Women in agriculture? We could learn a lot from the tech sector

Two pieces of short news - I was contacted today with news that Olhausen the pigmeat processors and makers of the very popular Olhausen sausage are in talks with a buyer to save the company. While listening to tales of misery and woe on RTE's Liveline, this was a lovely piece of news to recieve. Hopefully a sale will come to pass for the 160 workers and an established Irish brand with a popular, longstanding reputation.

Tomorrow I am delighted to be MC at the Georgina Campbell Irish Food Guide awards with Bord Bia in Dublin. While no relation to Georgina, we must have some deep genetic connection as we both love good food. I've seen a run down of the award winners tonight and it's great to see some new establishments making their way into the frame and from parts of the country that we might have passed over as having a vibrant or high-achieving food culture. I'm delighted to be part of it and all of the award winners (24 in total) have really achieved the top level in their field. Being selected by Georgina for her stamp of approval marks them out as quality, authentic businesses whether they are a rural B&B or a Michelin starred chef.

Later in the week I'll wearing my reporting hat again for RTE from the Dublin Web Summit. Ireland is at the centre of a vibrant tech sector which along with agriculture is one of our indigenous success stories. Of particular interest at this years summit is its focus on women in business and looking at why tech has many female CEOs (globally) than many other sectors. On Thursday I'll be at the Leaders Lunch (pictured right) talking to Anne Heraty CEO of CPL, Sonia Flynn, director of user operations at Facebook, and Pay Pal's vice president of global operations Louise Phelan. This are big hitters in the

tech scene and it's wonderful to see the leadership they provide to others wanting to enter tech. Gender balance is something pertinent to agriculture which for many years was a very male dominated sector. I wrote about this recently in relation to large animal vets in Ireland and how women were now commonplace calving heifers on farms and wrestling animals into crushes. Outside factors have changed the balance in veterinary, largely due to the amount of females in the degree course. It will be interesting to see how the many female entrants into Ag Science and take up roles in agri-business and influence the standing of women in the food and farming sector. We know they are present in huge numbers in terms of food businesses and especially artisan food, but on farms actually in charge of the business the numbers are smaller, mostly due to traditional patterns of inheritance and land ownership. For example a woman has never won Macra/FBD young farmer of the year award. Four reached the finals last year, the highest number ever. Let's hope we see a woman take home the top prize soon, or a women at the top of some of our agri-business giants. In my experience when I research or interview ag voices in Ireland I am often surprised to find a woman on the end of the phone, whether it be on a research facility or a farm. One very able female food producer/farmer said to me recently she wanted her son to do the interview as she didn't think she could do justice to their business talking about it. Despite my encouraging she wasn't for turning, and I interviewed her son. As Nora Ephron used to say, women are often their own worst enemies. We need to take a leaf from the tech sector, get out there, get visible and get to the top. 

Organic champions, and going back to our roots

I was delighted to be a judge at this year's Bord Bia National Organic Awards. After all, spending
a day eating and drinking fine food and drink... me? Never...

What was particularly interesting in sampling and examining all the shortlisted entries was the development that the organic sector has experienced in the last ten years; it really has been phenomenal. Yes it's only a small part of the national grocery spend, but as a sector it has developed large successful brands like Glenisk and also promoted Irish artisan food businesses in general.

When I was a producer on Ear to the Ground in the late 1990s I remember an editorial meeting about an organic cheese story we were planning to shoot. We vacillated over the decision as we felt for a farming programme organics were considered niche and outside the box. The situation is totally different today. We know that the marketplace for organic food in Ireland is worth 104 million euros annually. In Germany one in every five euros spent on food is spent on organics. There's no reason why we can't grow our domestic demand and also our share of export product in Germany with the expertise and development farmers and producers here have built over the past decade and more.

Crowes Farm (pictured above and below) won the overall award for their dry-cure rashers. The Crowe family have been farming in Tipperary for over a hundred years and switched over to organic certification in 2007. They now rear and butcher their own pigs (TJ is the butcher in the family) and their short listed rashers were pretty outstanding. We felt this product really deserved the overall award as it just had great eating quality. As it's low in salt and added water it didn't leave the customary mess when cooked. It tasted of good quality pork, not nitrates. Imported bacon which is a problem for Irish pig producers has even

higher levels of added water and nitrate than is allowable in bacon processing in Ireland. So many consumers are eating something which doesn't resemble any type of pig meat but a white mess on the pan, and has shrunk to one third of its pre-cooked size.

