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The Rural Voice, 1988-02, Page 28WHERE HAVE ALL THE FARM CHILDREN GONE? A 1 barefoot girl scattering crumbs from her apron to the chickens in the yard. A child squatting on a three-legged stool, tugging at the udder of a contented Jersey. A bare -chested youth, sweaty and lean, working a haywagon on a hot July afternoon. These images, though still the favourite subjects in photography competitions, are in reality only a nostalgia reflection of the way things were. The banty rooster roaming free, the hand -milked cow, and even the square bale are fast losing their place in the rural scene. And as agriculture increasingly gives way to agribusi- ness, it seems that farm children them- selves are becoming a vanishing breed. The demographics are familiar. A once rural Canadian population is becoming more and more urban. The by Sarah Borowski average age of the farmer today is 50, more likely to be Grandpa than Dad. There is a reduction in the number of farm operators actually living on the farm. Family size itself is decreasing. The figures are dramatic. The number of farm children in Ontario dropped a startling 34 per cent from 160,100 (babies to 19 -year-olds) in 1971 to 105,520 in 1981. The 1986 figures are expected to reflect contin- uing decline. There is an attitude regarding farming that is unique to fewer and fewer professions in our changing society. It is still generally accepted that tomorrow's farmers will be and should be those born and raised to farming — a real dairyman, it is said, starts to mill: cows when standing up. Indications are, however, that in a generation or two there will be no by Nicole Hehn, age 11, Mary Immaculate Community School, Chepstow, Ontario such natural apprenticeship. Farm lobby groups cry out to save the traditional generational transfer of family farms and govemment policy tries to support the practice. But the determining factor will be the farm children themselves. Where are they? In their 1983 study, The Farmer Takes a Wife, the Concerned Farm Women revealed that more than three- quarters of the farm women surveyed were either taking their young (under 12) children with them to the barns and fields or leaving them unattended. The push for rural child-care was on. Child safety was the major concern. Over the previous 10 years, 87 chil- dren in Ontario, under the age of 15, had been killed in farm -related acci- dents. Of these children, 39 were un- der five years of age. Simple aware- ness helps, but farms are dangerous 26 THE RURAL VOICE