a positive strike for all

here's a quirky little story I picked up from Slow Food news.

"Hundreds of German milk producers recently went on strike for several weeks to protest against reduced milk prices, stopping milk deliveries until the retail market agreed to pay 40 eurocents per liter. In the German federal state of Hessen, 130 Slow Food member milk producers and members of the Uppl�nder Bauernmolkerei cooperative supported the strike action and stopped milk sales for four days even though their organic milk (of very high quality) commands a premium price of 50 eurocents per liter. Instead, they produced 14 tonnes of butter and 24 tonnes of milk powder, which was then donated on June 24 to representatives of the charity M�decins Sans Fronti�res."

For more on slow food, click here

As food prices soar, will anyone buy organic food?

What does the future hold for that most extravagant of foods, organic food? Even when the Celtic Tiger was in full vigour, prowling around the place with a strut, we were told that organic food was too expensive. Now, every news report about the price of things is talking about the fact that people are cutting back.

A recent RTE news report on the topic interviewed a woman who ran a nail bar. She said that people were now only going for the essentials � like waxing.

How we survived as a culture without nail bars didn�t seem to come into the discussion. That nails bars have �essentials� while organic food is too expensive says a lot about our priorities.

Organic producers face rising costs, undoubtedly. Particular sections within the overall sector are especially vulnerable, such as poultry, pork.

While organic dairy and tillage have medium level vulnerability the rest - horticulture, beef, sheep - may start to see some competitive advantages emerge, as their overall external inputs can be lower.

In particular, those who have been at the less advantageous end of the market may see things improve for them: hill farmers sometimes buy in hay for the winter, but their overall purchasing of external inputs is low. Some simply don�t buy any inputs, and manage to out winter without buying in feed.

It is likely that seasonal eating will re-emerge � small scale horticulture focused on the regional market should be a key aspect of this, and policy should reflect this.

Pork and poultry may well become treats rather than staples, and more mature mountain meats may emerge, such as sheep meat over spring lamb.

Already, there is something of a move towards this: Hugh Fernley Wittingstall�s River Cottage Meat book waxes lyrical about extra-mature mountain lamb �is a great passion of mine and of a growing band of aficionados, and I believe it offers great potential� according to the man himself.

This type of meat is was in fact the meat of the kings in ancient Ireland: wether was used as feast and wedding meat by the chieftains.

Hill sheep and cattle offer great potential for converting to organic: the 450,000 hrectares of commonage, along with greenland of just over 350,000 hectares, produces very little product at present: 2,500,000 kg of meat. That�s 3.2 kg per hectare, and about �10 million output at �4 per kilo.

For these farmers to consider the organic option would involve very few substantial farming changes, and few of the ever more expensive synthetic inputs. We may yet see a controlled, well managed return of farming to the hills over the next decade, and it should be certified organic, to avail of the maximum mark up for farmers.

Meanwhile, the price of farming goes up and up in what have been the most intensive, most productive and profitable of places. Fertiliser, pesticide and fuel prices are soaring, and will most likely continue to soar.

The raw materials for P and K have increased three fold in the last year. The price of Sulphur has increased ten fold.

Oil and gas, inherently implicated in the production and transportation of fertilizers, are running out - even what�s left will at a certain point prove too costly to extract.

Simply put, it will use up too much oil to take out of the ground the last 1-2 trillion barrels. And as it happens, there are only 1 trilllion barrels known � the other potential 3 trillion of reserves are exactly that � potential.

Farmers have already started to use less fertilizer .The true cost of conventional farming is starting to hit home, and farming is actually becoming more organic in style and substance.

Polemicists like Kevin Myers may argue for even more industrialisation, for a race towards GM, for all kinds of everything within the current oil dependent paradigm.

In reality, farmers adapt, prices between some organic and conventional products begin to equalise, seasonality re-emerges, and the previously disadvantaged, such as hill farmers, may begin to get an advantage.

In these post Celtic Tiger, recessionary days, organic farming and food is actually well placed to step up and to step in.

(For more on this topic, have a look at the food monitor site )

Farmers' Markets: to Regulate or Incentivise?

For a variety of reasons, organic farmers and growers have always been interested in farmers� markets. While they may be of no substantial interest to the biggest of commercial producers, many of the smaller food producers like them for a variety of reasons.

Organics has always been about the consumer getting to know more about the product, and farmers� markets are a good vehicle to do this.

Along with the rise in farmers� markets, the rise in cynicism about these markets has occurred. Dublin-based, or perhaps Dublin obsessed commentators seem fixated with the price of food at farmers� markets, as if they are all held in Brooklodge, or south county Dublin.

In reality, many farmers� markets are better value for what you get than many of the alternatives. I know this because I shop at a few rural ones regularly, and I�ve studied them as an academic for five or so years. This involved visiting dozens all over Ireland.

But people are funny about the price of food. Especially people who don�t often frequent places like farmers� markets.

Here�s a few lines from the excellent Omnivore�s Dilemma book by Michael Pollan, in which the now iconic Joel Salatin talks about the price and the value of the food in his farm shop:

�When someone drives up to the farm in a BMW and asks me why our eggs cost more, well, first I try not to get mad. Frankly, any city person who doesn�t think I deserve a white-collar salary as a farmer doesn�t deserve my special food. Let them eat E Coli. But I don�t say that. Instead, I take him outside and point at his car: �Sir, you clearly understand quality and are willing to pay for it. Well, food is no different: you get what you pay for��.