That's why Crowe's bacon impressed; it looked and tasted great. The packaging was also simple but contemporary. Many of the products we judged had too much or too little information on the labelling and while I know it's something that's difficult to get right, it's really important for the consumer who pulls that product down from the shelf. I chatted to TJ after the awards ceremony and when I complimented him on the labeling he said it had taken months with the designers to get right. Goes to show hard work pays off.

While there were plenty of unusual foods short listed in the awards we felt as judges that some of the most notable were traditional Irish foodstuffs - Crowe's bacon, Pat Lawlor's porridge oats (pictured right) and Keogh's potatoes; all of whom also won their category. It chimes with where we are economically that the foods we are turning to and interested in again are far from complicated and Irish to the core. If it's a sign we're going back to basics then that can only be a good thing.

Congratulations to all the shortlisted entries and award winners, the quality of everything we judged shows a vibrant organic sector which in uncertain times, is still ploughing ahead offering great food, great food stories and food on the plate that you really want to eat.

Funeral planned this Wednesday for Ireland's "Good Food Sector"

Irish anti-GM groups have today announced a "Funeral Procession" in Dublin this Wednesday 12th for Ireland's good food sector following Teagasc's planting of outdoor GM potatoes. The planned procession will depart from Stephen’s Green (Wolfe Tone Memorial) at 12.00 pm on Wednesday and will arrive at Agriculture House via Dawson Street and Molesworth Street where "a requiem service will take place."
 

The groups involved in the march which include IOFGA and NO2GM, plan to present a spade to Minister for Agriculture Simon Coveney to ask him to put a stop to Teagasc's GM trials. I very much doubt this is going to happen after the EPA have approved the trials to go ahead but protesting gives the many individuals and groups in opposition to GM potatoes a chance to air their grievances. Last week they applied in the high court for a  means to tackle tackle Teagasc's plans without GM protestors being personally liable for the costs of the action. They lost the case but I hear there are more challenges to follow so watch out for updates here. 

In this week's edition of the Irish Farmer's Journal I'm away from the topic of food and GM to write about farmers, their vets and what the large animal practice sector may look like in future years. During Ireland's boom, equine and small animal practices thrived and there was a fear that in some rural areas vet cover would decrease to the point of creating difficulties for many farmers. This was borne out in some counties such as Mayo but it's clear now that there is a re-balancing in the sector. 

Large animal practice is thriving and female vets are very much in evidence on farms. As they make up the largest number of veterinary students we will see a slow shift this direction, and happily, all the vets I spoke with in my piece saw a vibrant future in on-farm work. There have been difficulties in the past between vets and farmers (largely relating to cost of services) but I feel it's a relationship becoming less adversarial and more in tune with each other's needs. Animal health on farms and resulting productivity is becoming more and more important, and farmers and vets are clearly working more together in weeding out problems like BVD before they arise. Check out the piece in the Journal and it's available on their smartphone app version which is a brilliant news service. Coming up in later in the series I'll be dealing with food price inflation, problems for Irish pig farmers and Bord Bia's Origin Green - what the scheme means at farm level.   

A party about ...lamb prices

I spent last night at a party with neighbours talking about farming, the price of food and how most farmers in my area now had off-farm employment in order to keep going. One neighbour told me how even when he farmed 1000 ewes he couldn't make a living producing lamb. He now works night shifts in a factory to pay the bills, keeping a few sheep but not planning about getting back into farming full time. He laughed as he looked at the drink in his hand "Basically it wouldn't put diesel in the car".

It's the same story on so many farms across the country."So what's your solution?" I asked. He shrugged his shoulders - "no one wants to pay more for food and that's what lies at the bottom of it". He's right, we do want our food cheap and retailers know that; employing hugely competitive strategies to get our business. Competition between them is relentless and they use two for one offers, discounts and sell some goods like milk below cost to get customers in the door.

Milk is a KVI - a retail term which means "known value item". Many shoppers search for bread or milk at the lowest price possible as households use a lot of these foodstuffs. But consumers will also pick up food other than just KVIs in a store, so the retailers sell product at a loss in order to to make profit on other lines. Unfortunately the person at the end of the chain - the farmer, is who suffers. Recently in the UK, huge pressure on the retail price of milk caused farming protests and eventually, agreement on a code of practice between the dairies and the farming unions. Some retailers also agreed to put up the price for milk, a surprising move in a market that is as sharp as Ireland if not more competitive.

