Time to grow
Robert Allen in Switzerland finds that the Irish could learn from
the Swiss about making use of the land
Land has always been a contentious issue in Ireland. People have
always had to dig out a living on someone else's property, never
mind those who benefited in 1922 and those few elite farmers who
now enthusiastically embrace industrial agriculture with all its
promises.
For most of us land is either a site to build a house on or a
patch of ground for keeping a score of sheep or an area for
growing a few flowers around a well kept lawn. Those with the
imagination to make something of a little bit of land are few and
often far between. This contrasts sharply with continental Europe
where every bit of spare land is put to use to grow a bit of this
and a bit of that. We're not talking here about the monocultures,
such as sugar beet, that exist in Ireland because they exist in
France, Germany, Holland, Italy and Switzerland too along with
huge fields of maize (corn) for example.
What also exists in these places but not in Ireland is a sense
that every bit of land should be cultivated - an industrious
attitude that doesn't impress everyone, yet while this is not an
organic growers' revolution it is an indication of what can be
achieved. It wasn't for nothing that the 19th century German
Chancellor von Bismark once remarked that if the Dutch farmed
Ireland they would feed Europe. We won't comment on his
assumption that if the Irish ran Holland it would be under water!
Earlier this week I travelled from Basel, in the German speaking
north-west of Switzerland, to Martingy in the French speaking
south of the country near the Italian and French borders. I had
already been impressed by the industriousness of the people, with
their gardens and fields which display a range of flora, fauna
and some wildfowl but also a rich picking of vegetables and
fruit, during a few days in Basel where I managed to get out into
the nearby forests with the help of a tram or two.
Then on Monday I travelled with a friend on a German train that
cruised into Basel railway station from Dortmund on its way to
Geneva. We passed through green valleys beginning to show their
autumnal colours and because the weather was unusually hot we had
a panoramic view of the countryside which is adorned with wide
lakes, high mountains and towering peaks.
As we sped southwards we passed through Neuchatel, Lausanne,
Montreaux and alongside Switzerland's largest lake, Neuchatel,
and its famous neighbour Lake Geneva I was struck by the use of
virtually every spare piece of land. Nothing seemed to be grown
on its own. Even on small holdings sturdy vines could be observed
in between patches which contained a range of vegetables, fruit
trees, flowers and nut trees. Many of these were on slopes which
caressed the shores of the two lakes.
The Swiss climate allows its inhabitants to cultivate crops we
would associate with the Mediterrean, which was a surprise to me
because I thought it was a bitterly cold country hidden under an
Alpine range that pokes through the sky. It's not apparently.
Yes, the winter is cold but the summers are hot even in the north
where Swiss land is indistinquishable from French and German.
Obviously they still get real climates here, even if that is
slightly contradicted at the moment by these remarkably hot
autumn days which Swiss people more commonly associate with
mid-summer. So the abundance of sunflowers amidst vines of black
and green grapes with vegetables such as pumpkins, courgettes,
leaf beet, runnerbeans, Portugese cabbage and fennel, clusters of
walnut and hazelnut trees, apple, apricot and plum orchards and
bushes of herbs, is a sight for the weathered eyes of those who
believe we too should be making the best of our climate by
growing produce for local communities.
The geology of Switzerland is just as unyielding as Ireland's.
The land is very stoney in places, boggy in others and while it
drains well there's not a lot you can grown on high mountains
slopes. The problem we have is freeing the land from developers,
farmers dependent on the demands of industrial agriculture and
local authorities. We presently import more than three-quarters
of our vegetables and export a large property of the animals we
fatten on thousands of acres now overburdened with phosphorous.
Surely it's time we began a real green revolution - one that will
feed people and provide them with labour intensive employment at
the same time.
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