Could we be reaching Peak Craft Beer?

In a food and drink area experiencing extreme heat, I recently investigated whether we're reaching the peak of a trend, or are in fact nowhere near the top. 

Long championed among Ireland's craft beer makers is the 10% of the US beer market that small craft labels have captured. Personally I love craft beer. But many Irish drinkers express a "done with that" attitude to the trend. So how is it really progressing and can it be ever upwards?

Recently I went along to a beer tasting seminar hosted by Liquid Curiosity in Dublin to meet brewers, taste beers and gauge the energy of new entrants to craft beer.

So what is a beer seminar?

Firstly there were about 25 people there – from the hospitality industry, brewers already in business, people wanting to set up a craft beer company and amateur enthusiasts. Tutor Jacqueline Steadman from Australia gave a basic introduction to different types of beers – pale ales, pilsners, stouts and what they are made from - hops, malt barley etc.

We sampled Irish beers and ciders in the main like Galway Hooker and Cockagee Cider from Slane but also more unusual products like cherry beers and a French Geuze formed with lots of lactic acid which tasted a bit like old socks. This was so deliciously on the verge of both disgusting and incredibly good that the only reason I pushed it to one side was it's incredibly high alcohol level at 8% APV.
 

The participants tasted the beers and discussed their characteristics. On each tasting sheet provided, beers were marked on colour, taste, the head, alcohol level, integration etc. Everyone really enjoyed tasting, commenting and getting to know new beers. There was lots of craic, plus a delicious lunch by Mourne Seafood where the seminar was held.


And there's not just energy and enthusiasm in the sector. The hard figures show huge growth.
From a handful of companies brewing before 2010 there are now over 80 Irish craft beer brands. Here's the question – how many more breweries can Ireland support? Craft beer here occupies between 1 and 2 percent of the beer market. In the United States their 10 percent hold has the big guns directly blaming craft beer for declining market share.

Budweiser volumes have fallen in the U.S. from nearly 50-million-barrel peak sales in 1988 to 16 million barrels last year. Light beers and craft beers have been the biggest factor in this decline, with younger people in the US staying away from what seem like old fashioned brands A recent study published by WSJ found that 44% of drinkers aged between 21 and 27 have never tried Budweiser. Sorry Clydesdales. You may be cute but you're also ageing.


So on paper there is still huge space for growth in Ireland – in other words to take Budweiser, Heineken and Guinness drinkers away from those brands onto craft beer brands. However it’s not as simple as that. Many Guinness drinkers simply like Guinness. Some craft beer drinkers are occasional beer drinkers who may not switch wholesale to one brand but try many and not be loyal to any.
Another remaining problem is that many bars particularly outside cities or foodie areas still do not stock craft beers. In some of the best hotels in Ireland I've asked for a craft beer and been looked at askance.

We also know that most of the Irish companies are very small and perhaps much of the appeal of their product is in their own local area or county. How many are going to be listed with the big supermarkets for example? Denise Murphy who manages the alcohol sector for Bord Bia points out that they are now directing craft beer companies more towards export. At so small a portion of the beer market here companies are going to have to look abroad to grow their output. It's not essential for survival but essential for growth.


Some drinkers are frankly sick to death of craft beer. And it's true that some products have been talked up. At the tasting seminar tutor Jacqueline Steadman who is an Australian wine maker opened a beer and pointed out a lot of what was wrong with it. There was plenty. We must remember that just because a beer says craft in front of it does not mean it’s excellent in every way. The term Craft Beer is also under fire in some territories where massive breweries make "craft" products and it’s been put forward by some publications that the term such be ditched.


Before the last budget in Ireland if you produced under 20,000 hectolitres annually beer companies got a tax rebate but that was then extended to 30,000 hectolitres. This was directly to benefit small craft beer companies very often situated in rural areas to grow, which is a very good thing. However it doesn’t stop companies calling themselves craft beer producers who produce far above this level.


