COMMUNITY SUPPORTED AGRICULTURE: FROM CORK TO CORRIGAN, CHARLIE THE BUTCHER AND CLOUGHJORDAN

�I spotted 3 acres of oats on a drive one day. I hadn't seen a field like it in years. It got me thinking� so says John Dolan of the Gerahies on the Sheep�s Head in west Cork.

So how to get his oats? Thinking cap on, John Dolan decided to try to initiate a CSA, or Community Supported Agriculture (CSA).

(photo copyright Oliver Moore: Richard Corrigan, Charlie Williams and the camera crew of the upcoming show, Corrigan Cooks Naturally)

Some conscious consumers are concerned about food miles and building strong local communities. However the farmer is still the one who has to 'do the do', deciding what and how much to produce, taking the risks and trying to find markets.

Vegetable or meat box schemes pay up front, and this does give the farmer who offers these schemes some security. CSA's, however, are a little different.

The latter is a shared risk and reward system, where the local farmer is contracted by the group for the act of production, not necessarily for the end product itself. While an end product is of course expected, both the consumer and the producer share the risks of the production process.

Sp if the crop doesn't thrive the consumer gets less, if its a bountiful harvest, the consumer gets more than expected. And as the farm grows, so too do the rewards.

For farmers, benefits include guaranteed price and market, as well as an improved cash flow, as CSA's pay up front. Farmers not directly involved also benefit from the rent of land to CSAs.

Consumers get very fresh, local seasonal food from a farm they have a small investment in. They also build resilience in their locale, and get to get involved in some of the direct and more ancillary parts of a local community-orientated farm.

In Ireland, there are two CSA initiatives, in Cork and Tipperary.

In Bantry, a very active and committed food consumer group approached two local farmers, Denis Holland and Stephen Donovan.

Denis Holland received E2000 for growing three acres of oats paid in installments. The group, who each paid E100 for the year, wanted to contribute to harvesting.

A slightly unusual tweak was the fact that they wanted to do so using the old skills of harvesting.

�Some of the group had done Simon Ferrelley's scything course, so 3 acres of oats were done in 4 hours by 20 people one rare fine day� John Dolan tells me.

This element was important for the consumer group: �learning the skills of small scale oat production, while gaining access to old varieties of seeds for home use were both really important for us�, according to John Dolan, who continues: � the heritage varieties we sourced from Michael Micklis. They do well under low input systems, consistently yielding 1 to 1.5 tonnes per acre, whatever the soil type or weather concerns. They also produce a more better straw, which we use for small animal and horse bedding, or for mulching our own gardens�.

The group had to find storage space, and purchase a de-hulling machine, the latter part grant aided from West Cork LEADER.

More bounty came in the form of 160 kg of potatoes for E88. The potatoes, planted on half an acre of Stephen Donovan's land, yielded about four tonnes.

�Our members were drawn from about 30 miles around Bantry: now smaller, more local groups are forming in the region� according to John Dolan. Already, groups in Kinsale and Ballydehob have begun similar initiatives.

Outside of Cork, Cloughjordan in Tipperary also has a CSA. Cloughjordan is unusual in already having an ecovillage in construction adjoining the main village itself.

While the CSA came from the ecovillage community in August 2008, it has established its own distinct structures and identity as a Limited Company.

50 families pay E20 per week. �The community here in Cloughjordan started a CSA, they set it up, looked for land and employed a farmer�, Lilly De Sylvia, the CSA's farmer, tells me.

They made an arrangement with a local farmer who had 28 acres available. This arrangement involves training and farm improvements in exchange for a 4.9 years rent free.

At the moment, the farm primarily produces an array of seasonal vegetables for its membership, from the four acres of horticulture on the site. Also grown are a range of cereals, mainly for animal feed.

Milk from their Kerry cows and their goats is available regularly now too, as well as eggs from their Rhode Island Red hens. There are also occasional supplies of beef, lamb and pork.

Walking around the farm, it was easy to bump into people from the village of Cloughjordan itself. The first day I went up, I met a retired headmaster and two newcomers building a house in the ecovillage, all with shovels and strimmers. Children have been helping out and learning on Thursday mornings over the Summer.

Most visits involve learning more about farming. De Sylvia found that taking the members on a walk of the farm last January was revelatory for them:

�Walking the whole boundary of the land, it was easy to show them that everything was frozen. So now, they have a better understanding of what's available and why�.

