The current thing we all shout about on Facebook, in Orkney, is Macmillan Cancer Support's Meat Free March campaign. This is a national campaign. They're doing it in every county. In a rural county where beef farming is central to economy and identity, this is very unwise.
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The big problems with the global meat industry -- factory farming, underpriced low quality meat, food deserts, deforestation, climate change, degraded soils, animal welfare -- are not very present in Orkney, where small-holdings and high quality produce are central.
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The things that support eating less meat while maintaining a healthy diet, in Orkney, also rely on far more global imports, food miles and industrial agriculture. Local eating and a healthy diet means meat here. Maybe a lot of us could stand to eat a bit less of it, but still.
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At the same time, the problems of climate change, soil degradation, biodiversity and shifting farming economics will be felt very, very strongly in Orkney's agricultural economy. Changing weather patterns are already causing big problems regularly.
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So agriculture is going to need to make some changes to cope, and that probably is going to mean some trendy environmentalist farming practices. Some Orkney farmers will definitely be leading on that, as Orkney folk have on renewable energy.
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The big national narratives of veganism and climate change smash into that complex situation with very little knowledge and sensitivity. And the result is a culture war. It's Orkney farmers with extensive local knowledge versus vegan incomers trying to impose unsuitable fashions.
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The Orcadian/incomer divide can get very uneasy here and the culture war manifests in all sorts of ways. Whether your family is from Orkney or elsewhere matters. How you speak matters. It determines who's on the Council, who goes to what arts events, how what you say is heard.
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So this vegan thing, it maps on to that. It's a symbol of language change, culture change, threats to how we do things, patronising incomers, threats to Orcadian life. And for the other side it's a symbol of conservatism, cliques, gossip, exclusionary culture, all that.
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Interestingly, this culture war does not map onto UK or Scottish culture wars at all. Orkney had the highest No vote to Scottish independence in 2014, and the highest Remain vote in the EU referendum in 2016. We've been Lib Dem for decades. Things are different here.
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There are also differences between the outer isles and the Orkney mainland. I actually find the Orcadian/incomer culture war to be a bit less intense in the isles, whose survival depends on an accommodation being made. (The population is around 50/50, after all.)
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I'm writing here, by the way, as someone from an incomer family, and as a trans artist, environmentalist and years-long vegan, but whose whole childhood was Orkney, with the language, and who has strong sympathies for the "Orkney culture" side of this divide.
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As national culture wars escalate, and as social media drives easy division, as the anxieties of cultural change (driven by tourism most of all) escalate, I have felt the Orkney culture war intensify. It worries me, because survival in islands depends on getting along.
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But to finish things off we can remember the 1970s and 80s, when there was a scheme to do uranium mining in Orkney. This was fought by an alliance of farmers with figures like gay composer laureate Sir Peter Maxwell Davies and anarchist writer Stuart Christie (here at the time).
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The culture war could easily have broken that alliance. The hippies were mistrusted by Orcadians. Stuart Christie launched diatribes against conventionality and local power. Some landowners stood to gain a lot, economically, from the yellowcake project.
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But instead the alliance held. Environmental concerns united with local cultural concerns. The shared economic interests of the many trumped the economic privilege of the few. The Orkney uranium stayed in the ground and is still there.
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So the future of Orkney agriculture, economy and culture can be met the same way. Of course it can. It requires talking more about shared interests than cultural differences, a lot of reaching out, a lot of biting of tongues, and a careful understanding of privilege and power.
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In small island life, you have to be in the same room as your neighbours often. You have to find a way to speak, even when you're in furious disagreement, because there's not enough room to stay apart. And if you're split, massive outside economic forces will kill the island.
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There might be some useful things to think about in all this today.
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