The Failure of ‘Back to The Land’

Extract

However enthusiastic we may be concerning what is called ‘the back to the land movement,’ it is a fact that most of the attempts made in any organised form, in recent years have ended in failure. However much we may deplore that fact, it still remains a fact, and ‘trying again’ in the same way with the same mistakes, except in regard to some details, is not likely to do more than to convince our unconverted brethren that ‘it can’t be done’. We should surely learn from our past failures some other way of achieving the high task which is literally our only ‘alternative to death’.

The failure of most, if not all, of the well-intentioned ‘movements’ of past years has been due to one or all of three causes : lack of funds, lack of suitable people and lack of education, The last is fundamental and overwhelmingly the real cause of failure. You cannot make a farmer out of a townsman until he becomes, by training and experience, not a townsman settled on the land but a true countryman in every sense of the word. He has to learn more than the technical aspects of his new work. He must before, and above all, begin a new way of living. He must, by patient endeavour and humble obedience, re-orientate his thoughts to a new valuing of almost the whole of his life.

The problem is immense, the suggested solutions innumerable, but we shall not in the future any more than in the past find the true solution without facing the real issue, and the issue is mainly one of education and the re-setting of values. A host of willing helpers, complete with public or secondary school education, may be, and usually are, a great joy to a farmer who has left all things to follow the Divine Wisdom of Nazareth. Their companionship, their conversation, their interests, bring back to him some at least of the good things in the world he has left. But willingness is not effectiveness, nor is the appreciation of the value of work the only requisite for its well-doing. Father McNabb once epitomised life in the words ‘work and the preparation for work.’