Linking farmers across the globe: what does `one world' mean to a farmer?

What does `one world' mean to a farmer? Pat Evans tells Paul Williams about his life's work?

Earlier this year, at the age of 75, Pat Evans was in India linking up with farming friends made over many years. He cannot remember whether this was his ninth or tenth visit there.

Evans is a living contradiction to the stereotype of the insular farmer, interested in virtually nothing beyond the farm gate. His enthusiasm for farmer-to-farmer contacts across the world is infectious. For him such links are part of an evolving `one world' society. He speaks of a `comradeship of purpose' among farmers that `surprisingly can unite the comparatively affluent Western farmers with the peasant farmers of Asia and Africa'.

On this latest visit to India his travelling companion was Alec Hutton, Secretary of the Herefordshire-based British Farmers for International Development (BFID). Evans is Chairman of this local group of farming families, formed in 1983 to promote farming links with developing countries.

One essential part of Hutton's and Evans' itinerary was a visit to the Sangli District of Maharashtra in western India where BFID has formed a strong link with the Verala Development Society. The Society, under the leadership of former university lecturer Arun Chavan, is a committee of local farmers who seek not only to develop agriculture in the area but also look to the needs of the disadvantaged. To date, six of the Herefordshire group have been to Sangli and Chavan has visited the Evans farm at Whitbourne.

Chavan is just one of a network of farmers around the world with whom Evans keeps in contact. He believes that such a network, arising from personal friendships, can not only `feed the personal element into structural plans' but also `help move things forward in terms of world agricultural policy'.

Farming was never far away from Evans in childhood. His father was a gentleman landowner and his home was the imposing Whitbourne Hall. It was the centre of an estate which included several farms. Pat was the youngest of seven children born to Frank and Fanny Evans. He remembers his father as a distant figure, who, though kind and supportive of his interest in farming, was `not very good at communicating'. He took the boys on fishing trips and taught them to shoot--something which Evans enjoyed so much that his initial ambition was to become a gamekeeper. He says he was `vaguely aware' of his privileged status, especially feeling uneasy when one of the estate workers would refer to him as `the young squire'.

While at school in Cheltenham he decided to devote his life to agriculture. When he shared this intention with his form teacher the response was, `Couldn't you do something better for yourself, Evans?' `It was considered strange,' he explains, `that anyone in the top half of the form should consider going into farming.'

It was also at this time (when he was about 16) that Evans made a decision which he came to regard as the single most important one of his life. Several of his family had experienced dynamic renewal of their faith through meeting the Oxford Group--later Moral Re-Armament. Visitors with widely varying backgrounds and intriguing stories of how God had made a difference in their lives began coming to Whitbourne Hall. All this had a cumulative impact and he began `to listen each day to the voice of God in my heart, the inner voice which is instantly available to anyone ready to make a serious experiment'. He felt he had discovered a way to link personal faith with the possibility of making real changes in society.

He gained a place at Cambridge to take a BA in Agriculture. During his first summer vacation he went to help with the harvest at Hill Farm in Suffolk, where he later spent several years after the war. The farm belonged to Peter Howard, who had been one of Britain's foremost journalists before the war and was now totally engaged in MRA's spiritual work aiming at personal, national and international change. The working farm became both a centre and a demonstration of this new approach.

Working at Hill Farm made a deep impression on Evans. `Throughout my farming life,' he says, `I have been sustained by the vision and sense of purpose I discovered there.'

He completed his course at Cambridge and, as part of the war effort, worked with the Essex War Agricultural Executive Committee to help farmers maximize production. He then returned to Hill Farm and was able to spend three months on a French firm at Andresy, near Pontoise. `It was my first concrete experience of how differently things may look from another vantage point,' he remembers.

The farm belonged to Philippe Schweisguth, who helped found the influential French farming organ La France Agricole. It was the beginning of a long connection with French farmers and helped to seal his view that `farmers the world over are one people'.

In the early Fifties Evans moved back to Whitbourne to take on the management of the home firm, Crumplebury. At that time it was a firm of 130 acres, concentrating on livestock, but also growing some cereals. In 1962 Longlands firm was added, giving 275 acres, and ten years later a further 75 acres were joined to this.

At Longlands he and his wife Kristin started having students to stay and work with them for short periods. At first these came mainly through their French connections, but soon several other European countries were represented. Over the years more than 100 students have passed through. `Kristin and I do not have children so, in a measure, the many young people who came to stay were a part of the family,' he says. `Now we visit them, with their wives and children,' Kristin adds.

In 1965, with his elder brother Edward, Evans helped organize a conference at Whitbourne Hall entitled, `A World Aim for Farmers'. It confirmed their determination to build a world network of farmers. At the end of 1977, Evans took a sabbatical from the firm to journey round the world consolidating these growing links.

Evans was inspired when French farmers responded to the Sahel drought crisis in the Seventies by raising FF5 million to send wheat. Wanting to do more than simply send food, they formed in 1975 the Agriculteurs Francais et Developpement International (French Farmers and International Development). This came to have branches all over France and stressed personal contact, encouraging French farmers to be interested in how farmers in developing countries actually lived and worked.

It was this model that Evans and his friends turned to when they set up British Farmers for International Development in their part of Herefordshire in 1983. Besides the project in Sangli, to whose running costs they contribute [pounds sterling] 400 every year, they have also become involved in Thailand and Poland. Their neighbours in Worcestershire have established a `Farmers Overseas Action Group' (mainly involved in Uganda).

Evans also helped arrange a series of international `Farmers Dialogues'. The first of these was held at the MRA conference centre in Caux, Switzerland, in January 1994. Further `dialogues' followed at the same venue in 1995 and 1996. Another, held in November last year in Minnesota, USA, attracted participants from Thailand, Cambodia, India, Zaire, Poland, Argentina, Canada and Britain.

In his new book Farming For Ever(*), Evans maintains that consideration of international factors is not only possible for today's farmer, but is becoming essential as the world becomes increasingly interdependent. Farmer-to-firmer links are a key element in this process. `Pushed across the world, such links open new dimensions of policy, and could play a decisive part in the next century,' he says.

(*) `Farming for Ever' by Pat Evans, available from Sapey Press, Whitbourne, Worcester WR6 5ST ([pounds sterling] 76.50 inc p&p) or from Grosvenor Books, 12 Palace Street, London SW1E 5JF.