A History of the Irish Agricultural Advisory Services

Rural Ireland and its agricultural way of life are emblematic of this country. For most of modern history, however, rural Ireland and Irish agriculture were comparatively underdeveloped. This changed dramatically in the twentieth century, during which they were transformed. In 1900 they were synonymous with poverty; by 2000 they had become synonymous with progress. Many people and organisations contributed to this, but chief among these were the Irish agricultural advisory services. First established in the early 1900s, they are today operated as a public service by Teagasc, Ireland’s Agriculture and Food Development Authority. With their establishment, agricultural instructors, trained to the highest international standards, were despatched to every community in rural Ireland. Their brief was to work with farmers, helping them to improve their farm enterprises and, in so doing, to develop rural Ireland. This gradually bore fruit, as each succeeding generation of agricultural advisors and farmers co-operated to adopt the most modern agricultural approaches. This book tells their story. In addition, by relating it to the wider national and international historical archives of the twentieth century, it makes it fully accessible both to those who know rural Ireland and to those who do not.

Author Bio

Mícheál Ó Fathartaigh is a member of the Social Sciences Research Centre at the National University of Ireland, Galway, and history lecturer in the Department of Humanities & Social Science at Dublin Business School. He holds a PH.D in history from Trinity College Dublin. His first book was Irish agriculture nationalised: the Dairy Disposal Company and the making of the modern Irish dairy industry (Institute of Public Administration, 2014). His second, The Treaty: debating and establishing the Irish state (Irish Academic Press, 2018), was co-edited with Liam Weeks.