GERARD O'NEIL
Gerard helping his father-in-law to dismantle his old chicken feed storage shed in Brazil.
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When I was a child, the first thing our primary school teachers always asked us to do upon returning to our small rural school after the holidays was to write an essay entitled: "What I did during my holidays."
As almost all of us lived on farms our essays were remarkably similar. They described children helping with various farm activities, riding horses, bird nesting, eeling and mountain trout fishing expeditions. Not to mention things like the diversion, by a large gang of bicycle-riding kids, of water into one of the County Council's gravel pits after the workers had gone home, to make an impromptu swimming pool.
If any of our old essays have survived they would provide a snapshot of what it was like to grow up in rural New Zealand in the 1970s, when farms were small and families large.
Fast forward 40 years and I find myself once again working on a project called: "What I did during my holidays."
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It is an account of spending my Christmas / New Year break on my parents-in-law's farm in southern Brazil, just as my Brazilian wife and I have done for the past 20 years.
It has become obvious however, that the way my parents-in-law farm is rapidly changing and that we are witnessing the end of an era.
As I follow my parents-in-law around with my camera, recording their activities to show future city-raised generations how their forbears used to produce food, I remember what it was like when I first visited my parents-in-law 20 years ago.
At that time, their principal activity was the production of chickens for a local freezing works.
Like dozens of small farmers in the region, their 50 metre henhouse, housing 7,000 chickens, had for years provided them with a comfortable income. Then one day the freezing works expanded, which meant it required more chickens.
In order to force the farmers to produce more, chicken prices were reduced. Farmers were told to extend their henhouses or the company would simply refuse to buy any of their chickens.
When the pressure came on my parents-in-law to expand, they did not have the capital or sufficient water resources to do so. So, like many small farmers in the area, they left the industry. Today, the minimum henhouse size to supply the works is 400 metres.
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Without the possibility of being able to make a living off the land, the young people living on farms all moved to the cities. Today, the region is dotted with dozens of abandoned henhouses, while a few big companies now supply the very large freezing works.
Fifteen years ago, a neighbour, seeing the demographic imbalance in the region, produced what become known as "The List".
He noted down the names of all the farmers in the district, their ages and health status, and then predicted in what order those listed would die or retire to the city. His list has proven to have been surprisingly accurate.
It is also well on the way to fulfilling its base assumption, that in another five years there will be no-one left to work the land.
As the old farmers have died or retired, their small holdings have been bought by a large paper company that is planting a new type of genetically modified Eucalyptus tree, ideally suited to the region. All evidence of a once thriving farming community is rapidly disappearing under thousands of hectares of Eucalyptus trees.
Recently, there have been various reports by economists suggesting that over the next 20 years, more than 40 per cent of the occupations people work in today will disappear.
I suspect this may be correct, as apart from small Brazilian chicken farmers, during my lifetime I have witnessed the extinction of the following occupations.
1. Switch board operators
2. Public Service tea ladies
3. Cream truck drivers
4. Milkmen
5. Steam train firemen
6. Guards on goods trains
7. Cashiers at the end of vacuum tubes in large department stores
8. Lift operators to push the floor buttons (We still have these in Brazil!)
9. The man on his bicycle who would ride the Taramakau River rail/road bridge to close the gates for the twice daily train
10. City Council traffic officers
11. Typing pool typists
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