Women & Ag: in the hot seat

After years of solid experience working in a voluntary capacity with Sligo IFA, Kathleen Herny was elected county chairperson last March. She will now serve a four-year term chairing the association in Sligo while also being a member of the executive council, its governing body. Kathleen reckons her experience stood to her in the election.

“I’d been county secretary, and vice chair. I’d represented the county on the farm business and environment committees as well as being involved in my home branch, Skreen. I just kept progressing.”

An only child, Kathleen loves farming and was always in the yard with her parents Michael and Kathleen. “I loved going to the mart and I’d be out of my school uniform and into my yard clothes so fast, you wouldn’t believe it.”

Unseen work

Her biggest surprise since being elected is seeing first-hand the level of lobbing that’s done by the IFA.

“If a farmer asks me what the IFA ever did for him, well I have my answer and it’s plenty. I’ve seen what happens in the months leading up to the budget, work that gets the right result for farmers. New MEP Maria Walsh was at Riverstown Show recently and we were able to talk through the issues with her. The work never stops.”

Kathleen is delighted with the support she’s getting from every quarter and says there’s a great camaraderie in the IFA.

“You get to know people from every part of the country and they are there to help.”

I made it my business to call to the home of every branch officer and if they weren’t there I phoned them

She set up a WhatsApp account for all the branch and county officers. “It gets the word out about what we are doing and is a great two-way street for information.”

Kathleen acknowledges she faced some resistance before her election but that has been replaced by positive feedback.

“I made it my business to call to the home of every branch officer and if they weren’t there I phoned them. It was a great way of getting to see what was of concern to branches and for getting to know people who mightn’t attend county meetings that often”

Big worries

Livestock prices, Mercosur and Brexit are what’s worrying farmers in Sligo. “Brexit is so uncertain. We have local marts and Aurivo and a lot of cross-border trade. Prices are not sustainable and farmers can’t produce food for nothing.”

Plenty on her plate

Time is the one thing Kathleen doesn’t have enough of but she says if she can do something, she will. As well as being a dry stock farmer, she is a practicing barrister, active member of the Civil Defence and the Tidy Towns. She also served on the ethics committee of the Nursing and Midwifery Board. On top of it all, she has her ‘little man’ James Wall to care for.

James is just four years old and is a huge fan of Mike Denver and Nathan Carter. “He won tickets for a Nathan concert in the Great Northern in Bundoran a few weeks ago. We arrived early and didn’t we meet Nathan and he was lovely to James. Then during the concert Nathan called James to the stage and the two of them preformed a duet of Good Time Girl. My little man was in pure heaven.”

With eight women (seven county chairpersons plus a Farm Family chairperson) now on the IFA executive council, Kathleen says it’s good to get that different perspective. “We need to take it to the next level by electing a woman commodity chairperson.”

With over three years of her term to complete, Kathleen aims to have paid back the farmers of Sligo who trusted her as their county chairperson.

When Irish Country Living called Elizabeth Ormiston she was coming from a ceremony hosted by Cavan County Council where she had been honoured for her contribution to the county of Cavan.

“I’m delighted,” she told me. “I was one of five people honoured. In my case it was for being the first woman county chairperson of the IFA in Cavan. However, I firmly believe there’s not a farming woman in the country who hasn’t the ability, brains, experience or knowledge to do this job. All they need is the determination.” And determination is something Elizabeth has in abundance.

Elizabeth is firmly of the opinion that the inherent bias against women inheriting the family farm has changed. “Women were the unpaid, unrecognised labour on farms. They were the book keepers, the accountants and the labourers yet had no input into decision making. But that has changed. And for the better.”

She says that 7% of IFA paid membership is of women in their own right. That, she says, gives plenty of scope for growth.

Elizabeth has set two aims for her four-year term of office. The first is to get more young people into IFA meetings. “We need to upgrade our meetings. Young people are used to using technology and we need to follow suit. I’m working hard with Macra to make that happen.”

Her second goal is to get the older generation to hand over their farms to a younger generation. “I’ve done it myself so I’m not being hypocritical about it. I’m still a suckler and drystock farmer and I have kept a bit of land but my son is farming the rest.”

Succession planning is a big issue for Elizabeth and together with Macra she is planning for a succession conference to be held on 16 October in the Kilmore Hotel, Cavan.

Tough times

Elizabeth describes herself as both tough and blunt. She had to be in order to survive. A mother-of-five, she lost her husband Philip when he was just 45.