Food prices in Ireland actually have varied little in the past five years, and one of the reasons for this is huge competition among retailers for a marketplace that is in recession. Incomes have fallen and so has our food spend. Research shows we look for KVIs, discounts, offers and are shopping around more. The growth of Aldi and Lidl in both Ireland and the UK are testament to our lust for bargains. While retailers say the customer wants cheap food, we also as customers don't want a food chain where the retailer takes huge percentages of the price we pay for an item, while the person who sowed the crop or raised the livestock gets the smallest slice of the pie.

What's interesting about the farming and food policy of the present Government is their sluggishness or lack of courage in implementing a retail code of practice to encourage fairness in the chain. There's been consultation on this done by the previous Government, it was set to continue and promoted as a badly needed policy in the last election campaign but so far there is no movement on it. Yes we want cheap food but a code of practice spreads the price of that food item more evenly to all the people who contribute to it.

Lamb prices are good now but my neighbour is still not tempted to re-enter the full-time farming fray. We also talked about how Harvest 2020's targets for more sheep on Irish farms could knock back prices as higher supply tends to do. There are no easy solutions but what we all agreed was that the massive power the supermarkets wield has been let go unchecked despite promises to engage with the issue. At the end of the night we took our torches, hi viz vests and walked home on country lanes underneath the stars, stopping at another house for a nightcap, which we needed like the proverbial hole in the head. One thing that keeps rural areas strong is people talking to each other, sharing issues and concerns and also laughing - about kids, animals, livestock... or the financially perilous predicament many now find themselves in. It would be great though to see policy addressing the inequality in the Irish food chain..If we're to see a vibrant rural sector and future generations still farming, we have to step up to the plate and engage with the elephant in the room.  

Want to ban cheese ads being seen by Irish kids? You've two days to do so... or not

Cheese is getting cheesed off. And I'm not surprised. If you're a supporter of Irish cheese or hate the fact that cheese could soon be banned in advertisements shown during children's television, you have just a few more days to submit your views to the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland on the proposed ban.

What the BAI want to do is ban ads for foods which can contribute to obesity in children. There's no doubt we have an obesity crisis in this country but under the BAI's nutritional profiling model, cheese is classed in the same grouping as fast food burgers and chips, soft drinks and chocolate bars. This is because cheese frequently has high levels of saturated fats, and there's no doubt that it does - with the average commercial cheddar made up of about 40% fat, or more.

But as we know, cheese has a very clean slate of ingredients compared to processed foods and snacks which are at the heart of our obesity problems. Many in Ireland's food sector view the ban as something that could be both detrimental to our dairy industry and also to children's diets. With research showing that many Irish children and teenagers are deficient in calcium it seems a contradictory approach to class cheese as a "bad" element of a varied diet. Particularly when you compare of dairy produce to the empty calories that children and young people are getting from soft drinks and the super high fat foods that they eat outside the home.

The proposals are also potentially harmful to the international push we are giving Irish dairy products in huge grocery marketplaces like China. This is the view of Irish artisan cheese producers, the Irish Farmers Association and summed up pretty much here in the The National Dairy Council's view on the issue -

“Restricting the advertising of cheese in Ireland will directly undermine the development of the Irish cheese industry, an industry where a huge element growth is predicated in terms of exporting increased production of Irish cheese to international consumers. The positioning of cheese in this proposed regulation as, effectively, 'junk food' could create reputational issues which may take years to reverse.”

My piece on the issue from the Irish Independent is at the link below which fleshes out the subject.

http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/smart-consumer/cheesed-off-are-tv-ads-helping-to-make-your-kids-obese-3110747.html

If you want to submit your views to the BAI, you have until this Thursday 31st May to do so. Check out the link at the bottom of the page, and if cheese is your passion, let your opinions be heard. 
http://www.bai.ie/?p=2431

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

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.

Stick to what you do best, believe in yourself and the passion will shine through. Finally, I visit the legend that is Ballymaloe

Breakfast at Ballymaloe House is the kind of breakfast you dream of. Gooseberries and pears from the garden nestle alongside natural yoghurt. The yellowest of eggs from hens on the farm fight for room alongside sausages, bacon, and puddings from pigs slaughtered and cured by a local butcher. A fragrant bunch of sweetpeas watches over the fresher than fresh orange juice and selection of home-made breads and scones.

