Sheepish questions for the Minister as city kids spend a day on the farm

NEVER appear on stage or camera with children or animals. You never know how it'll turn out.

Throwing caution and W.C. Fields's maxims to the winds in a Wicklow farmyard yesterday, the Minister of State for Agriculture, Mr Jimmy Deenihan, did both and came out smiling.

His fellow speaker at the launch of National Urban Rural Day was not so fortunate. Addressing some 70 primary pupils from Dublin's inner city, the Irish National Teachers' Organisation president, Mr Liam McCloskey, presumed that this was their first time on a farm.

"Nooooo," came the resounding response, as several teachers doubled up with laughter.

Mind you, the junior Minister did not get away that lightly. One mention of lamb and lamb chops and he was subject to persistent questioning by Grace Goad (10) of St Patrick's Girls' National School, Ringsend, who was eager to hear his views on sheep.

"Where do they keep them?" she said, as he delivered his speech. "Where do they put the sheepskin?" she continued. And finally, what was he going to do about a brood mare looking over his shoulder that seemed overly interested in lamb for tea?

In fact, it was the "candy floss" wool shearings offered by the children that the mare, Blondie, seemed most preoccupied with. The adjoining Doyle and Cullen farm steads, covering about 400 acres of land in Rathdrum, Co Wicklow, are a favoured annual destination for St Patrick's. "Even though they've no ostriches," said one of the pupils.

Initiated 12 years ago, National Urban Rural Day now involves some 15,000 schoolchildren many of whom will never have been on a farm before.

"We began with farm trips for a couple of hundred, but it has multiplied," Mr Bill Shanahan, president of the Agricultural Science Association (ASA), the main sponsor, told The Irish Times. "Now it is part of the primary school curriculum. Today, alone, 5,000 kids from Dublin will be spending their day in Wicklow and Kildare."

Even a couple of hours is very valuable, according to Ms Emer Casey, resource teacher at the Ringsend school. She remembers pinning a picture of a cow up on the board, in a lesson for third class. Some of the pupils didn't know what it was.

A former farm child in Listowel, Co Kerry, the Minister of State expressed regret that some children nowadays did not even have relatives involved in agriculture. "But it's not just an urban problem," he said. "There are many children in rural Ireland who don't understand where their food comes from, and who cannot, due to, safety factors, play out in a yard.

It was now an industry, he acknowledged, though he saw the future in "environmentally friendly extensive", rather than intensive, production.

Would he still recommend it to young people as a career? "Well, people will also have to eat food," Mr Deenihan said.