Do we have it harder than our fathers had it?

20silkcut

What are things like today versus 30/40 years ago ?

It goes without saying that farming was pure drudgery up until the 1960's.

But since then?

Could we do an honest appraisal of farming in the 2010's v farming in the 1970's .

What is better now than then?

Fuel was cheaper then.

Fertiliser was cheaper then.

Insurance was not a big cost then.

Intervention put a floor under markets then.

They were pretty much as mechanised then as we are now with front loaders bale forks etc.

Milking parlours have not changed much since then Its still a man in a pit changing clusters.

Nowadays silage can be cut in 4/5 hours v 3/4 days back then.

Round bales have revolutionised forage making.

But honestly overall I think our fathers had it easier.
It was easier make a living out of farming back then.

keep going

Id say it was even harder to make money then and I for saw enough of drudgery and four prong pikes to want it back

ardle1

I'd say they had it harder work wise and we have it harder money wise!!! There's no answer

whelan1

interest rates where very high then also there wherent as many rules and regulations

bbam

ardle1 wrote: »

I'd say they had it harder work wise and we have it harder money wise!!! There's no answer

In his later years that's what my dad used to say.
You might have had more manual labour but at least it would go well towards supporting a family. I'm sure many here will remember a time when a modest sized farm would give decent returns.

td5man

We seem to be busier now despite everything being mechinised.
Found milk statements from the mid 80's and they were getting as much in £'s as we are in €'s.

tabby aspreme

Recently came across on old factory return for sheep from June 1971 , 42 lambs came into £ 353-78. £8.42/ head the earliest average industrial wage figure I can find is £ 1599 for 1973 that's 190 lambs .
One thing I often heard my father say was how difficult it was to borrow from the banks in the 60s and 70s no matter how good your case

jomoloney

ardle1 wrote: »

I'd say they had it harder work wise and we have it harder money wise!!! There's no answer

well as the old timer on here work and money were harder

however I'd be first to admit that money had more buying power although it was spent with more caution than present times

people worked a lot harder and did'nt have modern day comforts but they seemed happier with their lot than present day folks,

"much wants more" seems to be the present day motto and lot of farmers are running in circles just to stand still

Markcheese

Fertiliser and fuel may have been cheaper but probably not when you adjust for inflation , I'd imagine machinery is still cheaper per hp, silage is probably cheaper per acre ,
A lad I used to work for used to say that few years ago you could just put yr head down and work harder ,take more land and make more , now you can just be a busy fool...

iverjohnston

The manual labour is gone . Carrying 2 cwt bags up stone steps onto lofts, packing loose and baled hay into lofts and hand balling lorry lady of fertilizer. No cutting the top layers off silage pits with a silage knife and forking it down.
On the other hand, oil for heating was almost unknown, there was one car at the house and that done everything, pulled trailers etc. A jeep was pure luxury, even if it was a land rover.
We have replaced drudgery with lease and hire purchase payments. We have insurance payments that our grand fathers didn't have to pay . And newer houses with much better standards of living. We are taxiing children from a to b 5 days a week, and you can't be turning up in a 15 year old corolla or escort.

freedominacup

iverjohnston wrote: »

The manual labour is gone . Carrying 2 cwt bags up stone steps onto lofts, packing loose and baled hay into lofts and hand balling lorry lady of fertilizer. No cutting the top layers off silage pits with a silage knife and forking it down.
On the other hand, oil for heating was almost unknown, there was one car at the house and that done everything, pulled trailers etc. A jeep was pure luxury, even if it was a land rover.
We have replaced drudgery with lease and hire purchase payments. We have insurance payments that our grand fathers didn't have to pay . And newer houses with much better standards of living. We are taxiing children from a to b 5 days a week, and you can't be turning up in a 15 year old corolla or escort.

My father would have written most of that about his father 40 years ago other than the taxiing children bit he never did that. Nor did he inflict any of the hardships listed above on himself with the exception of the bales we still had them up until around 20 years ago but a smaller and smaller number 'til I said if you make 'em you can pike 'em yourself that brought pricking around with small squares to a sudden stop.

