Encountering International Farm Policy in a Scottish Cathedral

by

Special to United Methodist Insight

I had hoped to see some working farms during our visit to Ireland and Scotland. We did see a few from the bus window, but stopping and talking to farmers, alas, was not part of the itinerary on this carefully organized religious pilgrimage. We saw lots of cathedrals, castles, monastic ruins, museums, statues, distilleries, pubs and gift shops, but only a few farms and farm animals.

Mostly we saw sheep in the northeast of Ireland and in the Highlands of Scotland where nothing much else will flourish. One day our guide, Brian Matthews, pointed to a flock of sheep with different colors of chalk on their backs, some blue and some red, and quipped that the red sheep were protestant and the blue sheep were catholic. We all laughed, having just been in Belfast where the tensions between Catholics and Protestants are still evident today. Then he explained that the different colors helped farmers identify their own sheep in the common flock that grazed on public lands.

My old farm kid’s heart did flutter when I spotted an exceptionally fine herd of Holsteins across the road from an ancient monastery on the road to Downpatrick, where we saw the grave of Saint Patrick. And one of the highlights of our trip was finally catching a glimpse of some Coos on the Island of Mull as we were headed to Iona in Scotland. There were a few horses and big round hay bales, a tractor here and there, and many barns, but nothing like the big red barns we are accustomed to in Wisconsin.

I did remark to my wife Jo, upon entering the great hall at Stirling Castle, next door to the chapel where Mary Queen of Scotts was crowned as an infant on September 9, 1543, “You sure could get a lot of hay in here.” The Great Hall was built around 1503 for King James IV as a venue for royal events. It is the largest medieval banqueting hall ever built in Scotland, measuring 138 by 47 feet.

It was on a Sunday morning at St. Mary’s Presbyterian Cathedral in Glasgow, Scotland that my farmer’s heart was most unexpectedly warmed.  Our bus load of 27 pilgrims arrived early for the 9 A.M service and were greeted by the provost, the Very Reverend Kelvin Holdsworth. As the service started he welcomed our group and told us we were going to experience a very different kind of service than we might be used to, but just to sit back and enjoy the music and the liturgy. In fact, it proved to be not all that different except for the grandness of it all.

The soaring organ music and the exquisite voice of the soloist resounding off the beautiful stained glass windows and the high ceiling of the cathedral, which opened as St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in 1871, is something I will long remember. The cathedral is 206 feet tall with painted ceilings, an ornate font, and a musical tradition some say is among the best in Scotland. The warming pipes that run along the bottom of each pew to keep feet warm was something I had never seen before.

The preacher of the day was the Reverend Canon Professor John Riches, an ordained Anglican priest who taught New Testament and Biblical Criticism at Glasgow University. From a magnificent elevated pulpit about the size of our Subaru Crosstrek, he spoke humbly and simply about the plight of subsistence farmers in Africa and the damaging impact of first-world farm policies on that part of the world. I had to strain to hear all of his words, but I heard enough to know that what he said was worth sharing with farm communities back home. The professor was kind enough to send me the text of his remarks:

“The misappropriation of land by colonial powers, the sharp reduction in international development aid for agriculture in developing countries since the 80s, neo-liberal policies which have cut support for health care, the reduction in the terms of trade between the developed and the developing, all this and much more has had a devastating effect on smallholder farmers in Africa and elsewhere. The effects of climate change, the direct consequence of the huge consumption of fossil fuels in the industrialized nations over 200 years, are dramatic and destructive. People’s livelihoods have been reduced, destroyed and it is little wonder that many are driven to risk the dangerous crossings across the Mediterranean and the English Channel to find some way of feeding their families and providing them with a dignified life.”

The professor said, “How can we respond? St. Mary’s has for long been committed to supporting the work of Fair Trade organizations like Tradecraft and True Origin… Over the years people here have shown remarkable generosity in supporting producers and farmers across the Global South. We have over the last 15 years sold and consumed a small mountain of the wonderful kilombero rice which (small holder farmers) grow in the north of Malawi. We are part of an extending network of people across Scotland and the UK who are working to help smallholder farmers across the developing world, particularly in Africa.”

Professor Riches told me that he and his wife, Nena, spent time in the Transkei in 1975 and again in 1979 during the apartheid period in South Africa. He said his wife “…was working as a doctor in a mission hospital. This was an eye-opening experience, both in terms of making us aware of the realities of rural poverty in Africa and of the evils of racism and of radical discrimination by one ethnic group against others. Following this, in 1980 with friends from our parish church we founded a Trust which started to support small locally run development and community projects in Africa and India and in Myanmar. The Trust was funded by a fair trade shop which sold goods from small producers around the world.”

Professor Riches added, “Since then, we have also started, in 2009, an importing business, True Origin, which imports products from smallholder farmers in Africa and Asia. Our trust, True Origin Partnerships, now concentrates on helping our suppliers develop their businesses and communities. The last 15 years have given us a clearer insight into the problems facing smallholder farmers in Africa. We work with farmers to grow their businesses (seed multiplication, farm implements, agricultural training) and through education, the development of training workshops and small off-farm businesses. We have been fortunate to work with some remarkable producer groups and farmers’ leaders. And we have been able to build up a great body of supporters in churches, schools and local community groups who sell the produce and provide targeted finance and material aid.” www.trueorigin.org.uk

John Sumwalt is a retired pastor and the author of “How to Preach the Miracles” and “Vision Stories.” A noted storyteller, he offers programs for churches and community groups. Contact him.