Stockmanship Quotes

“The big modernizing farmers we knew sounded a lot like Earl Butz. They had often been educated in agricultural colleges and were true believers in the gospel of efficiency. They were 'businessmen', engaged in a desperate race to be survivors, as everyone else fell behind, gave up and stopped farming, Everything had to be big and fast. They were ruthless capitalists. Dad was a bit confused by them. He said they were 'shirt and tie' farmers; 'too flash' with their fancy Range-Rovers. They didn't get their hands dirty and they sounded as if they worked for a corporation - listing data about their milk yield average per cow, grain moisure content, or their costs of production. They often had dozens of people working for them. The big new farms had a high staff turnover because the work was now deskilled, boring and dirty - more like repetitive factory work than the skilled 'stockmanship' or 'field craft that had gone before.”
― James Rebanks, Pastoral Song: A Farmer’s Journey