There has been controversy in particularly the US where craft beer producers are often massive companies the size of Diageo. And even some craft producers say it’s better not to have a classification at all.


Having observed craft beer grow from so little in Ireland it's been an exciting and interesting journey to report on. I've interviewed and featured beer producers from Galway, Dublin, Donegal, Cork, Leitrim and Monaghan. I would characterise the sector at this point as being in its second phase. The stage where a community regroups, reflects upon itself and competition usually gets tougher as the marketplace gets more crowded.


Bright futures aren't a given for all these companies and it's worth noting that breathlessly championing every single product is a mistake. Ultimately craft beer offers the consumer more choice as the big international brands have had a stranglehold on the beer market for decades. That's a good thing, but perhaps is also viewing craft beer as no longer the food and drink baby needing kisses and love but a juvenile with a bright future, and challenges yet to take on. 

@campbellsuz on twitter

The horsemeat in burgers scandal. Are we consumers partly to blame?

We consumers. We love cheap food

Oh how we love cheap food, but then gasp in amazement that it might contain something unpleasant. This week’s shock discovery of horse DNA in Irish burgers grabbed headlines around the world. But are we, the consumers also to blame for this debacle?

Our lust for a bargain has been mirrored in the advancing market share captured by Lidl and Aldi in Ireland – we’ve fallen in love with the low-cost German model. At a recent dinner party several well heeled guests boasted how they’ve halved their grocery bill by going to discounters. I replied that Aldi is a great buyer of Irish food – purchasing everything from Aberdeen Angus beef, sparkling water, artisan cheese and yoghurts for its own brand range. Food producers whisper to me that Aldi pay on time with “no messing around”. They’re only too glad to board the German steamroller.

Meat processing for burgers

Yet our desire for cheap food and the lengths the food chain will go to supply it are central to how horse DNA got into our burgers. Supermarkets want profits up, share price up and they do this by driving prices down. Their goal is to pay suppliers as little as possible including those who process beef. But like any product, food has a bottom line from where it can be produced or not. Below that line cost-cutting can put consumers at risk. For this very reason I’ve campaigned at Oireachtas Committee level for a supermarket ombudsman to ensure farmers and food producers can produce our food cleanly and safely.

Irish beef at its best; grass fed and highly traceable

Last year Monaghan chicken farmer Alo Mohan told me they made 56 cent on every chicken. These same chickens are then retailed as low as 2.99 by the supermarket. How can a living breathing animal which has been nurtured, fed and cared for from birth to cost less than a cup of coffee?. And if the farmer is getting 56 cent out of a 2.99 – who is taking the largest cut? The supermarket.

Chicken farmer Alo Mohan

But who’s driving this? Us the consumers.

It may come as a surprise that food prices in Ireland are in fact artificially low and far lower relative to the UK. Since 2005 food prices in the UK have increased by as much as 35%. By comparison, Irish prices are just 3 to 4 per cent above their level of seven years ago despite the euro area as a whole increasing by 15%. In this same period, the price of oil and grain has made the cost of producing food explode. In Ireland, recession and weak consumer demand has kept the supermarkets in razor sharp competition, trying to keep the price of food low despite production costs rising.

As our incomes shrink and bills dropping onto the hall floor are ignored for days no one wants to go out and pay a whopping amount on groceries. But in our desire for value we can end up with products like the supermarket spaghetti bolognese I examined containing just 16% meat. What on earth is in the rest? Most likely what are called food “extenders” and “fillers”.

Extenders and fillers are used to add volume and taste to sausages, burgers, ready meals and any amount of things in our trolleys. They arose from the need to produce lower cost food and can reduce costs by 10-30%. This week our Minister for Agriculture Simon Coveney described the ingredient that carried horse DNA into the Irish burgers as powdered beef-protein additive – a filler used to bulk up cheaply produced burgers.