The farm, now two years old, is increasing its profile significantly, and will feature on Richard Corrigan's new cookery show, Corrigan Cooks Naturally. Richard Corrigan recently spent a couple of days filming many food-related aspects of Cloughjordan, in particular the community farm, where he cooked outdoors for the cameras on a large fire made by the local Scouts.

There he met local organic farmer Ralph Haslam of Mossfield cheese, one of Ireland's finest cheeses made just up the road in Birr.

To a visual backdrop of rows of vegetables, Corrigan started a dish off with a variety of small sweet turnips called Golden Balls. Picked minutes before from the rows behind him, he sliced and saut�ed these with some butter and water. �These are good enough, cooked as simply as this, to be served as a starter in my restaurant� he said directly to the women who grew them, Lily De Silvia.

Amidst the busy hullabaloo of a marque spilling out with people, kids playing nosily, fiery cooking and cameras, this statement's impact resonated. This is fine food indeed.

Local butcher Charlie Williams helped out with the show, carving up a carcass from one of his own animals for Corrigan and the crowd. �Charlie has been a great supporter of the farm, right from the early days� Pat Malone, one of the driving forced behind the establishment of this community farm, tells me.

Charlie Williams still has his own land, herd, abattoir and butcher's shop � a combination that is becoming rarer across Ireland.

Everything meaty was up for conversation now, with dozens watching and talking with this chef butcher duo. The price of various cuts, hanging times, rare vs well done meat � all were part of the lively and good hearted banter.

Afterwards, many ages of long term residents and newer arrivals chatted with each other and with Kitty Scully (horticulturalist, Nano Nagle Centre, Cork) and herbalist Vivian Hayward who were Corrigan's on camera consultants, as well as the big man himself.

Buying into a CSA is a bit of a marriage � for better or worse: if the weather is harsh, this can have consequences on the harvest, and thus consequences on the bounty members get. But when as the farm grows, so too does the membership's take.

Who knows what the future holds for this novel way to reconnect food production and consumption? With CAP reform, recession, and such variability in price, impact and availability of oil, fertilizer, feeds and other inputs, novel approaches to farming and food may well become more prominent.

BIOCHAR COULD REDUCE GREEN HOUSE GAS EMISSIONS BY UP TO 12% - IF DONE PROPERLY, NEW RESEARCH SHOWS

A mate of mine is the lead author on a recent Publication in Nature Communications on Biochar. Fair Play Dom!

Here's a longer version of a piece I wrote for the Examiner on it, in my weekly Organic Diary (every Thursday)

Is there a way for farms to be fertilized and to reduce farming's Green House Gas emissions at the same time? The principles and practices of organic farming, such as the use of clover for nitrogen fixing, are no doubt helpful in highlighting the options and opportunities for conventional farming.

There may now also be another option. According to new research, just published by a team of international scientists in the journal Nature, a substance which can be made from farm waste could reduce the world's greenhouse emissions by up to 12 per cent.

The scientists writing in the journal Nature say "Biochar" is a fine charcoal that can store carbon while helping to improve soil.

Biochar is made by decomposing biomass like plants, wood and other organic materials at high temperature in a process called slow pyrolysis.

"Biochar offers one of the few ways we can create power while decreasing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. And it improves food production in the world's poorest regions by increasing soil fertility. It's an amazing tool," said Jim Amonette, a soil chemist at the US Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

Some of the specific benefits of biochar include the fact that it can take carbon and store it for hundreds of years, as well as: improve the soil's functioning (water retention and nutrient levels), decrease nitrous oxide and methane emissions from the soil into which it is tilled, and produce some bio-based gas and oil during pyrolysis.

It is also one of the few substances that can disrupt the Carbon Dioxide cycle, as it releases oxygen from the Cycle as did coal in its formation millions of years ago.

Interestingly, the researchers looked to the world's sources of biomass that aren't already being used by humans as food. So they looked at waste crop leaves, stalks and rice husks, livestock manure and yard trimmings.

Lead author Dominic Woolf's abstract for the article states that the reductions of 12% of current anthropogenic CO2_C equivalent emissions can be achieved "without endangering food security, habitat or soil conservation".

According to a detailed Science Daily report on the study:

"The researchers then calculated the carbon content of that biomass and how much of each source could realistically be used for biochar production.

With this information, they developed a mathematical model that could account for three possible scenarios. In one, the maximum possible amount of biochar was made by using all sustainably available biomass....

