Farmers Building up Resistance

Farmers in Dire Straits: The Role of Agriculture in Today’s Society
by Friedrich Traugott Wahlen

The position of farmers as rooted in the earth and attached to nature in our pluralistic society has never been easy. Their role has always been an element preserving the traditional values of our national community; it is, however, now conceivable that the small independent farmer will be dragged down by the social engineer’s categories of thought and productivity. Anyone who thinks that turning back current developments is in the interest of human dignity and necessary for the next generation’s chance of survival has to ask the question whether agriculture could require special assistance because of its traditional task as upholder and creator of our most important living space. They need encouragement to do this. This encouragement can only be given if other sections of the population adequately appreciate their work and if those people are willing to re-order their priorities.
Today’s farmers need this encouragement now more than in most past epochs. Because of revolutionary changes and faced with a decline in the number of their professional colleagues, they feel increasingly lonely and discouraged by their uncertain future prospects. Too often they hear criticism that agriculture constituted a burden on public finances, from which they conclude that their accomplishments in times of war had been forgotten. The result is pessimism, which does not do justice to real conditions and which detracts a young farmer’s sons’ and daughters’ dedication to this profession. This small and beleaguered minority of farmers are especially in need of the understanding of their fellow people for their problems and difficulties but also for an appreciation of their really significant accomplishments.
In order to become aware of his position and role in society, the small farmer, and especially the younger generation of small farmers, has to develop and safeguard his own identity —an identity rooted in healthy professional pride and professional ethos and in a responsibility for nature, the people and the state. The farming profession has become one of the most demanding in terms of the range of necessary expertise it requires, as well as the responsibility for the human beings and their surrounding nature. But for those who can put up with all this, the farming profession is one of the most satisfying because it allows contact with nature as well as a variety of daily tasks, which provide freedom to make decisions, as well as variety of work throughout the year and the combination of family life with professional work. The peasant’s family and the schools face the difficult task of conveying these values to the rural youth. This kind of education should enable them to include standards other than wages, free time, holiday claims and daily entertainment in their decision to take up a career as a farmer. Their identity as farmers also ensures the conservation of a farming culture rooting in traditions but at the same time open to modern methods, all this being a result of specifically human values which have always been linked to peasantry.
To establish a deeper mutual understanding between the population of the cities and the rural population is only part of a much greater task. In spite of, or perhaps because of, the abundance of information the citizens in our pluralistic society are exposed to every day, they find themselves involved in a process of increasing alienation and disorientation. This is especially true of the behaviour of the young towards the old, which often lacks those points of contact which could achieve an exchange of ideas and encourage mutual understanding. Everyone must make an effort towards fostering better understanding among the various groups of our society with the Swiss confederation as our model.
Source: Friedrich Traugott Wahlen, Politik aus Verantwortung (Reden und Aufsätze, 1974)