"Pink slime" was commonly used in US fast food chains

Also common is mechanically separated material from animal carcasses known as mechanically deboned meats (MDM) where meat on bones is ground and processed into a product that then goes into other foods. You might remember the unpleasant “pink slime” story which broke in America recently. This MDM (resembling pink ice cream) was found in many fast food chain burgers. But once it was exposed that ammonia treated to “clean” the slime, fast food chains boycotted it in a desperate bid to calm consumers.

Most of this intense manufacturing takes place in Europe and looks to like the source of our imported horse DNA problem. It’s frustrating that Ireland has the best food ingredients in the world with demanding standards on food safety and traceability. Yet somewhere an ingredient manufacturer has cut costs, or deliberately defrauded other manufacturers and consumers. You won’t find many other countries doing the type of DNA tests the FSAI carried out on meats because frankly they would be too scared about what it might reveal.

What needs to happen quickly is identifying and punishing the supplier who sold this tainted ingredient into Irish burgers. In 1999 the Belgian dioxin crisis cost Belgium 625 million euro and the prime minister his job. Yet the Belgian father and son who knowingly sold machinery oil into animal feed causing widespread PCB poisoning received ridiculous suspended sentences of two years. The penalty for messing up the food chain should be an enormous headline-grabbing event to match the damage done by the event itself. Horse DNA in Irish beef burgers is not acceptable. Who is going to take up the tab for the damage done to our own food sector and jobs?

So what can we do to eat safely and not pay out a fortune? The answer is keep your food chain short and keep things simple. And let’s be honest, this takes work. But putting a small bit of thought into what I buy makes me feel safer about what I feed my children in particular. I buy my meat and vegetables from local shops in the village. I buy store cupboard foods in one big shop about every three weeks in either Superquinn or Aldi picking brands and suppliers I know and trust. Kidney beans, tinned tomatoes, butter beans, chick peas, chilli flakes and herbs are all imported products, my trick here is to buy what has the least added ingredients and cooks well.

If you only want to shop in the supermarket always buy Bord Bia approved beef, pork, chicken and sliced meats for kids lunches. I’ve been on these farms, seen the processing and this is the highest level of auditing in food you’re going to find. I never eat ready meals but cook my own – cottage pies, ratatouilles, warming chillis and soups, freezing half for another day.

Preaching only to buy local and artisan goes over most consumers heads and budget. But buying less complicated foods and ingredients is one way to bypass the extremes of food manufacturing. Remember horsemeat is also present in many snack foods and crisps sold on European supermarket shelves. The more processed something this, the more surprising the ingredients are on the label. Keep things simple is the key, buy Irish and above all enjoy your food. Our food sector employs 200,000 Irish people, let’s hope it can weather this storm. 

Sustainability. Sounds green, woolly and warm but what does it really mean for the Irish food sector?

This week in the Irish Farmers Journal I wrote about what sustainability programmes can yield to food producers. Sustainability has been a buzz word bandied around liberally in the past decade. Unfortunately it has also been frequently abused by many food retailers and manufacturers.

More recently the term has gained renewed focus as commodity prices move sharply and continuously upwards. The scramble for land in developing countries to feed our Western appetites has become a contentious issue. Here in Ireland our chief food and drink marketing agency Bord Bia has put a sustainability programme into place. In the following analysis I spoke to farmers, Bord Bia and outside voices on what issues are involved. Of huge importance to farmers is looking at the costs of more form filling against the benefits that may come in the door in terms of farm income.
So what are those benefits? Is sustainability just a word for lovers of open-toed sandals? Or is it a way of farming in Ireland that could yield us huge benefits in the future.


Greening the Shamrock; where’s the pound, shilling and pence?

Irish Farmers Journal Suzanne Campbell, 18th October 2012

Bord Bia’s Origin Green scheme had its “soft launch” earlier this summer; promoting sustainability as something far from green and woolly but as a hard business strategy for Irish food exports. As Ireland’s clean food image is already a seller, what does ticking more boxes on waste and emissions mean for Irish farmers? Is greening the shamrock a strategy that works for big food, or can tracking sustainability create rewards that will filter down to Irish farm incomes?