They were making serious money 40 years ago. They would have been disappointed with less than 2.5 tonnes of spring barley were regularly getting 3 and upto 4 of winter wheat. Paying a half tonne per acre in rent and 50 tonnes covered a mans wages for the year. They were coining it, working damn hard but the returns were there. None of us would mind doing the hours if we were getting the returns.

TD5sman I'd say the £'s were per gallon if you were looking at the mid-eighties.

td5man

freedominacup wrote: »

My father would have written most of that about his father 40 years ago other than the taxiing children bit he never did that. Nor did he inflict any of the hardships listed above on himself with the exception of the bales we still had them up until around 20 years ago but a smaller and smaller number 'til I said if you make 'em you can pike 'em yourself that brought pricking around with small squares to a sudden stop.

They were making serious money 40 years ago. They would have been disappointed with less than 2.5 tonnes of spring barley were regularly getting 3 and upto 4 of winter wheat. Paying a half tonne per acre in rent and 50 tonnes covered a mans wages for the year. They were coining it, working damn hard but the returns were there. None of us would mind doing the hours if we were getting the returns.

TD5sman I'd say the £'s were per gallon if you were looking at the mid-eighties.

What i meant was they were getting a £1 for every €1 were getting now

KatyMac

My parents managed to rear three children on a milking herd of 12-15 cows with a bucket plant. He used to rear the calves til 2 year olds and also used to buy a few extra from a close neighbour who was in milking in a big way - he had 40 cows! We had our own milk, potatoes, turf, veggies and chickens and turkeys for Christmas. And that was it! He bought almost no fertilizer as we couldn't afford it. When I was tall enough to reach the pedals of the tractor (aged approx 6) I drove it round the field while he stood on the back throwing muck off with a grape. He saved hay, which took at least 3 weeks and often longer when the weather was bad. I used to help build it into the shed after school for most of the month of September. I have nothing but admiration for them and often wonder how they did it as I seem to be running around, catching up with myself frequently, trying to keep two children educated etc and I have a part-time job as well as the farm.

Saying fuel etc was cheaper back then is daft talk because in my experience there was very little money around to buy it anyway. Of maybe it's a case we were of the 'poor but happy' variety!

bbam

td5man wrote: »

What i meant was they were getting a £1 for every €1 were getting now

And a £ would have bought a hell of a lot more than a € does now.

That's the probably the real difference. Buying power - it takes so much money for basic stuff, energy, insurance and the like. I clearly remember when £3.75 would fill a 5 galon drum of diesel, I'm filling the same drum to run the same tractor and it's costing near €30 to fill it at the pump.
We never had farm insurance until a close call incident in the 1990's, now it's just an annual cost to be endured.

bob charles

any farm around 100ac in the eighties had a work man who tipped around day in day out and kept the place in order. Now one guy covers god only knows how many acres and animals. Dinner was a three hour, three course meal ritual everyday which the housekeeper made, whereas nowadays its into a shop and maybe never turn the engine off

td5man

bob charles wrote: »

any farm around 100ac in the eighties had a work man who tipped around day in day out and kept the place in order. Now one guy covers god only knows how many acres and animals

There was three generations of us here and a man on a saturday, now its just me and oh.

Conmaicne Mara

Markcheese wrote: »

Fertiliser and fuel may have been cheaper but probably not when you adjust for inflation

You would need to adjust the price of what was being sold as well, I bet it would work out a lot cheaper then. I remember my Dad selling butcher lambs in the late 80's for £50, what would they make today? I don't know what price a 50kg bag of 10 - 10 - 20 was then.

vanderbadger

they didnt have to deal with the endless red tape, paperwork whatever you want to call it thats goes with everyday life today, life was a bit simpler in olden times i reckon

moy83

They were completely different times , personally id have prefered it without the red tape . But the were born and died the same way we are going to

Timmaay

The gap between the "rich" and "poor" farmers now appears to be wider, to get into farming now you either need to be handed a farm from your parents, or have a serious whack of capital up front, which can be seen with the likes of the greenfield site. Things like the SFP etc really are only prolonging the agony of many unsustainable smaller farmers. Its a pure margins game now, each animal gives you less profit now than it did before, so you will need more of them to make a basic wage. Then external factors are further adding to this divide, such as the housing boom (both farmers selling land for development, and just sites) have given these farmers a huge income bonus, the only farmers purchasing land are these and the biggest/best of dairyfarmers.

