The pig kids

Ah, pigs and teenagers. Two words that probably occur in the same sentence more often than we'd like to admit. The state of my teenage bedroom drove my parents into a apoplectic frenzy. But I'm much tidier now, I swear.
These two lads - Patrick and Hugh McInerney are some of the most enterprising teenagers you're ever going to meet. From their house in Kilkenny they run a business breeding and selling rare breed pork. I talked to them at length earlier this week about their mini-enterprise and was amazed at how professional and forward thinking they are. If I had half the vision and business cop-on of these two boys I'd be a very happy camper indeed.
It's amazing that all over Ireland and despite the recession, little businesses are cropping up and whirring away. In the food sector, small businesses are actually doing very well with a Bord Bia survey showing that food entrepreneurs have a healthy outlook on how not just the rest of 2011 will treat them but how well their business will do in future years. The McInerney boys' story is a great one. At heart they are lovely charming lads with a love of animals and great heads on their shoulders as my father would say. Check out my full interview with them in the Irish Times today...

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/magazine/2011/0924/1224304437138.html

We've less money, so why are we still eating organic food?

Here's some lovely pears that were brought to me today by a friend from Kerry. Grown in her parent's garden they are as organic and free from pesticide as they come. This is the kind of food you find "along the way", just like blackberries in the hedgerows, or a few spuds from your neighbours garden. But it wasn't always the case that we valued this kind of food.

Alongside expensive marble kitchens and Michelin starred restaurants, in recent years, buying organic food in Ireland was symbolic of wealthier times. But was buying organic just an example of conspicuous consumption or are consumers still committed to paying more for what is perceived as healthier food? With the recession, sales of organic produce have declined in Ireland, but not so badly as we might have expected.

In fact between 2009 and 2010 organic sales in Ireland fell by about 5%. This happened after huge growth in the sector - from 2007 to 2008 sales in Ireland increased by 82%, reaching a value of over 100 million euro compared to €57 million in 2006. So we had this huge boom and then not a crash as you might have expected, but a slow down. And if you look at 2010 in detail, six months into the year the rate of decline eased and in the second half of the year several categories (breakfast cereals, yoghurts, savoury snacks and vegetables) actually grew in value and volume of sales.

In terms of how many of us are buying organic food. Bord Bia’s research reveals that 45% of Irish grocery shoppers purchased an organic product in the last month, 7% up on last year.

92% of Irish adults purchased organic products over the past year and the Irish organic sector is currently valued at €103 million. Sales are also good in Europe and on the rise for our export markets, charging ahead in Italy with a rise of 12% this year and also in Russia.

So even in these tough times, we’re still buying more organic food than in the UK for example. In the UK sales in 2010 fell by 12% so the sector took a big hit. The fact that organic food in Ireland wasn't hit as hard as in there (despite our worse financial circumstances) may be because we are more connected to the notion of farming and growing food. This is what I like to think anyway, hopefully it's the case.

Last Friday I talked on this subject on RTE radio's Pat Kenny Show. It was organic week and around the Irish countryside farm walks, barbeques and foraging days were being held to celebrate the growing of organic food in Ireland. It's great to see that in spite of our financial meltdown consumers still see the value of buying organic, where it's possible. Not all of my food shop by any means is organic. I make a choice first to buy local meat and veg, and if I buy imported veg where there is no Irish equivalent I try to buy organic as they have less pesticide (or hopefully) no pesticide residue.

In terms of dried foods like pasta or tinned kidney beans it's often easy to choose an organic item for just a few cents more. In these cases I choose the organic option, again believing that the less pesticide residue I can keep out of my body and my kids, the better. Recent research revealed that Roundup, one of the world's leading pesticide brands was found to be present in rain, so I think I'm making the right choice. Our environment is full of toxins from industry, farming and materials such as plastic which we use constantly in our daily life. I'm a pragmatist and a realist about food and farming, but if I have the choice to keep a little of it at bay by eating organic food, then I take that opportunity, even if it costs me more.