Sustainability is safety, and Ireland’s track record on extensive production could be worth more than we bargained for in a resource-strapped world under pressure to meet demand for food. With a population of nine billion the global marketplace is a huge opportunity for Irish exports. But it’s also placing pressure on basic but limited resources like water and land.

The new scramble for Africa is about land for growing food, and supplying Western diets from developing countries creates complex issues. Ethiopia which farms baby corn and mange tout for the UK and Ireland has suffered renewed hunger this summer after drought. According to former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, hedge funds and other speculators bought African farmland the size of France (over 210,000 square miles) in 2009. He attacked the growing practice of “land grabbing” by which countries are buying or leasing land in other nations to increase their own food security.

Food companies cannot afford to be labelled as unethical in terms of where their food is produced and they also need to make sure that the bottom won’t fall out of supply chains. This is where Ireland steps up to the plate; we’ve plenty of rain, good grass and we’ve just began tracking exactly what’s going in and out of the system.

In May of last year Bord Bia began auditing use of water, energy, waste levels, animal feed and production practices on Irish farms. Beginning with farmers in their Beef Quality Assurance Scheme, so far 30,000 members or 94% of QA producers have participating in the sustainability survey; the first national assessment of environmental performance of farms worldwide.

One of the farmers involved in the auditing is Richard Hogge who farms sheep and sucklers in Stonyford County Kilkenny. He views the scheme as worth getting involved in, despite the additional workload. “There’s a fair bit of trust and honesty on the farmer’s part as you’re putting in all your details and costings, so I had to gather all that. Then it’s processed at the Bord Bia end and I get a chart coming back to me outlining how my farm is performing on the different elements.”

For Richard there were obvious rewards in seeing how profitability could be improved. As he has 350 ewes on the farm and 25 sucklers, it was clear from the feedback that his grass could be better utilised by cattle but it didn’t suit his sheep enterprise. “I could have shorter time with cattle indoors but as I need my grass for sheep outdoors all year this is difficult to improve on. At the same time I compared well on how I’m finishing my animals – little outside purchased concentrates, and I’m also getting a calf per cow every year. If I considered a continental bull I might get more kilos per hectare but might lose out on the better calving ratios and fattening from my Angus bull. I’m getting the heifers away at 18 months and the bulls away at 20-22 months off grass. So it’s a balancing act.”

Richard came into the scheme from his involvement in Bord Bia’s quality assurance schemes for his sucklers and sheep. “This was thrown in front of me as an option and for me it wasn’t a hard choice as I’m involved in nearly everything that can be done to improve my lot. For farmers there’s an advantage that it’s showing you what can be improved with what you’re doing, and ultimately that’s saving money ”.

Some of the top farmers taking part in the sustainability programme were rewarded at the Ploughing last week in New Ross by Bord Bia, The Irish Farmers Journal and Teagasc for efficiently producing cattle at a suitable specifications for export. One of these winners was Michael Murphy from Nenagh for his dairy calf to beef production. In a business where profitability can be tricky, Michael found the auditing gave him an outside eye on productivity on his farm.

“When the charts came back, compared to the national average I was up there near the top which made me think I was doing everything as near as good as I can. At first I didn’t know much about carbon footprint and it is difficult for farmers to understand. Sometimes they don’t think about details and may not have any plan in their head about when they’re going to slaughter what they buy.”

For Michael tracking every last figure is the only way his business works. The 200 calves he brings in yearly are fed by machine which communicates with the calf’s electronic tag. He also weighs them every two months.

 “There is a definite time span for any animal I have, you need to keep animals moving along and putting on weight everyday. I can’t understand lads not weighing cattle, I suggested a weighing scales at a discussion meeting and they called it a luxury, for me it’s essential. Overall I found the experience a good one, and if other farmers are thinking about it it will improve their efficiency without doubt.”

Jim O’Toole at Bord Bia was one of the driving forces of the sustainability monitoring, previously working on the Quality Assurance schemes. Quality Assurance has been a huge success for the marketing of Irish food, and customer feedback shows shoppers identify with traceability and “safe food” assurance. But why the move into the more “open-toed sandal” area of sustainability? For O’Toole it was a natural progression from the monitoring they were already doing.

