Speech | “Conditions are getting worse, the value of the profession is going down and nobody is interested”, says Pekka Nisu – about both musicians and farmers

When singer and songwriter Pekka Nisu was a child, he went with his parents and brothers to Posio in Southern Lapland. Nisu's mother is from there, from a farming family.

Nisu remembers how his mother complained that Posio used to be a much livelier place.

When the Nisu's came back home from the Easter vacation to Huittis, the atmosphere was completely different.

“It felt like there was a tough atmosphere there. A lot happened in Huittis. The city developed and a lot of new things were built in our village as well. There was faith in the future,” says Nisu.

“Now I see that the same development has flowed from north to south.”

In his opinion, it is unfortunately true that the countryside is disappearing and young people are losing hope in Southern Finland as well

Pekka Nisu emerged as a music maker in 2013, when the band Pimeys released their first album. Nisu was the band's guitarist, second lead singer and second songwriter. Darkness made witty and personal-sounding pop rock. The songs described the life of young city dwellers in a relatable way.

Back then, nobody knew that Pekka Nisu was a farm boy from the village of Huittisten Lauha, on the banks of the Kokemäenjoki. Until his twenties, he took part in the work of the family farm every day, until he chose to study and moved to the city.

Of darkness after breaking up, Nisu has made a career as a solo artist. Newly Lauhanmaa-album, he describes the desolation of the Finnish countryside and the end of livelihoods, sometimes in a harsh way.

Nisu says that he has never hidden his background, but he didn't see anything particularly interesting in it either.

The awakening came during the corona lockdown, when the performing artists were not allowed to do their work as before.

“For a couple of years, we waited to see why no one was interested in this, even though our industry was making a lot of noise. I realized that I have been hearing the same thing from farmers all my life. That the conditions are getting worse all the time, the profession's value is decreasing and no one is interested.”

Wheat on the medium-sized farm once acquired by the parents, grain is grown, pigs were also raised in the past. The youngest of the three brothers is now in charge of the farm. The decision to continue was made only a few years ago.

Pekka Nisu's own family and work are in Helsinki, but he still comes to help with sowing and threshing. So far, farm management has paid off, but even in Huittis many farmers have run out of work.

In the agriculturally dominated locality, jobs in the food industry have also decreased, as there are fewer farms. Fields are more often cultivated by companies, and their employees do not necessarily live in the same village as where the farm is located.

Huittinen is a town of just under 10,000 inhabitants on the eastern edge of Satakunta. Pori is 63 kilometers away, and Turku and Tampere are just over an hour's drive away.

“If there are no daycare centers, and if schools and high schools are closed, and now that emergency services are also closed in cities that are still active, then that is exactly what has happened in the north before.”

Wheat wanted to work in the music industry early on. He was particularly interested in recording and studio technology, and he first got to study acoustics at the Aalto University College of Technology and later music technology at the Sibelius Academy. He graduated from both, and nowadays he runs a recording studio together in Vallila, Helsinki, alongside his artistic career Väinö Karjalainen with.

“I work in the cultural sector and come from a farm, and I feel that these worlds are really far from each other. When talking to each other in both contexts, the conversation often feels like 'you don't know what you're talking about,'” says Nisu.

With the theme album, Nisu wants to increase understanding from both sides.

Wheat in my opinion, the climate crisis is taken seriously in rural areas.

“Farmers have seen what happens in the climate crisis, when there have been really dry summers. They are also the ones who are the first to be pissed off about it,” he says.

Climate change has also been the reason why Pekka Nisu, as a breeder of a grain and pig farm, has had to seriously consider his own relationship with agriculture and meat consumption. It hasn't been easy.

“How can you tell someone that what you've seen your whole life and what you've grown up with is actually not okay? It's quite difficult to discuss that with those who do it for a living.”

Although farmers have seen concrete signs of the impact of climate change, the ship is turning very slowly, says Nisu.

“For example, you are 50 years old, and you have half a million loans, fields as collateral, and suddenly they say that you are no longer allowed to continue that work. We musicians were in that situation during the corona lockdown. That in the name of the common good you cannot do that work. It was absolutely terrible, and I understand the distress in the countryside.”