If you are interested in organics have a listen to the full interview. The item can be listened to below, the podcast is the third item down. Happy eating!

http://www.rte.ie/radio1/todaywithpatkenny/2011-09-16.html

Waterford's soft white bread known as the "blaa" is applying for EU protection, but why aren't more Irish foods doing the same thing?

Going the way of the blaa

The Irish Times - Saturday, September 10, 2011
SUZANNE CAMPBELL

EU protection is being sought for Waterford’s blaa bread roll, in line with that for champagne. Shouldn’t other Irish foods also apply?

WATERFORD’S distinctive floury bread roll, the blaa, could soon rank with such delicacies as Parma ham and feta cheese if it is granted protected status for its regional characteristics. If the blaa achieves the EU’s standard of protected geographical indication (PGI) it stands to gain from being a unique product, like champagne, which is protected from imitation.
Yet while many Irish foodstuffs are produced using local ingredients or methods, few of our artisan foods have gained or even been submitted for PGI status. Research indicates that the PGI designation brings with it considerable economic and environmental benefits. An EU report found that French cheeses with PGI sold, on average, for three times the price of other cheeses. It also found lower unemployment in areas that produced these foods.
Consumers appear to be switched on to the value of PGI foods, too. According to the research they perceive food with PGI as more trustworthy.
So why aren’t more Irish food producers applying for this designation? Britain has about 50 foods, including the Cornish pasty and Cumberland sausage, protected by PGIs.
One of the difficulties is that the application process for PGI takes at least 18 months. “The words ‘time’ and ‘detail’ come to mind when you apply for this scheme,” says Dermot Walsh, one of four bakers who came together to apply for protected status for the blaa. “We had help from Bord Bia, the Taste Council and the enterprise board, but it’s a long journey. It took the Cornish pasty nine years to get protected as a regional food.”
Also, getting a food’s geographical origins and properties protected is more feasible for groups of food producers than it is for stand-alone brands.
Sergio Furno of Cashel Blue says, “As we are the only people producing Cashel Blue cheese, if we applied for and won a PGI, then anyone in the region around Cashel could start making a ‘Cashel Blue’. So, by not applying, we remain in control of the brand.”

HOW IT WORKS
Protected geographical status (PGS) is a legal framework within the EU that allows countries to protect the names of regional foods. Protected designation of origin (PDO), protected geographical indication (PGI) and traditional speciality guaranteed are designations within this framework.
Four Irish products have already gained PGI status: Timoleague brown pudding, Clare Island salmon, Imokilly Regato cheese and Connemara hill lamb.
A PGI product must come from one region, have a specific characteristic of that region and be processed or prepared there. To gain PDO status, a product must be wholly produced in a specific region.
Because the flour for the blaa comes from overseas, Waterford can apply for PGI status only.

Eating, talking, learning and possibly crying

Yes I'm getting around this week, in fact, it's quite ridiculous. Just like boyfriends and busses all arriving at the same time, it's pretty much the same with food events. Even for me, five in one week is quite exceptional. After cooking for 85 people last Sunday, (including kids and dogs), the week just past saw a plethora of food events; a fabulous madness of eating, debating, learning and being wowed by what's going on in Irish food.

In reverse I'll start with the GIY Gathering which starts tomorrow in Waterford. The city has had a great food festival on throughout this week, and this Saturday and Sunday, the Grow it Yourself movement is having a huge shindig - a conference, workshop and street feast all in one.

The GIY movement has been a huge success in Ireland with all credit due to Michael Kelly who left city life, literally, to start a rural smallholding in Waterford. He got stuck in, planted seeds, grew food and as with all of us, learned a few lessons along the way. After realising that growing your own veg and keeping hens and pigs were activities being shared right across the country, Michael set up the first Grow it Yourself group in Waterford so that local people could get together, share tips, stories and probably cry a bit over what the snails were doing to their crop. Since that first group set up in 2008, Michael has established GIY communities across Ireland, with new member groups cropping up continually, providing a social and learning resource for people starting their own vegetable gardens and who want to connect with others.

