The Rural Voice, 1981-09, Page 6COVER STORY
Joe Moss: a maverick farmer
For those of you who read
this magazine, or this part of
the magazine, to learn more
about farmers like yourself,
read no further.
It's unlikely that Joe Moss
is of your mold. He's not a
conventional farmer. in mind
or in operation. As he puts it,
perhaps more subtly now
than in years past. "I'm a
radical."
For people in Perth and
Oxford Counties, Joe Moss,
of R.R. 5, Embro, is a fruits
and vegetables farmer who
specializes in strawberries
which he sells on a pick -your -
own basis. And he's the man
who not too long ago sold a
profitable poultry operation
(12,000 layers) near
Tavistock.
Lest you think there is
nothing extraordinary here,
let us take a closer look at the
trail of this man, a trail which
began 47 years ago in
Donegal, Ireland.
Joe Moss, youngest daughter Aisling. and wife Brede.
The son of a cattle farmer, Moss
received a degree in forestry from
National University of Arklow, in the
County of Wicklow (the garden of
Ireland), just south of Dublin. But he
spent less than two years in the field
because "my personal needs for com-
municating with people weren't being
met. It was a public service job and there
was no challenge in it."
Abandoning forestry, he worked with
his father in cattle sales and soon got
involved in farm organizations. He was
the county secretary (volunteer) for the
National Farmer Association (now the
Irish Farmers Association) in 1964 and
helped coordinate a massive march on
Dublin. Each of the association's twenty-
seven counties was represented and the
farmers arrived in their capital at the same
time.
"The whole thing went over well,"
says Moss, "and I became hooked on the
power of group action. I'm still convinced
it's the way to go in everything, but
particularly in farming."
In time Moss was named one of two
farm representatives on the one hundred
member Irish Freedom From Hunger
Committee, and subsequently he was
elected to its executive. Among its many
endeavours back then the IFFHC sent
cattle and pigs to India, and dumped
L250,000 into a peanut operation in
Tanzania.
The African project was not going well
and Moss was chosen to go to Tanzania to
investigate. Before he could leave,
however, the whole thing fell apart and
was scrapped. Barely resigned to the fact
that there would be no trip abroad, Moss
was asked by the Committee to establish
an agricultural school for boys in that
same country. There was some hesitation
on his part, Moss recalls, but the
by Dean Robinson
opportunity sounded too
exciting to pass up.
For the next eighteen
months the Moss family (Joe,
his wife Brede, and their four
children) lived on the slopes
of Mount Kilimanjaro (about
a quarter of the way up its
19.340 feet) in a village called
Mandaca. To some exent they
were in a farmer's heaven, a
place with topsoil ten feet
deep and a fresh cut of alfalfa
every six weeks. The temp-
erature never went beyond 32
degrees Celsius, there was no
humidity, and always there
was a cool breeze from the
snowcaps above.
While at Mandaca, Moss
was "absorbed" by the Food
and Agriculture organiza-
tion (FAO) of the United
Nations and he was assigned
to Medac, India, for a six-
month term to pinch-hit for
the director (who was on
leave) of a dairy project. It
was a dramatic change,
moving to central India where it can be as
much as forty-four degrees Celius in the
shade on some days. Joe sent his tamily to
live in the cool of the hills and stayed on
site where he did, in fact, suffer from
sunstroke.
Then it was on to Ceylon for what was
to be two projects over two years. It grew
to five projects over thirty months. The
Moss family also grew, from six
members to eight. Not all of FAO efforts
were successful and Joe is not reluctant
to talk about his failure to get a reform
school off the ground.
In 1971, civil war erupted in Ceylon
(now Sri Lanka), just as the Mosses were
given the option of a new contract or
return home. The unsuccessful coup
attempt eliminated the family's choices.
It also confined them with a 6 p.m. to 6
a.m. curfew from March to July, and
gave them a ringside seat for an uprising
that resulted in 25,000 deaths. It was a
PG. 4 THE RURAL VOICE/SEPTEMBER 1981