But agreed with the rest of what's said here, you worked a hell of alot harder then, and as a result alot of farmers have health problems as a result, my dad went through years of serious back problems, just had his hip done awhile ago also. Its a tradeoff that in any other industry there would be war if you got serious workplace related injuries as such, so for that reason alone I'll rather the present day!

mf240

Im sitting on an air seat in a four wheel drive tractor and loader, looking at my I phone while trying to answer this question.

Timmaay

Actually another thing, are diseases much more prevalent now? Back then it only appeared to be likes of TB, whereas now there are always about 10 different diseases waiting to strick down your herd. Of course the whole tractability now means that eradication is easier though. But still, it all adds cost to the bottom line, and reduces your margins.

whelan1

years ago our parents made much better use of what they had, like making butter, bread etc. Nowadays so much stuff is thrown out, even look at the other thread on under lay, how many people would just throw it out....

theaceofspies

The other major difference is that neighbours worked together on each others farms years ago. It was a much more social/family business than what it is now. I believe it was called the Meitheal. As a result there is a lot more rural isolation now. A tractor doesn't talk back!
The old saying "hard work never killed anyone" springs to mind as well. Yes the work was hard but people were arguably more active than the modern farmer sitting for hours on end on heated tractor seats. There is a lot of the "Big toys for big boys" outlook prevelent in today's agriculture scene.
The first 2 decades of EU membership was good for Irish farming but I wonder if that tide is turning?

reilig

We're 4th generation on our farm. Great Gran uncle bought 6 acres after the famine. Grandfather added 12 acres to that. Old man added 100 acres to that. How many of us at retirement will have expanded our farm by 100 acres?

Similar to others here, he milked 25 cows with the bucket machine. In relative terms, we were quite wealthy. Not as wealthy as those familys who had off farm jobs but wealthier than the children of builders and general operatives that went to school with us.

The farm helped put us through college - not by giving us a whole pile of money but by giving us a work ethic. City and town kids though we were mad ones from the country when I was in college just because I worked in a warehouse every evening instead of going to the student bar!

But the farm involved a lot of physical work back then. Pushing yards into an open slurry pit, cleaning out sheds with a grape, pitching square bales, spreading dung with the grape. Was it hard? No, it was life. They tipped away at it day in, day out and it was done. There wasn't much stress and they had hard hands and good physical fitness.

In comparison to today - does anyone think that money has made life harder? more stress about overdrafts, keeping up with the Jones', new cars, jeeps, tractors, machines, sheds, regular meetings with the bank manager, reposessions, etc
In my father's day, he didn't have a lot of money and in return he didn't have a lot of stress! hard work I can deal with - worry is more difficult!

bob charles

Timmaay wrote: »

Actually another thing, are diseases much more prevalent now? Back then it only appeared to be likes of TB, whereas now there are always about 10 different diseases waiting to strick down your herd. Of course the whole tractability now means that eradication is easier though. But still, it all adds cost to the bottom line, and reduces your margins.

That is another point I taught about and more worryingly I think its going to have serious consequences for the meat industry down the line. My out of the blue deaths are rising each year. years ago, you might lose a few cattle, now it a few dozen and a heap of vaccines also used

20silkcut

Really when I started the thread I was assuming our fathers time to be the 1970's and 80's.

Some of you are describing farming life from pre 1960's which was undoubtedly harsher.

Honestly having lived life on a farm in the 1980's as a child and now in the 2010's as an adult I don't see a big difference.
Other than maybe some jobs can be done a bit faster. But you could not say 1980's farm work was any more drudgery than today.

