Standing with Farmers and Food Producers

Illustration courtesy of Wix

My son Eoin is home from San Francisco for a week to attend a stag-party and, separately, a wedding of two of his friends. The fact that it clashes with my birthday is a happy coincidence! (Thanks and good luck to Séamus, Rebecca and Domo!)

Eoin loves his food and the quality of our Irish food is one of the aspects of life that he really misses while living abroad. Where and when they can, he and his wife try to shop and buy produce in farmers' markets and eat in restaurants that serve food from as close to the producer as they can. I agree with him. While living in three other countries over the past six years due to my husband's work commitments, I too found myself missing our wonderful Irish vegetables, meat and dairy products.

Mick Kelly's recent article in the Irish Times was alarming where he claims that in Ireland we are sleep-walking into a food security crisis. He outlines that we now have just 74 field-scale vegetable growers, down from about 600 in the 1990s. His thesis is that these growers have been squeezed out due to 'rising costs and relentless price pressure.' It is worth a read.

I find it difficult to understand why we don't have more community gardens/allotments in Ireland. My daughter and her husband's house in Inchicore backs on to one and, sitting on her back patio, it is a wonderful oasis of greenery and wildlife in an otherwise mainly concrete environment.

Overlooking (or peering through the trees!) at the community garden in Inchicore

An acquaintance is on a waiting list for one in Dublin and has been told it will take approximately ten years to get to the top of the list. Basically, only when somebody dies will a plot become available.

In contrast, in almost every public park in the Netherlands there is a section of the park for a community garden. It was always a lovely section of the park to explore and was a delight to wander through. Many owners had decorated their plots with distinctive ornaments and a unique labelling system for the various vegetables, plants and flowers they were growing and there seemed to be fantastic camaraderie among the owners. In some of the parks, sections had been given over to school gardens where the local school children looked after a designated area during school term time and local residents took over that responsibility when schools were closed. Both the names and photographs of the young person and the local resident were often displayed on the patch. It struck me as a wonderful learning opportunity for the children, and what a gorgeous inter-generational project with tremendous outcomes for both the younger and older person.

I didn't take a great photo of the school garden when Elizabeth brought a few ex-teachers and friends to explore the one in in Park Frankendael in Amsterdam-Oost (East Amsterdam) last September, but you get the idea.

Aileen, Elizabeth, Miriam, Súsanna and Claire at the school garden section of Park Frankendael in Amsterdam

As it happens, today is Earth Day and, as GIY Ireland points out, it feels different this year. Across Ireland many households are feeling the pressure of rising food costs and access to healthy food. This organisation does wonderful work including their GROW at School programme which helps young people learn how to understand where food comes from and learn how to grow it.

It's been a difficult few weeks here in Ireland, mostly through no fault of our own. Because of the actions of some of the world's war-happy leaders, the cost of fuel and oil products has shot through the roof for all of us, not just for farmers and for those who transport our food products around the country. The knock-on concerns around our food security were a wake-up call for me.

My Writing Life

I'm so looking forward to attending the Cork Book Fest this coming weekend and 'personing' a book stall with fellow authors Mary Minnock, Valinora Troy, Joanne Ryan Curran and Mary T. Bradford.

If you happen to be in Cork City this weekend, please drop by our stand. We would be delighted to chat to you about all things bookish and writerly! You might even win a prize...