“We did work that was completed in 2009 with some of the bigger customers of Irish food – food service, retailing and manufacturing to see how important sustainability was and we concluded it was an important issue. Our natural production in Ireland would resonate with that perception, but what we felt was that companies wanted more evidence.”

Bord Bia returned to the topic in 2010, asking respondents again about sustainability. Instead of falling in importance as recession dug in, it seemed sustainability had hardened in importance. For customers of Irish food and particularly beef and dairy, sustainability was now on the slate of key words and concepts, but what was driving the impulse for food buyers?

“The debate about sustainability is often described as a triple bottom line – environment, financial and social” says O’Toole. “If there isn’t a financially sustainable supply chain that supply chain could break down. There is also benefit from efficiencies by improving their environmental performance in terms of reducing waste, energy etc so there’s a cost saving there as well as enhancing brand value”

The scale of ambition of Origin Green is huge. To date 27,500 of Irish farms have had a carbon footprint assessment done. 45% of Irish export food and drink production has signed up to the scheme; retailers, food service operators, manufacturers, Unilever, Nestle, McDonalds, Danone and Tesco are already involved. For retailers like Sainsburys with their “20 things for 2020” strategy, auditing our own sustainability on Irish farms can’t fail to be an attraction as it means someone else doing the hard work for them. It’s a move that has put Ireland ahead of the pack, potentially yielding us a competitive advantage.

But farmers might ask - if retailers are so interested in sustainable food chains, why don’t they just pay farmers more? Would Tesco’s investment of £25 million in the Sustainable Consumption Institute at University of Manchester be better spent rewarding extensive farming systems we already have. Sustainability is clearly a great buzz word for retailers and at the corporate table, but where or when is the payback?

“It’s too early to tell” says O’Toole. “The cheap food debate isn’t one that isn’t going to get settled very quickly but from our experience with this programme the buy in we are getting from farmers it means Ireland can secure markets in the future. What we’ve got to do is prepare our industry to compete and win business so it’s a strategic long term initiative.”

Padraig Brennan, senior information analyst with Bord Bia has been working with Teagasc and understands that Origin Green needs to appeal at farm level. “There’s no point in being environmentally sustainable if you can’t make a living out of it. Being sustainable comes down to getting more output from the same input, more beef and more milk on a daily basis – a combination of management, genetics, and using resources on farm.”

As it stands, many food companies aren’t making demands on suppliers in terms of sustainability but as Padraig points out, it’s about Irish producers getting in before the rest of the posse. “We are putting structures in place so rather than waiting for when it happens and being forced into certain things, we’re being proactive in this area and creating that point of differentiation.”

But how important is sustainability to our European customers of Irish food? Marine Digabel, a journalist with Agra Alimentation in Paris came to Ireland this month with a group of European food industry writers, visiting Richard Hogge’s farm and the Glanbia plant in Ballyraggart. “In France there is a real interest in sustainability but  after the French election,  local food and French jobs have become more important.”

With financial woes being felt among France’s retailers and consumers, several things are happening in their grocery market. Apart from poultry, meat consumption is decreasing overall but organic meat is growing its share. Sustainability may have been overtaken by local, but as it makes sense to bottom line, it’s a strategy not being ignored among large French companies like Danone.

“Definitely they are all working towards less energy, less carbon, less waste” says Digabel “probably not because they’re deeply interested in environment but its more about reducing costs all along the chain.” Does getting on the sustainability train early create advantage for Irish producers?  “I don’t know if the Origin Green programme in Ireland will make people switch from one supplier to another. But it might make them more tempted to change. Definitely simply the fact that it’s measured – that companies know they’re working with people who have quality assurance and traceability and tracking the environment, is good for a long term perspective.”

