Can foodies and commercial farming co-exist?

Savour Kilkenny organisers you know who you are. Again; a great festival. Again I return home so stuffed with gorgeous local food I roll out of my car on arrival, replete with foodie gifts for just about everyone except the dog.

What stood out for me about this year's festival was the inclusion of John Bryan from the Irish Farmers Association on the Foodcamp panel where I was also speaking. As someone with a foot in both camps, I feel the food world and the farming world frequently revolve around each other like two suspicious planets. Rarely do they have an opportunity to meet, engage in discussion or put to bed misunderstandings that exist between the two sectors. The GM issue has polarised this with many foodies and food groups now pretty angry with Teagasc and the IFA. Many also oppose the general idea of commercial farming which they feel is overfond of GM animal feed and supports a liberalisation of GM technologies in Ireland.

In fact the position of both sides is far more complex than this, but you wouldn't believe this unless you talk to the people involved. And that's the problem, many foodies never meet anyone who farms and most farmers have scant time to talk about the eating quality of a white truffle from Piedmont or what Rieslings they particularly enjoy.

Speaking on the Kilkenny Foodcamp panel last Thursday I suggested both worlds have a lot to learn, and more importantly to gain from each other. The IFA are superb lobbyists and have access to Simon Coveney our Minister for Agriculture and Brussels in a way that leaves the artisan and small food sector far behind. Yet both are singing from the same hymn sheet. Irish cheeses and artisan products are the shop window that sell our clean green image to the likes of Sainsburys and Danone. Big food can exist with small food, but unfortunately I often find myself the only person in the room saying this.
So kudos to Mag Kirwan and the organisers of the festival for including the IFA. As Mag said herself during the panel discussion "I hate the word artisan. And you won't make money making produce at your kitchen table". Her business Goatsbridge Trout had to grow to be successful. Others can remain small and still make money. What's important is that there remains a no size fits all mentality to the food sector in Ireland. Those that are very big or very small are not necessarily in opposition to each other. Yes we have to be careful that Harvest 2020 means sustainable production and that Ireland steers away from a factory farm model. But the only way in ensuring that is that the farming and the food sector shares more common ground and starts talking to each other like the example of what happened at Kilkenny. So, what about it lads?

Irish food, embarrassment of riches or plain embarrassment?

This is Donal Skehan, isn't he lovely? More on that later. This Friday I'll be locking horns in a debate with some premier Irish and international food writers at Savour Kilkenny. The topic is "Irish cuisine - embarrassment of riches or plain embarrassment?" Funnily enough I could debate either side of this but on Friday I'm on the "embarrassment" bench. Can't wait; I've got some great hideous Irish food examples lined up; the pub sandwich in the bag, rubbery, watery chicken in a wrap, the ubiquitous beef or salmon dinner - so awful they named a racehorse after it. Whatever side you might ally yourself with it's sure to be an entertaining debate. And hey opposition, don't think for a second you've a chance in hell of beating us.

Savour Kilkenny has a brilliant line up of food events - demos by Donal Skehan and Catherine Fulvio (above and right), food trails, wine workshops, children's cookery, blindfold sensory dining and a foodcamp on the Friday. Going to festivals is one of the nicest parts about writing about food and farming for a living. It's where I meet people who farm and produce food, other food journalists and all kinds of people who just like cooking and eating. Whether you write as I do for print or television it's still a solitary job. So going on the road; hanging out in windy fields with farmers and laughing with people at food festivals is where you see it all come together.
It's also where you see changes happening in the way food is presented and discussed. Five years ago in Ireland food festivals were all about food on the plate. Now they focus increasingly on where the food is coming from. What's the point offering a dish with tiger prawns intensively farmed in Vietnam, frozen and flown here god knows how long after they were harvested, as Irish Food? Unfortunately we still see this kind of thing in many good restaurants around the country. More and more chefs are realising the value of local ingredients, cooking accordingly and food festivals are thank god, following suit.

I spent five years producing Ear to the Ground - filming in stifling hot chicken houses, cold milking parlours and on wild wet mountainsides amid hundreds of black faced sheep. Learning how food is produced and handled at its early stages is essential to understanding what we have here in Ireland in terms of our food potential. Having visited factory farms in Holland, Belgium and documented GMO farming nightmares in Thailand and Vietnam, it's often sadly the case that don't know how lucky we are here, and how good and "clean" our foodstuffs are.

If you are near to Kilkenny this Friday drop into the foodcamp at the festival - it's a series of workshops where food professionals (chefs, producers) mix with foodies (journalists, bloggers, consumers) and agencies learn and share with each other. There's a day of speakers and discussions planned from 09:30 through to 15:30 running in 4 simultaneous rooms.

The day finishes with the Food Fight debate at 3:30 chaired by John McKenna of The Bridgestone Food Guide, the debate poses the question:
“Traditional Irish Cuisine – an embarrassment of riches or just an embarrassment?”
On the embarrassment side are:

Colman Andrews – Journalist, founder of Saveur magazine and food writer
Suzanne Campbell – Journalist, author and broadcaster
Regina Sexton – Author "The Little History of Irish Food"

On the opposite bench are:
Birgitte Curtin of the Burren Smokehouse
Kevin Sheridan, food campaigner, Sheridan's cheesemongers
Catherine Cleary – Journalist and food writer, The Irish Times

I'll keep you posted on how we get on and how soundly we trash the opposition. Happy eating x http://savourkilkenny.com/