As a seasoned examiner of hotel breakfasts who harasses waiters with "where does the raspberry jam come from?", breakfast at Ballymaloe was up there with some of my Great Food Experiences. In fact it's best if you eat breakfast here not to go to another hotel within a short space of time, or in fact ever. Simply because few meals are going to match this standard, and that's even before I get started on the Blackwater salmon and Ballycotton lobster at dinner.

It was last week that Philip and I found ourselves in Ballymaloe; we visited the hotel, cookery school and farm for a speaking engagement on our book Basketcase; What's Happening to Ireland's Food? and the follow-up documentary What's Ireland Eating? which aired a few months ago on RTE. Doing these talks is seldom hard work as the reaction and energy from people interested in food and which direction Irish food is going is so wonderful to be around. If anything, every time we speak at a food event together or separately, I learn so much from the people in the audience and take away many personal stories from farmers, food producers and enthusiasts. These chats have led to relationships with people from all over the country (in fact all over the world) and have informed a big part of my journalism. Indeed, they should all watch out, or they're in danger of appearing in the follow up to What's Ireland Eating? which looks to be on the cards.

But more important than the opportunity to eat the wonderful food at Ballymaloe, was the chance to spend time with Darina and the Allen family. It's so rare to meet someone who is truly so passionate about food, farming and the environment, or someone who is so steeped in the tradition of good food but also au fait with the realities of the global food highway we operate in. So many hotels and food businesses "greenwash" what they are doing; they market themselves as authentically Irish, organic, sustainable etc. But what's written all over Ballymaloe and Darina herself is that this farm is the genuine article. In fact, after filming with Ear to the Ground on farms from Belgium to Vietnam, I can safely say there are very few places like Ballymaloe, it is a remarkable farm and a beacon for Irish produce, organics and for the sheer quality and correctness in the way it produces food.

We all know Darina from her books and television series, but what you don't get to see on television is the way she moves through her garden, puzzling over how many days it will be before the blackcurrants are just right to eat. In almost the same breath she remarks on supermarket legislation and what upcoming changes might mean for Irish producers.

Darina's and Tim's breath of knowledge on farming, gardening and production of every type of foodstuff from cheddar cheese to cob nuts is remarkable, and the gardens they have built surrounding the cookery school at Ballymaloe are incredibly beautiful. Pictured above is Darina showing Philip around one of the formal gardens; box hedging encloses vegetables, herbs, lavenders and ornamental planting. Food is in evidence everywhere; chickens peck amongst the trees, garlic bunches hang from the mental struts of the greenhouses and everything from cabbages to cherry tomatoes are grown on the farm. From the milk of two Jersey cows they are currently making cheese. In fact, if there was ever a model for self sufficiency this is it.

After a tour of the farm we watched Rachel Allen giving a demonstration at the cookery school. The Ballymaloe courses are world famous, and it's possibly the only cookery school in the world located on an organic farm. As someone passionate about food and farming, I had always wanted to visit the cookery school and farm, but somehow I felt I would be let down by the experience. I felt it might be "chinzy"; inauthentic, that the Ballymaloe experience could be marketing over matter; a Cath Kidson version of River Cottage. As farming and artisan food is currently so vogueish, it's often hard to tell what's real and who is pulling the wool over your eyes.

But Ballymaloe is real. You know if you spend as long as we did talking about deep litter systems for cattle and compost making that this is a farm which knows what it is about. It is also a food message which is not a cutesy one, but a real one. Everything is done properly. It has an old fashioned workmanlike feel about it. Correctness and workmanlike approach might sound like something from a past age but it really pays off in terms of working with the environment and with livestock - it's a quality that was beaten into me from riding and working with horses. It's also something I learned from my parents farms, and something I always look out for when I visit farms, food or tourism businesses. Over-ornamentation or faux "Irishness" does not make up for bad farm management, poor quality food or mass produced ingredients. And thankfully customers aren't stupid. In my experience food businesses that fail to do things properly, fail themselves.