Padraig O’Donnell agrees. Auditing sustainability is about creating solutions for customers of Irish food who may not be ready now, but will need assurances on sustainability in the longer term. “We explain to buyers what the programme is and what it’s trying to achieve. As we get more food and drink manufacturers on board we want to show commitment from a 3-5 year plan and also roll out advice at farm level. We want the companies who are supplying them with product to show the targets they have achieved. A lot of these customers have set out targets to reduce energy, waste targets here and they want their suppliers to help them meet those targets.”

Whatever way the food market moves, Ireland is better off one step ahead than one step behind. We mightn’t have valued it twenty years ago but the homogeneity of our production systems is something other countries have now bypassed, making branding themselves sustainable more difficult. “It’s definitely quite easy for Ireland to set up a programme like this as you have extensive grazing” says Marine Digabel. In northern France it’s similar to Ireland but in some places we have intensive production so there is huge disparity. The same scheme in France would be difficult to implement as you are saying “this type of production is better than another”.

“For me the material payback is in lowering costs” says Richard Hogge. “It’s no good to me unless I can improve profitability, the farm I’m running is a business not a charity. For scheme for me has pointed out where money can be saved without affecting the environment. It’s like bringing the euros and the farm along together.”

Tesco suspends contract with UK farm after animal cruelty allegations

UK supermarkets including Tesco have just announced that they are suspending pork supplies from a pig farm involved in cruelty allegations. For the second time in recent months, undercover footage has emerged from the lobbying group Animal Equality appearing to show pigs being beaten and inhumanely killed.

Tesco has suspended its contract with the pork supplier saying that they expect "extremely high standards" for animal welfare and are urgently investigating what went wrong at the farm, which was also approved under the RSPCA's "Freedom Food" higher welfare standard. The Co-Operative Group has also asked its own label suppliers not to source from the East Anglian Pig company which is at the centre of the allegations.

For consumers, viewing images like the photos and video which have emerged from the Norfolk farms would put you off your breakfast sausages in a jiffy. I've filmed and interviewed farmers on pig farms in Ireland, and in the supersized version - pig units in Holland. This is the intensive end of the pig farming world - pigs are housed indoors in large numbers and like it or not, it's where most of our rashers, sausages, pork loin etc come from.

In both the UK and Ireland they are regulated under EU food and farming regulations which have codes of practice and welfare conditions to be met in terms of the pigs having space to move, correct ventilation, feed and veterinary care. And at the end of the pigs growing period, they are to be sent to abbatoirs with veterinary inspectors present to be humanely killed for the food chain.

Unfortunately this system does sometimes go wrong.


In England the RSPCA has released a statement saying it has visited the farm and has concerns about the handling of the sows, younger pigs and the way animals seemed to be inhumanely killed. It's the second time in recent months that pig farms, (both in Norfolk) have been found to be breaching guidelines. After the first Norfolk footage emerged, the farmer was found dead three days later. This terrible outcome followed an interview he gave saying he was unbelievably distressed that the animals he farmed were so badly treated by the workers he employed on his farm.

I feel that in Ireland that pig farmers are closer to what is going on on their farms, livestock handlers are more connected to what they are doing, and also to food and animal welfare standards. In Ireland, Bord Bia "Quality Assured" pork means farms have a extra layer of standards above the EU regulations for regular pig farms. They are inspected, audited continously and there is a high degree of traceability in the chain. In terms of pork you buy in the supermarket, "Quality Assured" label on packaging as it means the pig meat was farmed in Ireland under a highly regulated system. 

What happened in the UK should not be happening on pig farms anywhere in Europe, including Ireland. I read a lot about food and farming systems in the United States and one thing we have in bucketloads in this part of the world is regulation on how our food is produced, including the welfare of the livestock we eat. The good aspect of this story is that the supermarkets were very quick to react to consumer fears, and the off-putting idea that animals are suffering for your plate.

If you want to pay extra for animal welfare to the extent that it influences your shopping you can always buy free range pork from the many Irish farms now selling it. Pigs on these farms roam in the open and have a more natural "herd" structure. If you can't make that price point  - free range is going to be more expensive, look for Irish pig meat, Bord Bia approved or from small producer groups like Trully Irish.

