Spirituality, self-sufficiency, selling and the split: a brief potted history of organic farming in Ireland

Here's an article on organic organisations in Ireland, and how they developed from the 1980s to today. It is a linear and political take - I may contribute a cultural take sometime soon. This is essentially a v short history of IOFGA - the Irish Organic Farmers and Growers Association. As it happens, according to Anthony Kay (one of Ireland's genuinely pioneering organic farmers) a branch of the Soil Association was established in the 1950s in Ireland. He baked some bread for the event.

IOFGA was set up at a sequence of meetings in the early 1980s. Then, it was called IOGA (i.e. The Irish Organic Growers Association), which reflects just how important vegetable growers were to the movement back then. The grand total of 6 people attended the first meeting. Long haired, beardy men and shaven-headed women sat around on bales of hay in Rod Alston's place, Eden Plants in Rossinver County Leitrim. 40-odd attended another gathering in Blackcastle Co.Meath. By 1984, 2-300 hundred attended a three-day conference in Glencree (Wicklow). The name was soon changed to IOFGA.

Before the mid 1980s, the vast majority of organic producers in Ireland were homesteading migrants. By the mid 1980s, native born Irish farmers like Gerry Brown (a vet from Roscommon) and Michael Hickey (a beef farmer from Tipperary) were entering the fold. Bigger enterprises were being established, like Ballybrado farm. IOFGA had 350 members by 1986, but few of these were full time farmers.

A gradual but unmistakable divide was forming in the 1980s, between commercially-minded farmers who saw both the commercial and environmental merit in larger-scale organic sales, and those more interested in a smaller, but 'purer' environmentalism and alternative living.

In the Winter of 1991, a personality-driven split occurred. While there were genuine differences between the two camps, things didn't work out as simply as you might expect.

People who stayed with IOFGA were concerned that there was a conflict of interest in the Irish Organic Inspectorate(IOI). The IOI were the organic certifiers at the time. The only people who could possibly know enough to certify organic produce were those directly involved in the sector. So this controversial situation was unavoidable. The move away from alternative living and a feeling that the inspectorate was behaving in an elitist and unaccountable manner were also cited as being problematic by some.

Those that went on to form the Organic Trust (OT) were, in the main, committed to larger-scale organic production. They worried about inspection standards, a particularly nationalistic logo which was in use from 1987-1991, xenophobia against blow-ins, careerism in IOFGA and the emergence of possibly weak national standards with emerging Irish government interest in the sector: the much maligned Charlie Haughey actually gave substantial support to the sector in 1991, and actually farmed Kinsealy organically.

None of this went smoothly, as you can imagine; IOFGA represented many, often divergent interests: alternative living, environmentalism and rural native Irish farmers. Also, it was the body which received state support. Organic Trust represented the biggest producers in the land, but were in a legal vacuum for a few years. In what was a very symbolic act, the Ballybrado farm, perhaps the most visible landmark on the organic map, was split in two.

Slowly, the woulds began to heal. In 1996, equalisation between the IOFGA and OT standards occurred. The organic sector grew, with around 1000 producers and around 30,000 hectares of certified land by the end of the century. Today, IOFGA represent about 2/3 of producers, and the Organic Trust about 1/3. People tend to join either IOFGA or OT without any real reference to what are now largely the political differences of the past.

That said, IOFGA still carries out more political work - whiel Organic Trust members are also anti-GM, IOFGA members have been to the forefront of the anti-GM campaign. They also produce the magazine, Organic Matters. Organic Trust still claim to certify the bigger producers and an overall larger amount of produce, but maintian a fairly low profile otherwise.

IOFGA is now located at Newtownforbes, Co. Longford, (T) 043 42495 (F) 043 42496 (E)iofga@eircom.net.

Organic Trust is at Vernon House, 2 Vernon Avenue, Clontarf, Dublin 3, Tel/Fax: +353-1-853 0271, email organic@iol.ie