Dichotomy of Technology:

Rural Labour Pools

Rapid growth in understanding and using technology in the past two hundred years has had double edged results. Without question, many advances have been achieved in pure science and the applications of findings subsequently implemented. Our advanced societies of clearly improved health care, communications, industrial processes and mobility, to name only four of many more, stand in large part on the shoulders of technological innovations and applied possibilities. That is the up-side. The down-side is equally notable for the damages caused in and upon our environments and in the creation of many social ills now common in an existential grab-bag of issues associated with a business as usual thinking.

The impact on rural communities and landscapes has been to say the least mixed. Some have benefited enormously while others have suffered, one’s conclusions depending of course on the measures and perspective employed. During the past two hundred years if there has been a common occurrence, it would be that change has inevitably repeated.

Recently in our community a bit of research including farmer interviews was conducted. From it we learned quite a bit and received many suggestions of what could be done to address identified issues. One of the issues noted was the absence of a rural labour pool and that got me thinking about why and some of the repercussions.

A growing majority of people now live in urban settlements and while urban populations have increased change has also transformed rural communities. No single reason can be pointed at to say, ‘Aha, that is the cause.’, but I think one can conclude technological thinking and developments were very influential directly and indirectly in driving a wide variety of both urban and rural changes.

During the past 150 years a lot of simultaneous change occurred. Technological developments across the board were on a tear. Two world wars displaced many people and the inevitable casualties of war eliminated others. The combined weather events of the ‘30s and the economic depression cast many adrift. The lure of the city with all the emerging opportunities was a powerful magnate as was the underlying drive to gain wealth seen to be more possible in an urban context. Certainly the attraction and demand for a growing variety of skill sets and occupations in urban areas encouraged people to move there. Our education systems encourage people toward urban thinking and occupations. In the countryside the opposite seemed to be happening as agriculture was shifting away from a labour oriented activity into a machine dependent one. As agriculture became more mechanized jobs disappeared and farms could be operated by fewer and fewer people. Other factors such as debt and financing of course played a part and so today our rural areas do not have a willing and skilled labour pool for an agricultural industry continuing in the throes of change. Big agriculture gets bigger while at the same time a divergent phenomenon and trend toward small farm and niche agriculture hangs on and in some areas flourishes. The required labour for big and small operations is now largely imported. The domestic pool is noticeable by its absence and that is what the research mentioned above, in part discovered.

So, what is to be done? The tasks involved in reversing the trends are huge while the necessity of making such adjustments seems to be growing daily and, no surprise, technology is bound to play a big part in the transformations. The transition though, however it happens, to a new paradigm will not be rapid. Two monumental adjustments will be required simultaneously and over-lapped for the foreseeable future, shedding the legacy that got us here and creating and adopting new ways of doing. Of course, one of the most important changes will involve extrication from dependency upon fossil fuels and we do not know what that outcome will look like or how long it will take. It is as if there is a great fog ahead and no clear sight-lines and an invisible terminus. There is a growing will and recognition of a need to change, but the adjusted thinking is happening slowly. We live with legacy, are comfortable with it and are reluctant to give it up. Of necessity, a momentous shift in our values, attitudes and beliefs will be required to forge our new future.

Emergence of a new kind of labour pool for rural communities is a case in point. Maybe migrant labour and workers coming from new immigrant populations will provide the bulk of rural labour requirements. Personally I think too much reliance upon incoming labour would be misguided. Alternatively, re-visiting the cultivation of a home grown labour pool seems to have more chance of long-term and stable success. The following suggestions would help to make that a reality.

Organizing more collaborative partnerships around rural requirements in agriculture, industry and the service sector would concentrate responses to labour shortages within the communities requiring the quantity and quality of labour skills;
Inventory of skill set requirements would focus efforts to supply labour requirements;
Focusing on and involving youth in labour pools will support their skill development, their education and their desire / decisions to stay and build a future in the communities in which they have grown up;
By focusing on youth involvement in agriculture an outcome of more new farmers is more likely helping to address the issue of succession;
All of these ideas would re-invigorate a sense of community, an important reason for people choosing to stay and build their lives in places of familiarity;
By making the countryside, community, work choice and experience more ‘sexy’ the attractions would hold people in their rural communities;
Taking steps to strengthen rural economies will help to encourage people, the young in particular, to stay;
Programmes, facilities and mentoring incubation of businesses will help to encourage more variety and opportunities for everyone;
Appropriate scaling and use of locally developed and supported technologies would minimize dependency upon outside the community / region businesses that would take wealth from the community;
A wide variety of locally produced food and other products would contribute to security of supply in those products;
Encouragement for consumer support of locally produced goods and services would encourage and strengthen business development, labour security and a stronger economy generally; and
By concentrating efforts toward local production of a variety of goods and services, energy requirements and CO2 emissions could be reduced, especially in the transportation sector.

The above suggestions by themselves are not the panacea required, but together they would go some way toward strengthening rural communities and improving the availability of a rural labour pool. In theory a healthy, vibrant community of interests recognizing and respecting local and environmental qualities will discourage degrading activities. Why shoot oneself in the foot by ignoring opportunities to enhance a rural labour pool and by continuing to look to technological fixes if hurt is is a likely outcome?