Chocolate rabbits, fine food... Say hello to the awards season

There's very few people able to coerce the premier of any country into auctioning a chocolate rabbit but if anyone's up for the job, it's Margaret Jefferes. Margaret is founder of Good Food Ireland - a tourism and food organisation which brings together the best of Ireland's food producers, restaurants, cafes and accomodation. In my work I come across members of Good Food Ireland all the time and it's testament to Margaret that she has gathered those at the top of their game into her organisation. The sublime Merrion Hotel, Cliff House Hotel, Chapter One and food producers like Graham Roberts of Connemara Smokehouse, Glenillen Farm and Cashel Blue cheese are all members of the group. These are people and companies who I've covered in stories because they are doing something different and authentic in food. And when I travel around the country to interview farmers and food producers I always find the Good Food Ireland folk a fantastic, energetic and fun bunch of people. The minute I get out of my car they're there with a warm welcome, an honesty and humour that always makes me really warm to them. Maybe it's because they gain strength from each other in what can be a lonely business - running a food SME in a recession. But whatever the reason, they have huge passion for what they do, and I always end up chatting for hours and more importantly, laughing, a lot.

Earlier this week they held their annual conference and awards in the Shelbourne Hotel Dublin. It was an honour to asked to speak at the conference alongside the likes of Kevin O'Sullivan editor of the Irish Times, Feargal Quinn retail legend, Fred Karlsson Founder of DoneDeal.ie, and Mary Carney winner of MasterChef Ireland. Mary spoke about "Creating Great Taste Memories" and the good and bad memories we all have of Irish food which brought me back to the terrible days of the 1980s microwave lasangne but also my Donegal grandmothers insanely good soda bread. The lunchtime spread of foods from Good Food Ireland was so fantastic it was hard to take in. I think I had about fourteen separate things on my plate at one stage, everything packed with flavour, beautifully cooked and as Irish as it comes. Some of the highlights from the conference talks on the day were from Sile Gorman, Aran McMahon and Peter Ward from Country Choice who all spoke about how difficult it is to make money out of producing or serving good food, but that what keeps them going is the love affair they have with food, and the feedback they get from their customers who come back again and again.

The awards ceremony was later in the evening and it was lovely to see some great Irish businesses like Goatsbridge Trout farm, The Chocolate Garden and Ballyvolane House collect some well deserved silverware. But for me it was a race over to Trinity College for my second appointment of the day - the Bord Bia Food Industry Awards, and yes, I finished the evening pretty well fed. The Bord Bia awards were slightly different as they are aimed at larger food businesses. Huge Irish success stories like Largo crisps won awards alongside Flavahans porridge (a staple in our home), Country Crest, Green Saffron, Jameson Whiskey and a new collaboration between Kerrygold and Cashel Blue which will see the Grubb family's handmade cheese on shelves in the mega marketplace that is the USA. It's fantastic to see this kind of innovation taking place as our big brand leaders like Kerrygold could do a lot to give smaller businesses a leg up in markets where they already have a foothold. And now more then ever, when our food exports are so important in keeping jobs in Ireland is the time to exploit this further. Here's a shaky photo of Minister for Agriculture Simon Coveney speaking at the event; bigging up the export performance of Irish food which is set to hit 9 billion euros by the close of the year. Just so you know, the Bord Bia dinner was St. Tola's Cheese, roast Irish pork and a berry crumble to finish. As usual with Bord Bia's events, it was beautifully done and a really lovely evening. For me it was also a chance to catch up on the gossip with other farming and food journalists and we had a lively night with lots of laughs. Particularly pleasing to me was seeing the "journalist writing tomorrows piece on back of napkin" approach is live and well, as a quick scan around the media table revealed. Having no napkin to hand, my own scribbled notes were made on the back of my speech from earlier in the day. We're nothing but enterprising, us lot.