Garlic from China on Irish supermarket shelves. That’s nearly as bad as apples from New Zealand whilst our own Irish apples sit in the fields, what is this all about?
You would have to think there is something amiss with our food system when it is cheaper to ship food all the way around the world that grow it here in Ireland, would you not?
These large supermarkets sourcing choices like many of the ultra-processed products on supermarket shelves are certainly not chosen with our health in mind. Not ours or that of the planet and with the absolute necessity of progress in reducing man-made carbon emissions for the sake of humanity at COP30, we need to make the best food choices we can, and these large retailers have a responsibility to do so too.
The reason we have Chinese garlic and so much of it, nearly 1 million kgs, or one third of all the garlic eaten in Ireland, is about price and supply. There is very little Irish garlic production with a couple of notable exceptions such as Drummond House garlic and Taylors of Lusk, but how can locally grown garlic compete with this scale of cheap imports?
Of course, importing food will always be necessary, eating seasonally is great, but to be fair, it can’t be all swedes and cabbages. We are not going to subsist on daily mashed swede, we could, but realistically is this something we are going to embrace?
Conversely right now there is amazing seasonal veg and fruit available right now here in this small green wet island of Ireland. From Irish organic squash to amazing Brussel sprouts, to kale, to our own final harvest of cherry vine tomatoes (and it is definitely the last harvest of them) and to everything in between, we on our farm and many of the other Irish organic farmers that supply us have an abundance of local organic produce. From a carbon emissions perspective, eating more local plant based food is probably if we can one of the very best choices we can make to help mitigate climate change.
But some produce we will always need to import, think Bananas. Whilst there may have been a time when ostrich farming was encouraged in Ireland (this is 100% true but a story for another day) I have yet to see the department of agriculture put its not inconsiderable resources behind banana plantations but never say never and with climate change that day may be sooner than we think.
But garlic from China, well now that is another thing altogether, as we plant our first garlic and as we (and I’ll put my hands up here, import our weekly boxes of organic garlic from Spain), why in the name of God would garlic need to be shipped halfway around the world when we can grow it here in Ireland or at the very least here in Europe.
The Chinese grow nearly 800,000 Hectares of garlic and export a stagging 2.4million tonnes (in 2024), and one third of all garlic eaten in Ireland is from China. It is cheap, and how as Irish farmers can we compete with that? Could more be grown right here in Ireland?
Yes of course, we could grow we ourselves are just planting a full tunnel of garlic, which will be ready for harvest in May next year.
As always thank you for your supporting a local sustainable organic food system.
Kenneth
PS We have just opened our Christmas section on our website and are really excited to be able to supply you with a mostly Irish, always organic Christmas offering. So, if you want to support local food, and if you want to cook without chemicals this Christmas then please support us. This helps strengthen our local organic food system, and you may not think it but this is one choice that can really help ourselves eat well and help address our broken food system and our broken climate. You can order one of our fixed boxes or nearly any other product on our site.
As we were so busy last year we have had to put a cap on the boxes this year, so please get your order in early.