The movement has been a spectacular success and tomorrow I'm delighted to be asked to speak at their conference in Waterford on the topic of "Can GIY save the world?" My talk will be about the success of urban gardens all over the world, the return to growing your own food and how to live a life less reliant on supermarkets and to be ultimately more food secure. For more info check out http://www.giyireland.com/

For a run through of the weeks other food entertainments I'll have a few further posts up in the next few days. What's most remarkable about all the activity going on in Irish food at the moment is that it seems to be really touching people, and not just foodies. I feel in a sense that many people are reconnecting to the amazing agriculture and food producers we have in this country and finding ways in which to interact with it more. But if you still believe it's impossible to live without a weekly shop and vast amounts of imported foods, come along to my talk tomorrow, and I'll prove you wrong.

Outstanding in the Field - less Condé Nast, more the real deal

Who doesn't love a picnic, especially when it looks as gorgeous and as simple as this: one field, one long table, with all the food on that table supplied by local farmers and food producers.

I first came across the "Outstanding in the Field" long table dinners a couple of years ago via Condé Nast. Typically Vogue, or whatever publication I spotted it in, was wooed for the same reasons as everybody else - beautiful images, beautiful food and a brilliant but simple idea, executed with elegance and chutzpah. It made great editorial, and great images sell magazines. But behind the gorgeous visuals and were a bunch of genuine hardworking people: Outstanding in the Field were the real deal.

Started in America in 1999, Outstanding in the Field began as a series of long table dinners on farms in California. The key was to bring local food to the table in places where local food wasn't available in shops and supermarkets.

This is still something very relevant not only in the US but in Ireland. Plenty of us live within two to twenty miles of a farm, but haven't the first idea of how to actually buy the food grown there - saving the miles of travel, food spoilage, and the need for a middleman in the shape of the big retailers who control most of what we eat.

So the idea of the long table dinners was to bring together both consumers and producers of food. Very simple, and it's both surprising and sad that such a thing is a rarity in the way we all eat and procure food. This is something I try to do myself but the routes to market for farmers aren't always simple and connecting your produce with people who want to buy it is often difficult. Last week I bought half a lamb from my neighbours farm in Newcastle County Wicklow. It will be cooked this weekend for a lunch in our house that will feed around 60 adults - quite a task that I am, em, meant to start preparing for today.

We all have to start somewhere, and the Outstanding in the Field dinners have grown from a small group of enthusiasts into a huge food advocacy movement. Since their beginnings in California they've hosted long table dinners on farms and rural locations all over the world. They've had events in barns, in libraries, museums and on beaches. The theme of each dinner is to honour the people who bring nourishment to the table; and everyone sits down to eat together.

For the first time, the group are coming to Ireland and hosting a long table dinner at Ballymaloe in Cork on the 5th of September. Their message is particularly relevant at the moment as the US is currently the locus of so much bad news on food and farming - the "Ag Gag" bill banning journalists from recording inside factory farms and the huge dominance of the meatpackers (it's said now that Cargill isn't part of the food chain, they Are the food chain). In the US, campaigning for alternatives to "Big Food" have given birth to movements like Outstanding in the Field, and hopefully what happens in the US can have an influence on food advocacy here.

Check out more on the event and the organisation at the link below. As far as I know there are still tickets available. I'll be there, and am going to enjoy every minute of it. And for those of you who fancy a piece of Wicklow lamb, check out www.sweetbankfarm.ie
http://outstandinginthefield.com/events/2011-tour/

For more on the dinner and Ballymaloe Cookery School - http://www.cookingisfun.ie/

Enough procrastination, time for me to get into that kitchen..