No corners are cut at Ballymaloe; it's the real deal. At its kernal is a message of quality; growing local ingredients through generations of experience producing food in East Cork. If there's any message or ethos I took away from Ballymaloe it's to stick to what you are doing, believe in it, and passion will shine through. So much of our lives and consumerism itself is built on precisely the opposite. What's lovely about Ballymaloe and so pertinent to all of us is that we produce great food in this country. Finally we are taking more notice and Ireland the Food Island is punching above its weight. Like Ballymaloe, food doesn't have to be complicated to succeed. It just has to be true to itself, and real.

Building an Artisan food sector in Ireland - hey folks, it's already there

I returned windswept and shaken from a conference in Tullamore last night. It wasn't the content of the day that had me in shock but rather getting stuck on Brian Cowen's throw-s***-loads-of- money-at-Tullamore-to-keep-my-seat series of ringroads built without a single sign back to the motorway that tested my nerves. Let alone that the weather did its level best to add to the confusion.

Happily, earlier in the day I was speaking on the subject of building jobs in rural Ireland from the artisan food sector - a subject close to my heart, and my stomach. According to Bord Bia's figures released last week the artisan food sector is in good nick - the 400 small food companies they work with provide 3000 people with employment and with a turnover of 400 million annually it's grown at a rate of 7% per year since 2007.

But all isn't rosy in the garden, and as someone who talks to food producers throughout the year and tells their stories, things are a little harder on the ground. Getting paid is a major issue for small food producers, with suppliers of cheese and the like waiting long periods to get paid from outlets which buy their stock; particularly restaurants. Not only does this create cash flow problems but it fosters fear that their buyer is about to go under which isn't the nicest feeling in the world.

If you're a small food company, getting money from banks to expand or provide more employment is almost impossible at the moment, and dealing with very restrictive food regulations is also driving people mad. I know that Eurotoques the chefs group has made representations to the powers that be to make things easier for smaller producers; putting Irish food businesses through the hoop on regulations that aren't followed in other EU companies seems particularly unfair.

We all want to eat safe food, but if we see butchers in France with more casual set-ups than what's required in comparison to here still producing good safe food, then the legislation can surely to be adapted to be more flexible.

The decline in consumer spend is the biggest problem communicated to me by producers. Whether they have a stall at a farmers market or produce large quantities of a premium product to the multiples, their customers are spending less money and business can be tight at times. However, I spoke with one food seller yesterday who pointed out that if people come into your shop and spend less, you just need more customers to come in the door to make up the same numbers at the end of the month.

So expanding customer base is key, while keeping the customers you already have. I feel that even in these less than rosy times, people who buy artisan food even occasionally find it difficult to go back to eating total rubbish. I think once you're converted you stay that way, and if you spend less now on food (like most of us do), then so be it. It's simply the case at the moment that if more consumers are tempted go down the local/artisan food route, and spend money on it even now and again, then producers can stay in business.

My presentation (which you may not gather from the above) was actually very positive about the Irish small food business sector and this was backed up by case studies by Joy Moore from Oldtown Hill Bakehouse and Bernadine Mulhall from Coolnaowle Country House and Organic Farm from who gave a potted history of how their businesses had started and where they stood now. Both were really interesting examples of successful hard working entrepreneurs who had a passion for what they do.

Bernadine's situation in particular stood out as herself and her husband had left conventional mixed farming to start an organic system. After spraying their wheat crop with pesticides every year her husband was ill afterwards for several days. So they turned organic and his health recovered. This doesn't say much for what we're putting on our fields, though I think we knew this already.

Overall the conference was a great day, and thanks to National Rural Network who invited me to speak. It was lovely to catch up with buddies from my old days on Ear to the Ground and with Ollie Moore, Catherine Mack, Duncan Stewart and other writers who share a common agenda in keeping good food in production in Ireland. While it's clear that it's our large scale dairy and beef sectors that are the real contributors to the 8 billion euro worth of food we export each year, artisan food still has a very important place at the table. It functions as a way to keep people farming, making food and living in the Irish countryside, which far outways the attractions of producing factory food at low prices.

While there's a world wide market for cheap food, we will kill farming in Ireland if we adopt the US model of producing at the lowest possible price point. Somewhere in the mix Ireland can occupy the middle ground and in fact, the upper ground as well.

Thanks again to all the great speakers who contributed to my knowledge on renewable energies, dairy expansion and the other subjects which aroused a lot of discussion on the day. A further big thanks to David Meredith and Kevin Heanue from Teagasc for letting me grill them on supermarkets; getting to the bottom of their huge margins and understanding what exactly they are up to.... but we'll hold that news till later.

x