HBLA

Six months ago, I sat in Jake’s diner, on the corner of Linfield Ave. and Highway 99. The coffee was bottomless and straightforward. Joel Murrant, a terrifically thoughtful and compassionate man, was telling me about a tiny village in Romania. When he first visited in the 70’s, the village had existed near the poverty of the feudal age. Donkeys and oxen had pulled the plows, and subsistence farming left the people enough for a meager existence. The picture he described was hardly idyllic. Poverty and want had ruled the lives of these peasants. It was easy to understand why the young people would flee such a situation for the cities. Which they did, to the point that now deaths outnumber births in the small village by fourteen to one.


The problem with this fleeing is that it is not a solution to rural poverty any more than the medieval methods which had existed. The village had also had its recommendations. It was a community. The people in this village, aside from their propensity to flee it, leaned on each other and helped each other. Joel was convinced that with the introduction of a few simple devices, a few rules of good farming, the smart use of education, these farmers could have lived a good and hearty life—a life that did not require their children to flee to the city. The city hardly seems to be the answer, for while cities can be shining jewels of human achievement, they are also grimy, dirty, slummy and dehumanizing. No one takes notice of anyone else, and when a beggar dies, he is disposed of like so much garbage. People live further and further from the consequences of their actions, to the point that we are now blithely destroying our world. This seems also to be far from any ideal.


Here in Austria, such social problems and third world living conditions are two worlds away, shoved under the rug of distance. The cities are all clean, full of fashionable students, wealthy ski tourists, and healthy looking pensioners. The countryside shows the telltale health of good and intensive management. The milk is plentiful, the cheese delicious, the supermarkets full, and full of variety. Litchi from Madagascar, mangos from Brazil, curry from Thailand are all to be found at even the discount stores. On the other hand there is also a strong movement to support the local farmers. Products from Tyrol are labeled specially. They are sold for more, but also more often sold. The farmers form a powerful social class; they play an important role in the fabric of Austrian culture. To descend from farmers is an honor, not a shame.


The HBLA in which I work is both a result and a reason for the endurance of this land ethic of the Austrians. In it, students are trained to be farmers in the same way that U.S. high school train students to be college freshmen. The school is small in terms of students. Only about 300 attend in any given year. There are two tracks, one five year and the other three year. The three year students are transfers from a separate practical school, which may have taught them . In the HBLA the students learn all the subjects typical of an adolescents education. They are instructed in the sciences, math, languages (German, English, and Italian at my school), religion, geography, history, economics, psychology and more. It is an education which, at it culmination when the students are 19 years old, rivals what a sophomore an American college has achieved. They are liberally educated in academic subjects. They have all completed the same general course of study. But they also have been learning practical skills.


Alongside their academic studies (usually in the morning) they are instructed in “Agriculture and Nutrition” the title of their school. I am tempted to translate it more loosely as, “Agriculture and Nutrition Practices and Economies”. They learn what it takes to grow, tend, manage, prepare, cook, serve and present food of all sorts. The practical subjects have names like: Milk Preperation, Meat Preperation, Animal Husbandry, Horticulture, Baking, Traditional Cooking, Household Management, Schnapps-making. The school is a functional dairy, with forty odd milk cows. There is an apple, pear and walnut orchard. The students tend a garden, produce most of the food that they eat, and are on a first name basis with their lunch ladies, since they often help in the kitchen. They sell their successes and surpluses every Thursday to the local population and the teachers. The students man the store. Upon graduation they are accomplished pastry and bread bakers, confectioners, butchers, and I wouldn’t be surprised to be told they learned candlestick making at some point.


The results of a school like this are interesting. For one, these farmers children—as the majority are—aren’t looked down on. As one student told me, “No one laughs when I am worried about my cows.” Most of the students are members of agriculture clubs, the Austrian equivalent of 4H, and FFA. When I asked them one day what they wanted to do after school, they unanimously reviled office work. “I don’t want to be inside, cut off from the world, doing something repetitive and pointless,” said Heidi, who is a year and a half from graduation. “I want to work with animals,” said Anna, completely aware of the amount of work. When I put the question to them about the lack of freedom to “get away” when they are on the farm, they were surprised. “But you are free on the farm, no one tells you what to do. You do what has to be done, and you decide how and when,” was the answer from Matthias.


These are not the voices of peasants who haven’t enough to eat, but perhaps there is hope in their answers for the likes of Romania. Austria seems to have stemmed the tide of rushing to the cities, the countryside is by no means empty and full of boarded up Main Streets. Culturally, there is respect for farmers. There is also education in place which encourages them. Could such a school be created in a third world country? It could be staffed by those former residents who made it to the teaching profession, now brought back to the countryside to plant the seeds for strong local knowledge. Before the intelligence of the land is lost, it could be passed on in such schools to the future farmers. The problems of the past could be confronted. It could keep the bright young students nearby, connected, committed to the place, and helpful. Even in great agricultural graveyards and industrialized monocultures of the U.S., the land of freed in part by agrarian Jefferson’s pen, could be revitalized. Farmers could again rise to importance, their children no longer be taught to flee the hayseed hard work.


The HBLA is still an institution, subject to human problems and politics. I know it can’t fix all the problems of agriculture, but I can’t help but think its example could do some good. Maybe even for more than one country in this world that is not actually divided into first, second, and third.