Then the unfavourable external factors at play mentioned above conspire to make farming life a good deal more miserable today in my opinion.

RobertKK

Easier now, my father talks about the summer of 1946 and trying to make hay, it rained all summer and only those in the very south - around Cork got to make hay in June, being later up the country only bad hay was made and then the bad winter of 1947.
My father said he knew bad weather was coming, before the snow came he had to bring firewood home everyday and lucky he did given several feet of snow fell.

I mean nowadays we have silage and we don't really depend on our farms as the source for the fuel for our homes in most cases.

Farming has gotten easier overtime, the same thing though as in the past remains, you need to treat the farm as a business and don't do anything crazy.

iverjohnston

20silkcut wrote: »

Really when I started the thread I was assuming our fathers time to be the 1970's and 80's.

Some of you are describing farming life from pre 1960's which was undoubtedly harsher.

You didn't specify what age the people replying should be!
The father took over the farm when he married in the early 1960s. Came across the agreement drawn up between him and
the grandfather. Along with the parents day in the home place, the grandfather specifically kept ownership of 15 heifers and a Ford Ferguson.


Central heating came in the mid 80s, before that there was an Antracite range in the kitchen for cooking, heat and hot water.

I remember during the miners strike in England, Antracite was as scarce as gold dust. So much so, that the range was pulled out and a solid fuel one bought. I have Maggie to that for central heating!

20silkcut

iverjohnston wrote: »

20silkcut wrote: »

Really when I started the thread I was assuming our fathers time to be the 1970's and 80's.

Some of you are describing farming life from pre 1960's which was undoubtedly harsher.

You didn't specify what age the people replying should be!
The father took over the farm when he married in the early 1960s. Came across the agreement drawn up between him and
the grandfather. Along with the parents day in the home place, the grandfather specifically kept ownership of 15 heifers and a Ford Ferguson.


Central heating came in the mid 80s, before that there was an Antracite range in the kitchen for cooking, heat and hot water.

I remember during the miners strike in England, Antracite was as scarce as gold dust. So much so, that the range was pulled out and a solid fuel one bought. I have Maggie to that for central heating!

Ha ha sorry didn't mean to be age-ist.

I suppose there are some people here who farmed in the 70's/80's and are still at it today.

I suppose the main thrust of the thread is to compare farming today in 2013 to farming in the 1975-1990 period.

Of course farming today compares favourably to anything pre- 1970.

But could it be argued that farming has gone backwards in the last 30 years?
There seems to be a lot of opinion and anecdotal evidence and indeed real self evident evidence that it has.
Running a farm (with no borrowings)in the 1975-1990 period was a less stressful more profitable,better quality of life experience than running a (no borrowings) farm in 2013.

onyerbikepat

In a developing country, the farmers will always be the most well off. That's no longer the case in ireland. Farmers are no longer the richest people on the road. I think part-time farmers do have it better now. Not so sure about the full-time guy though. they do seem to be trying to run faster and faster to make their living. No money is easy earned, that's for sure anyway.

kay 9

Farming was never easy. It's a way of life that gets handed down through generations. It has ruined many the smaller farmer as it's a tight margin between survival and starvation or going hard on the beer as I've seen some around me do. Sad really. Alot never got married. I love farming but I'm lucky I've got work and have a good wife and family as backup... The farming battle goes on lol..what would our fore fathers have thought if they seen stock for sale on the inter... Web

Sam Kade

reilig wrote: »

We're 4th generation on our farm. Great Gran uncle bought 6 acres after the famine. Grandfather added 12 acres to that. Old man added 100 acres to that. How many of us at retirement will have expanded our farm by 100 acres?

Similar to others here, he milked 25 cows with the bucket machine. In relative terms, we were quite wealthy. Not as wealthy as those familys who had off farm jobs but wealthier than the children of builders and general operatives that went to school with us.

The farm helped put us through college - not by giving us a whole pile of money but by giving us a work ethic. City and town kids though we were mad ones from the country when I was in college just because I worked in a warehouse every evening instead of going to the student bar!

