It’s never too late to learn something new

You’re never too experienced to learn. Roelof Bezuidenhout explains why farmers’ days and other get-togethers are such a valuable resource.

- Roelof Bezuidenhout

Farmers’ meetings are as old as farming itself. The need to share information and to discuss business with other farmers has always been there, judging from archaeological finds in Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt.

The first documented farmers’ days occurred in North America and Europe in the late 1800s, and they were brought about largely by events such as the potato famine in Europe, caused by potato blight, as well as a crisis in Minnesota in the US, where farmers had become too reliant on wheat and did not have the knowledge to grow other crops or raise livestock.

The problem in Minnesota made newspaper headlines across the country.

“FAILURE OF WHEAT CROPS. Alarming Shortage in Minnesota and the Dakotas. GRAIN OF POOREST QUALITY. Unprecedented Rains Following a Drought Cause Conditions That May Call for State Aid to Many Farmers,” ran the front page headline of The New York Times of 14 October 1900.

“Crop experts have made estimates on the wheat crop of 1900, running all the way from 100 000 000 bushels to a third more than that,” continued the report. “Newspapers of the Northwest have carefully refrained from giving much publicity to the lower estimates, and have in many cases ridiculed them.”

Relying on one crop had depleted the soil, and without crop diversification, natural threats such as locust plagues wiped out entire farms and communities. The disaster eventually led (among other things) to the development of lecture courses for farmers and, later, farmers’ days, even though these were at first poorly attended.

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