“When he got ill our youngest, Ruth, was just two and Peter, the eldest, was 13. Elaine was four, Rosemarie was 10 and PJ was 12. Philip died after six years of suffering with a brain tumour

“It was the last days of January 1995 and I will never forget it. Then the following October our dairy herd and everything else went down with TB. It was very bad time for our family. But I’m a woman who tries to see the glass half-full all the time and that helped me through.”

Greatest surprise

Elizabeth represented Cavan on the IFA national farm business committee and was also vice president of the Simmental Society. She was a regular and out-spoken attendee at meetings and when she went for county chairperson she never thought she would win.

The one disappointing thing about my election was that I didn’t receive great support from women in the county

“It was the biggest surprise of my life. The one disappointing thing about my election was that I didn’t receive great support from women in the county. Hopefully I will win their trust during my term.”

She believes she has the trust of her officers and says they are on the phone all the time. Beef prices, Mercosur and Brexit are the big issues. “Brexit is the worst of all. It threatens our peace and prosperity. Sinn Fein and the DUP are playing historical politics. Between Brexit and Mercosur they are putting my livelihood and that of every beef producer at risk.”

Elizabeth has compassion for young farmers starting out in the business. “A store bullock would buy an acre of land in the 1980s – not anymore. Costs have rocketed and prices are static. It can’t continue.”

Despite all her commitments, Elizabeth finds time for her four young grandchildren, Aaron, Aoife, Philip and Moya. She’s teaching them to grow strawberries, lettuce, scallions, potatoes and celery. “To see their fascinated little faces is a joy. And we need to remember it’s their futures we are fighting for.”

The recently elected county chairperson of Westmeath IFA certainly brings a wealth of experience to the table. Having spent 30 years working with people with profound disabilities, she has taken to farming with gusto.

Bernie McCarthy was born and reared on a dairy farm In Innishannon, Co Cork. There were seven children in the family and along with dairying, her dad Charlie and late mother Kitty kept pigs and had 1,500 turkeys ready for the Christmas market.

“Mam was proud of those turkeys and the money they earned for her. It was all hands on deck for those two weeks and even when we had left home we all took holidays to help out.”

Solid career

Bernie trained in intellectual disability nursing in Moone Abbey, Monasterevan. She went on to St Mary’s in Dalgan as a staff nurse and was promoted to clinical nurse manager. Then she met her partner, Paul Daly, Fianna Fáil’s agriculture spokesman in the Senate. She took on the running of the family farm, which is comprised of sucklers and a purebred Angus herd.

“Even as a child I always loved farming. I knew how to drive a tractor and operate a loader and I knew my way around livestock. So I took on the challenge.”

Some of the older farmers were kind of shocked that a woman would get the job but they are behind me now

Mind you, she says the one thing she and Paul do not discuss is her lobbying on behalf of farmers and the IFA. “That just wouldn’t work. We keep politics and the IFA off the agenda. We need a personal life.”

Bernie was secretary of Westmeath IFA for four years and it gave her a great insight into the county and its 27 IFA branches. She also represented the county on the national animal health committee. To her delight, she was elected unopposed to the position of county chairperson.

“Some of the older farmers were kind of shocked that a woman would get the job but they are behind me now. I’ve a great bunch of officers who take their jobs seriously and who are a great source of advice for me.”

Bernie says that the seven women on the IFA executive council have been a great help. “It’s a daunting arena and you’d be afraid to say anything so their support is great.

She believes women are well able to run farms and lobby and she would love to see more women in the IFA. She aims to get more young people of both sexes involved in the association.

Worried farmers

A few months down the line, she can’t get over how busy the job is. “A lot of my calls are from farmers who are really worried about their future. We have climate change, Mercosur, Brexit and prices at rock bottom. I was talking with a farmer who finishes 25 bulls a week and he’s moving into dairying. He can’t see any future in beef. That’s not good.”

Another issue that’s of concern to Bernie is the recent break-in by an animal rights group to a piggery in the county. “Forty of them broke in, leaving another 40 on the road. This behaviour has to be stopped. They have new rules in Australia where people can be fined a substantial sum for breeching biosecurity regulations. We need to legislate for it here too.”

Outside of the IFA, Bernie is chairperson of Kilbeggan Tidy Towns and is mother to Mary Ellen, now a nurse in Sydney, and Charles who works in the technology sector. Her latest task was to officially open Mullingar Show. “What an honour, I was absolutely delighted to do it.”