THERE ARE few organisations able to boast a growing membership in these recessionary times but one is Macra na Feirme, the organisation for rural youth, writes SEÁN Mac CONNELL
Yesterday, Macra elected its 32nd president, Michael Gowing, a 30-year old farmer from Co Laois who has been a member of Portlaoise Macra Club since 1996. He replaces its first female president, Catherine Buckley, an accountant from Rylane, Co Cork, who has held the post for the past two years.
She is handing over an organisation in good shape as regards membership and also, she argues, in terms of rural clout. Membership, she says, is growing and now stands at around 9,000 organised into 300 clubs in 31 regions of the State. The annual fee is a modest €40.
Macra was founded in 1944 by Stephen Cullinan, a Kildare- based rural science teacher to provide young farmers with adequate training to ensure their livelihood and also give them an outlet for socialising.
Ireland at the end of the second World War had twice as many farms as today but most of them were small and under- resourced. There was a serious lack of educational facilities for farmers – no farm advisory services, for example, and no dedicated farming press.
Socially too, there were few outlets for young men in rural parts, and one of the founder’s aims was to help young farmers get the confidence to socialise and meet partners. Macra na Feirme can claim to have been very successful on that front – the road to many marriages started at the local Macra club.
Indeed, I know one young woman who not so many years ago decided she wanted to settle down with a farmer. She joined Macra na Feirme and at her second meeting met the man of her dreams and they are now a highly successful couple with a family of five. She confessed she never went to another meeting.
Since 1944 over 250,000 young people have passed through Macra’s ranks including the current president of the Irish Farmers Association, Pádraig Walshe, and most of his predecessors.
Indeed Macra can accurately claim to have founded the Irish Farmers’ Journal, the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers’ Association, Macra na Tuaithe (now Foróige), the National Farmers’ Association (now the IFA) and the Farm Apprenticeship Scheme.
It also lays claim to having established the Irish Farm Accounts Co-operative and one of the most important services farmers receive, the National Co-operative Farm Relief Services Ltd, where farmers can find someone to take over if they are sick or going on holiday.
Macra has been quick to adapt to changing times and while it still has a very strong educational ethos, it is now mainly a social outlet for young people aged between 17-35. Its membership reflects the fact that farmers are now a minority in rural Ireland – only about one-third of members are farmers. The male-female breakdown is 60/40.
Because of its standing in the farming community, Macra is one of the social partners along with the other farm organisations and it continues to exert considerable influence. In recent years, it has been particularly vocal on quality of life issues, and it has run initiatives on suicide among young people in rural Ireland. It has not neglected the old either and was responsible for launching the ESB-sponsored “Know Your Neighbour” campaign.
On the agriculture front, Macra has its own land policies mainly focused on encouraging the early transfer of farms to younger farmers. It also arranges exchanges for young farmers who work for three to six months on farms in France, Germany, Holland, Denmark, the UK, Spain, Austria and Switzerland, and it has facilitated foreign students coming for farm placements in Ireland.
For most members, however, it’s the weekly social outings with sport, drama, table quizzes and the national competitions and weekends away which remain the main draw – a gentle reminder that some things remain constant in a changing Ireland.
Seán Mac Connell is Agriculture Correspondent of
The Irish Times