back to search results
Less Info

Some 300 miles of stone walls lace the rugged Aran Island of Inishmaan, where Irish farmers from time immemorial have cleared their fields of stones and hauled in sand and seaweed to create thin soils for their small sheep and cattle pastures and, since the sixteenth century, plots of potatoes as seen here. It’s been a hard life at the best of times, but the traditional low-impact agriculture has also allowed the island’s rare plant biodiversity to thrive. Some 75 percent of the three small Aran Islands that cross Galway Bay have been designated Special Areas of Conservation, the highest level of protection in the European Union. While US agricultural policy tends to support larger farms that grow monocultures like corn or soybeans, the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) favors smaller growers like those on Inishmaan, where subsidies help maintain both the biodiversity and the artisanal farming culture of the island. The EU has five times the number of farmers as the US and an average of fewer than 40 acres per farm, one-tenth the US average.

Filename
STNMTZ_20220608_26322.TIF
Copyright
©2022 George Steinmetz
Image Size
6008x4000 / 68.8MB
www.georgesteinmetz.com
Contained in galleries
Some 300 miles of stone walls lace the rugged Aran Island of Inishmaan, where Irish farmers from time immemorial have cleared their fields of stones and hauled in sand and seaweed to create thin soils for their small sheep and cattle pastures and, since the sixteenth century, plots of potatoes as seen here. It’s been a hard life at the best of times, but the traditional low-impact agriculture has also allowed the island’s rare plant biodiversity to thrive. Some 75 percent of the three small Aran Islands that cross Galway Bay have been designated Special Areas of Conservation, the highest level of protection in the European Union. While US agricultural policy tends to support larger farms that grow monocultures like corn or soybeans, the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) favors smaller growers like those on Inishmaan, where subsidies help maintain both the biodiversity and the artisanal farming culture of the island. The EU has five times the number of farmers as the US and an average of fewer than 40 acres per farm, one-tenth the US average.

All images ©George Steinmetz. Please contact us for usage.