This is not to say that there aren�t issues facing local food. These issues can boil down to distance and disconnection.

Consumers come looking for local, naturally produced food. And often they get it. However this level of personal attention can be time consuming for producers: there are issues of scale for producers to stand at every stall their produce is on. This balance between integrity and viability, between actually providing local food and having a range of varied products people might want to buy, is key.

Of course, there are buffers against the stallholders and the produce itself coming from further and further a field - many farmers� markets manage to avoid an excess of distance and disconnection.

Nonetheless, there are sometimes frustrations at the difference between the wording, and the impression of local food and the reality people sometimes experience, particularly in or near Dublin.

With this in mind, some promising steps have been taken by Junior Minister Trevor Sargent to address the standards to which farmers� markets operate.

While there is a consultation process underway, involving a number of Departments and stakeholders, its clear what the Minister himself prefers: �I�m very focused on providing incentives first and foremost. I recognise that there is a need for regulations, for example from a health and safety point of view, but some of those are already in place. I�m hoping to encourage an accreditation system which would be an incentive for farmers� markets to, as it were, �tick the boxes��not unlike the systems in place on beaches or for the green flag schools.�

And while the specifics are to be hammered out through the consultation process, it is clear that the Minister wants �to encourage rather than to regulate.�

This must chime pleasantly with those wary of over-regulation, or wary of too strict an interpretation of the dictates on locale stifling the markets� growth potential.

Farm Fest 08: organics comes of age

If ever there was an event that represented the coming of age of the artisan and organic sectors in Ireland, then it was Teagasc�s Farm Fest 08, held in Athenry on the 20^th June last. And if the Ploughing championship could be compared to the Oxygen music festival, then Farm Fest was the Electric Picnic.

This is because the otherwise more boutique, small, niche, high-end and specialist was actually centre stage. While all of the main players from the agri-food world were at the event, the main marquee, and by far the busiest and liveliest of the locations at Farm Fest, was the place where the organic producers were.

This marquee was called �innovation and artisan food�. Interestingly, the word organic wasn�t in the Marquee�s name, despite the fact that the majority of stalls, by a considerable distance, were by or of interest to organic and artisan producers.

The place seemed young, active, dynamic and positive about the future. In other arenas, people had heated debates over one cent. In this marquee, people seemed to know and love their product, and seemed able to convince consumers to pay a fair price for it.

In most cases, the farmers here were food producers � they did something to their primary products and got a proper mark up for so doing. In one section of the marquee there was Noodle House Organic Pastas, Gerry and Mary Kelly�s Moonshine organic diary products, both sitting alongside Ralph Haslam�s Mossfield Cheeses. The food producers themselves were all present and accounted for, dealing with enthusiastic and interested consumers, curious farmers and an array of media.

For Ralph, Bruce Springsteen�s decision to buy copious amounts of Mossfield when here recently seems to have catapulted the cheese into the culinary stratosphere. When I dropped by, Valerie Cox from RTE radio 1 was chatting to him. Within five minutes, during which time I devoured some hearty slices of his mature gouda-style cheese, TV3 had dropped over to find out about the Bruce Springsteen cheese.

And considering the fact that at he has done so well at the World Cheese Awards, Ralph is looking forward to the event being held in Dublin later on this year.

Another set of products attracting attention were those of Solaris botanicals. Here, a range of leading-edge organic whole leaf teas were on display and available to taste. The business is run by Karin Wieland and Jorg Muller, a couple who are qualified medical herbalists. As well as a simply spectacular range of teas, their knowledge, skill and passion were also on display.

There was a strong interest in organic feeds and seeds, while many of the main organisations involved in the organic sector had a presence too, including IOFGA, NOTS (National Organic Training Skillnets), as well as the Wexford and Leitrim Organic Centres.

The rural development, artisan and organic ends of the state institutions such as DAFF, Teagasc and Bord Bia were also busy and present, taking up a whole area of the marquee itself.

Along with the wandering and chatting, there was business being done:

Joe Condon of Omega Beef Direct was flat out gathering potential recruits for his upland farming �Organics with Altitude� idea, (featured in this supplement two weeks ago). Martin Henry and Liam Lyons had their recently purchased organic mobile butchers� unit outside the marquee in the market area � it took me five visits just to have a quick word with Liam. Padraig Fahy of Beechlawn Organic Farm seemed as busy with his vegetable selling and interactions with various players in the organic sector as when he was chair of IOFGA.

The artisan stalls were super busy too: Glastry Farm�s artisan ice cream stand, all the way from the county Down, was absolutely trobbing, as was the Foods of Athenry stall from just down the road.

When I did leave the �Innovation and Artisan Food� arena, it occasionally did look like the Electric Picnic, with some of the same food stalls, surrounded by entertainment like wooden toy tnets, a kids zone, Connemara Pony displays and then all the other marquees.

It was a beautiful day in many ways. Great weather helps, but the contented feeling of a sector on the rise helped too.