenges. Besides, equipment has become so complicated and repair is stymied by proprietary software and a lack of available parts. As a response, many farmers are now buying simpler, and much cheaper second-hand tractors from the 1970s and ’80s.
Also, local service providers have repositioned themselves and taken over many of the farm operations. And the fewer local service providers there are, the more pressure they can put on farmers, often charging fees that further eat into farmersâ meagre profit margins. Many machines, like the ones that inject liquid manure into the soil, have become so big that they are often wider than the country lanes, damaging them and forcing cyclists to jump off the road to save their lives whenever these machines roar by.
But there are also positive changes in the development of new machinery, which are not about making them bigger and heavier. Until last year, our local machine provider needed three tractors to collect grass for silage. One tractor raked up the grass and filled a wagon pulled by a second tractor. Meanwhile, a third tractor hauled the grass to the farmstead, to fill the silo, before running back to the field so the second tractor could empty its load. No time was wasted. This year, I noticed a single machine picking up the cut grass. This meant that the tractor then needed to drive to the farm where the silage was made, but to finish this entire field with just one tractor only took an hour longer than with three tractors and drivers, a big savings in labour, machinery and fuel.
Due to tillage and use of agrochemicals, many soils have become depleted of organic matter and soil life. As agricultural policies for decades have supported industrial agriculture, all farmers own their own pesticide spraying equipment. So, will these become obsolete when farming transitions to more sustainable models? Or could pesticide spraying machines be used to spray the soils and crops with Effective Microorganisms or other natural biofertilizers, to bring life back into our soils and boost crop health in a natural way?
To enable the transition to more sustainable farming, appropriate machines will be required. In the Netherlands, Wageningen University & Research (WUR) has been studying intercropping for several years, involving conventional and organic farmers. By growing a variety of crops in narrow strips they were able to attract beneficial insects and slow the spread of crop disease. The researchers also found that yields are similar to those found in monocultures and labour requirements are comparable too. Reading their study, I immediately thought how intercropping would work in a highly mechanised setting. Adjusting machinery will likely be part of the solution.
With the action plan laid out in the European Green Deal, the EU aims to be climate neutral by 2050. Different sectors of society each have a responsibility to make this happen. For agriculture, the âFarm to fork strategyâ stipulates that by 2030 pesticide use has to be reduced by 50% and chemical fertilizers by 20% in order to make food systems more sustainable.
Clearly, equipment manufacturers will continue to adjust the design of machinery, but this also comes at a cost. To keep as many farmers in business as possible, some creative thinking will be required on how to strike a balance between supporting industry to innovate and finding ways to repurpose the already available machinery park that farmers have already invested in. European family farmers are ready to adapt, but they are also being run out of business. Policy and research should lend them a hand, by inventing and promoting appropriate small machinery that can be used to serve multiple purposes.
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Inventing a better maize chopper
Some videos on appropriate machinery
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The clod breaker: a rolling harrow
Read more
More nature in fields through strip cropping. https://weblog.wur.eu/spotlight/more-nature-in-fields-through-strip-cropping/
The European Green Deal: https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/priorities-2019-2024/european-green-deal_en
Credit: The photo on harvesting an intercrop is from Wageningen University & Research. The bottom photo of intercropped field with flowers is by Fogelina Cuperus.