"the maximum scenario could offset up to the equivalent of 1.8 petagrams -- or 1.8 billion metric tons -- of carbon emissions annually and a total of 130 billion metric tons throughout in the first 100 years. Avoided emissions include the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide.

The estimated annual maximum offset is 12 percent of the 15.4 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions that human activity adds to the atmosphere each year.....

Adding biochar to the most infertile cropland would offset greenhouse gases by 60 percent more than if bioenergy were made using the same amount of biomass from that location, the researchers found."

The origins of Biochar are in South America. Before settlers arrived, agricultural waste was smouldered by the farming inhabitants to help with soil fertility. This involved covering burning biomass with soil and then letting it smoulder. This process was labelled Terra Preta, or Terra Pretta de Indio by the European settlers who arrived.

This soil is still today more fertile and indeed dark (from the charcoal) than surrounding soils.

As with all supposed magic bullet solutions to climate change, there are pros and cons. Most who query biochar's potential, and indeed many undecided experts, see it as a small part of a multi-strand solution.

Even in this, it is acknowledged that only with careful management of its potential, can it emerge as a positive:

"Using biochar to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at these levels is an ambitious project that requires significant commitments from the general public and government. We will need to change the way we value the carbon in biomass," according to Jim Amonette.

This latter point is the key. While Biochar can work, throwing it to the wolves of global carbon trading could lead to a very messy situation, full of unintended consequences.

Critics worry about plantations to produce biochar displacing forestry: anything from 200 million to over a billion hectares have been suggested. This would replace existing forest, Savannah and woodlands with biochar plantations.

Ironically people who currently use these, in western terms, uneconomical lands, also produce hardly any Green House Gases.

Massive commercial tree plantations have, all over the world, been shown to be environmentally destructive in a myriad of ways, from soil erosion to pesticide run off.

There are also examples where biochar has been shown to suppress rather than improve plant growth, and also stimulate bacterias which cause other types of climate change anyway.

Of course, it doesn't have to be like this. Biochar can simply be a case of baby steps in the right direction, using farm wastes that would otherwise be costly to treat and climate change causing if left untreated.

Here in Ireland, FEASTA (the Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability) have been engaged in a Department of Environment funded multi agency initiative to examine carbon cycles and sinks. Research into biochar for arable farming has been part of this.

The journal article reference: Dominic Woolf, James E. Amonette, F. Alayne Street-Perrott, Johannes Lehmann, Stephen Joseph. Sustainable biochar to mitigate global climate change. Nature Communications, Aug. 10, 2010)

For more see feasta's Carbon Sinks and Cycles site

WHAT'S ON THE ORGANIC RADAR? SEE HERE!

As Autumn starts to approach the Organic calendar begins to hot up. A few Teagasc organic demonstration farm walks remain, entries need to organised for the National Organic Awards and National Organic Week itself is being planned.

Remaining walks include field scale vegetables (August 26th Offaly) Beef, sheep, pigs, tillage, direct selling (August 31st Laois), dairying and biodiversity (September 1st Tipperary), beef, sheep, pigs, tillage (September 2nd Cavan), dairying tillage and farm shop (Kildare) and horticulture and direct selling (Galway).

(Pic: Una Ni Bhroin of Beechlawn Organic farm, which is holding an event for National Organic Week 2010)

All walks are on at 2 pm this year. This factor does make it more difficult for part time farmers to attend, which has had a bearing on numbers: last year's times were more varied.

Some of these walks are especially noteworthy. The Cavan event is on Richard Moeran's land, who also, as it happens, now supplies excellent organic poultry. This poultry is usually available at Declan McCarthy's organic mobile butcher's unit in various parts of the north west, including Cavan and Sligo farmers' markets.

Moeran is most noted, however, for his rare breed pigs. So if this area is of any interest to you, its well worth visiting his Mountnugent holding.

The last two walks have distinct direct selling elements: indeed the event on 3rd September on Peter and Jenny Young's farm, is on a holding which features a veritable A-Z of diversification, from cheese making to allotment training. In offering the latter, the couple train both farmers in offering allotments and allotmenteers in growing.

Now in their 4th year, the National Organic Awards have highlighted some spectacularly fine foods. Last year's winner, Moonshine dairies' unhomogenised milk, was and still is a fabulous product at a great price.