But the farm involved a lot of physical work back then. Pushing yards into an open slurry pit, cleaning out sheds with a grape, pitching square bales, spreading dung with the grape. Was it hard? No, it was life. They tipped away at it day in, day out and it was done. There wasn't much stress and they had hard hands and good physical fitness.

In comparison to today - does anyone think that money has made life harder? more stress about overdrafts, keeping up with the Jones', new cars, jeeps, tractors, machines, sheds, regular meetings with the bank manager, reposessions, etc
In my father's day, he didn't have a lot of money and in return he didn't have a lot of stress! hard work I can deal with - worry is more difficult!

A grape is it a four prong pike you are talking about? Never heard it called a grape

KatyMac

Sam Kade wrote: »

A grape is it a four prong pike you are talking about? Never heard it called a grape

Yes! that's what they are called in my line of country as well!

And I still have use for them!!

hugo29

KatyMac wrote: »

Yes! that's what they are called in my line of country as well!

And I still have use for them!!

Never heard it called a 4 prong pike, next time am in creamery must ask them for a 4 prong pike for the crack:D

mf240

hugo29 wrote: »

Never heard it called a 4 prong pike, next time am in creamery must ask them for a 4 prong pike for the crack:D

I thought grapes were something you bought in bunches for someone in hospital.

And a four pronged pike sounds like a deformed fish.

It's called a four grain fork around here.

blue5000

Today we have to work harder to stay standing still, in the 80's, if you didn't have high borrowings all you had to do was work hard to make money.

How long would it take to pay off the buying price of a farm today just by selling what that farm produces, compared to buying a farm in 1975 and paying it off with product prices then? I reckon it would take 10x longer today without an off farm job.

Sam Kade

hugo29 wrote: »

Never heard it called a 4 prong pike, next time am in creamery must ask them for a 4 prong pike for the crack:D

That's what they are called in Cork. I remember a few fella from up the country that was sent on work placement on a Cork farm the farmer asked him to get the four prong pike and your man didn't have a bulls notion what it was and he didn't want to ask in case he made himself look stupid

mf240 wrote: »

I thought grapes were something you bought in bunches for someone in hospital.

And a four pronged pike sounds like a deformed fish.

It's called a four grain fork around here.

Four grain fork sounds like something for a tillage farm :P

Bodacious

My grandfather was a herdsman for the local convent, hand milked 12 cows twice a day 7 days a week for 50 years of his life, farmed his own farm too, saved the turf, made his own hay, grew all vegetables for the house, kept house, fences, hedges immaculate too... great worker and times were very different back then, plus my granny was the real stockwoman.

we now have ways and means of doing things faster/bigger/ better

e.g he would cut and split oak stakes from woodland.. I throw 50 in quad trailer in Coop and quad brings them right to the furthest corner of land

he'd cut ferns 3 years in a row with a scythe.. id spray and be done

he'd spread slag and bag manure by hand.. quad shaker

keep going

Anybody who thinks we have harder now can come with me to my beet field and pull a few rows of beet and I think they will go home happier with their life now

RobertKK

Sam Kade wrote: »

A grape is it a four prong pike you are talking about? Never heard it called a grape

hugo29 wrote: »

Never heard it called a 4 prong pike, next time am in creamery must ask them for a 4 prong pike for the crack:D

mf240 wrote: »

I thought grapes were something you bought in bunches for someone in hospital.

And a four pronged pike sounds like a deformed fish.

It's called a four grain fork around here.

Sam Kade wrote: »

That's what they are called in Cork. I remember a few fella from up the country that was sent on work placement on a Cork farm the farmer asked him to get the four prong pike and your man didn't have a bulls notion what it was and he didn't want to ask in case he made himself look stupid

Four grain fork sounds like something for a tillage farm :P

A sprong?

086111

RobertKK wrote: »

A sprong?

A four prong fork is what its called over here in Clare

Timmaay

onyerbikepat wrote: »

In a developing country, the farmers will always be the most well off. That's no longer the case in ireland. Farmers are no longer the richest people on the road. I think part-time farmers do have it better now. Not so sure about the full-time guy though. they do seem to be trying to run faster and faster to make their living. No money is easy earned, that's for sure anyway.

