PRESSURE ON FAMILY FARMS
Grandparents, parents and their sons and daughters working together and living together on intergenerational family farms have generated a livelihood and sometimes prosperity for generations.

Industrial workers will say that it is an effort to ‘get on’ with co-workers on a continuous basis for the 40 hour working week, even subsequent to teamwork and communications training.

But the intergenerational family farm team have got the work done for many generations, on a 24/7/365 basis, all members making an effort and some members making an extraordinary effort. In some situations this may not be to maximum efficiency due to the confinement of working dynamics.

Smoothing out conflict
There are many instances where a wife and mother is forced into smoothing out conflict in the interpersonal relations within the family farm. When she is forced to continuously resolve others’ disagreements, she is placed in a very stressing, invidious and non sustainable position.

Keep Farming On aims to spread the load on managing the intrapersonal and interpersonal communications and relationships. This will help to increase teamwork in not only the day to day operation of the farm but also the farm family team.

This team will strategise to continuously renew itself, renew the farming practice for the greatest efficiencies and successfully withstand the external (outside the farm gate) challenges of new global trade agreements, strain on EU budgets and shifting public priorities

Clearing up misunderstandings
In every parish across the country there are examples of the family farm being brought to its knees by unattended resolvable conflicts. These conflicts are caused mostly by misunderstanding of self and/or of others or a combination of both, that in most cases could be cleared up with a little intervention.

A new and managed way
Keep Farming On, through a unique intervention, wishes to reinforce the Irish family farm. The current ever changing global society calls for a new and managed way on the family farm. Major issues now challenging the family farm including interpersonal communication, identifying what people want, succession and inheritance planning, marital breakdown, and disconnection and isolation.