This year's awards have been extended to include organic horticulture growers. The announcement of the awards will coincide with National Organic Week (13th-19th September).

The award categories are: Best Organic Retail Product; Best Organic Local Product; Best Organic Export Product; Best Organic New Product; Best Sustainable Organic Product.

Each of the above five winners will then be put forward for judging for the Best Overall Organic Product. Application forms are available to download from the Bord Bia website

Also on their site, the list of events for National Organic Week itself is growing and growing. These range in size from tastings and tours to seminars and conferences. There are events on in the Nano Nagle Centre (Cork), Gortbrack (Kerry), Beechlawn House (Galway), various farmers markets and stores, and more soon to be announced.

Organic conferences are listed for both the Wexford Organic Centre and for the Hodson Bay hotel

According to Eileen Bentley of Bord Bia the aim of the week is to increase �the awareness of organic food benefits amongst core target audience� which she describes as �female, pre-family/young family.�

She goes on: �We will be doing this via a mix of activities on a national and local level, including national press advertising, bus shelter advertising, PR, on-line activities, in-store point of sale materials and funding for local producer events nationwide.�

She also makes reference to local events listed on the site and to the awards as being part of this promotional work. On the day of the awards' announcement, September 14th, �a workshop seminar for organic producers targeting the German market will also be held in Bord Bia, delivered by Grunekopfe Berlin� according to Bentley.

One element that will differ this year for National Organic Week is the promotional phrase used. Following a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority of Ireland, last year's phrase 'Organic: good for nature good for you' has been dropped.

The new phrase? 'Organic farming: good for nature good for you.' The latter is OK because its an approved EU phrase, whereas the the former was adapted.

Just how the word farming changes the meaning so much is a bit mysterious. It must be all the weeding. Organic farming � helps you get fit!

For a listing of the ever expanding array of events being held forr National Organic Week, see here

Euro Toques call out to artisan food producers

Euro-toques, the chefs' and cooks' organisation, is seeking information on issues primary and secondary food producers have had with regard to food safety enforcement.

The organisation has established a �Food Producer �Safety Net� council�, comprising Myrtle Allen, Darina Allen (Ballymaloe House) Evan Doyle (Brooklodge), and Ruth Hegarty (Eurotoques).

According to a recent statement by Euro-toques, which has about 180 members, �we are seeking factual accounts of cases where food safety requirements have been imposed on small producers which seem disproportionate, incidents have occurred with the authorities which seem unfair, or producers who have gone out of business or simply given up because of the cost or burden of food safety compliance.�

While concerned with maintaining good food safety standards, they also point out that it is important to �provide emergency support for producers as well as advocacy to advance recognition of safe traditional and artisan food production practices�.

They point out that �practices that have been carried out in food production for generations are safe, and that hygiene requirements must be proportionate to the risk�.

They aim to �identify the least expensive way of complying with legal requirements and to have these methods recognised by the authorities�, while also working on education of food safety authorities and enforcement officers with regard to artisan food.

To do this, they want to build a database of food safety concerns and to �highlight, factually, where food safety regulation has been applied in a way that is not necessary or proportionate to the food risks in question�.

They will ask for �concrete facts and real cases�, but will use them in an anonymous way.

Positive encounters with food safety authorities are also requested, as these could help develop best practice guidelines for the future.

Information is to be submitted on: the producer, the problem, legal issues, costs, suggested alternatives and interactions with authorities.

They point our that they have �a legal expert on board who will work on relating your cases back to the relevant legislation and showing where EU law allows for flexibility in such cases�.

On the ground, many primary and secondary food producers have complained about the costs of compliance as well as what they see as unnecessary and avoidable duplication.

Food producers are not reimbursed for samples given up for testing, even when this can consist of a considerable proportion of overall product.

Some farmers who also have food businesses have listed up to two dozen inspections in a given year.

According to Anthony Creswell of the Ummera Smoked Products, �We ourselves spend a large amount of money getting identical tests done because the regulatory bodies require us to. It�s the duplication that adds to all our costs - duplication of tests, duplication of inspections�.

He points out that because his business smokes both meat and fish, it has inspections from both the Department of Agriculture and the SFPA (Sea-Fisheries Protection Authority), but �both under the auspices of the FSAI�. So �why not just one inspectorate?� he asks, while also pointing out that this would also be more economically efficient.

To contact Euro-toques, ruth@euro-toques.ie; ring 01 6779995 or see here