Hmm I don't know about the difference between now and the 70s/80s, but is part the reason Irish farmers aren't well off as such is because of land, people would rather farm away for very little/at a loss instead of giving up their small farm and rent it, as its been in the family for generations and all that. Combine this with the ageing farmer population, an older farmer has tipped away all his life on the farm, he probably doesn't have any major expenditure anymore, and even if he did have buckloads of money, he'd have nothing to spend it on ha. So he will continue on as before, not really trying to drive on output on the farm or maximize its potential.

On the part time farmers, lets face it, alot of these are simply hobby farmers, they use the farm to offset tax, and work away on it at the weekend etc. Efficiency or scale are largely irrelevant, if they hang onto the SFP they are happy.

Sam Kade

keep going wrote: »

Anybody who thinks we have harder now can come with me to my beet field and pull a few rows of beet and I think they will go home happier with their life now

I often did that, it's great work for the back Thinning turnips or beet and weeding before sprays came in all lovely jobs

Sam Kade

Timmaay wrote: »

Hmm I don't know about the difference between now and the 70s/80s, but is part the reason Irish farmers aren't well off as such is because of land, people would rather farm away for very little/at a loss instead of giving up their small farm and rent it, as its been in the family for generations and all that. Combine this with the ageing farmer population, an older farmer has tipped away all his life on the farm, he probably doesn't have any major expenditure anymore, and even if he did have buckloads of money, he'd have nothing to spend it on ha. So he will continue on as before, not really trying to drive on output on the farm or maximize its potential.

On the part time farmers, lets face it, alot of these are simply hobby farmers, they use the farm to offset tax, and work away on it at the weekend etc. Efficiency or scale are largely irrelevant, if they hang onto the SFP they are happy.

Does this mean if they rent out their land they will be well off? Might work if the early retirement were still around but it isn't.

Timmaay

Sam Kade wrote: »

Does this mean if they rent out their land they will be well off? Might work if the early retirement were still around but it isn't.

No but would let them get an off farm job.

Sam Kade

Timmaay wrote: »

No but would let them get an off farm job.

I would think older farmers would find it hard to get a job also a lot of them have spent their lives self employed and would find a job daunting.

The man in red and black

RobertKK wrote: »

A sprong?

Thank God someone finally put them straight!

Timmaay wrote: »

Actually another thing, are diseases much more prevalent now? Back then it only appeared to be likes of TB, whereas now there are always about 10 different diseases waiting to strick down your herd. Of course the whole tractability now means that eradication is easier though. But still, it all adds cost to the bottom line, and reduces your margins.

I think there's something to this. There was a study done on old blood samples the department had from years before joining the EU on the prevalence of disease. I'm open to correction on this but I think Ireland was free of Johnes, IBR, BVD and possibly Neospora before we started importing large amounts of cattle for our herds. If we had known back then what we know now about biosecurity could have saved alot of hardship!

freedominacup

The man in red and black wrote: »

Thank God someone finally put them straight!



I think there's something to this. There was a study done on old blood samples the department had from years before joining the EU on the prevalence of disease. I'm open to correction on this but I think Ireland was free of Johnes, IBR, BVD and possibly Neospora before we started importing large amounts of cattle for our herds. If we had known back then what we know now about biosecurity could have saved alot of hardship!

Oh we knew, it was simply ignored. We had lectures on all of the above in the U.K. in the early nineties as all were fairly prevelant on the continent and in the U.K. at the time. It was around this time that certain high profile operators started to import a lot of dairy stock to replace herds taken out with BSE. The rules on quarantine were actually significantly relaxed at the time:rolleyes:.

Sam Kade

A sprong sounds like a sprung prong.

reilig

Sam Kade wrote: »

A grape is it a four prong pike you are talking about? Never heard it called a grape

That's why your forefathers suffered such hardship - ye had no grapes. They revolutionised farming in these parts!! :P :P