Only 60 field vegetable growers left in Ireland…

by Kenneth Keavey

In 1998 there were over 400 primary field scale growers in Ireland, now there are less than 60.  I imagine if you went back a further 30 years, this number would double again.

There was a time when a potato or vegetable grower could deal directly with local supermarkets, this allowed local produce to be sold at local supermarkets. But since the advent of central distribution, the flow of produce has been restricted to only three or four large distributors that supply the supermarkets, putting a swift end to local supply chains.

Growers had little choice, either consolidate, increase production and compete or go out of business. But as the supermarket model of procurement was centralised their power increased and there was little power left in the hands of the farmer.

Farmers that scaled up to meet the demand, usually with very significant investment (you need tractors, sheds, washing facilities to grow vegetables in scale), were left at the mercy of unscrupulous supermarket buyers. When farmers were then faced with propositions from supermarkets to drop their prices or to fund promotions to reduce the price of their produce on supermarket shelves they had little choice but to do so.

On a smaller scale but not dissimilar to the bigger growers above, I remember distinctly our experience of dealing with supermarkets. We had spent several years building up business with certain supermarkets and we were selling well in several stores. Customers had gotten used to our shelf in the supermarket, but then bit by bit, own branded supermarket imported produce started to appear next to our produce.

One Monday morning as we called to get our usual order, an order we depended on, we were to discover that the rules of the game had changed. A new fresh food buyer was put in place, and he demanded that we reduce our prices, stock the shelves ourselves, and be responsible for any waste they incurred due to lack of sales of produce they had bought from us.

We never supplied that shop again or for that matter any of the other 12 supermarket stores we used to supply.

The supermarkets continue to put pressure on growers to fund their loss leaders’ campaigns, they expect farmers to shoulder part or all the burden of this cost.

But these cheap prices lead to the perception in the eyes of the consumer that freshly grow produce is of little value. Ironically this can inadvertently lead to food waste, nearly one third of all food produced is thrown in the bin, which in the end will cost us more. If we were to pay a little more for our food, maybe we wouldn’t waste so much and ironically actually be better off.

So, as it stands the supermarkets, the kings and gatekeeps of this seemingly inexhaustible and abundant supply of produce are more to blame for the decline of the Irish vegetable industry than anything else. The bottom line is always the bottom line, and if the farmers had a model that was financially viable, they would still be here, I guess we can safely say they did not.

as always thank you for your support.

Kenneth

We all get sick sometimes

by Kenneth Keavey

We all get sick sometimes, but when something serious comes along how we define what is important to us can change significantly. There is little doubt that without our health we have very little. All it takes is to be laid up in bed with a serious dose of the flu to know that being sick can be serious. The prevalence of chronic disease in our current age is frightening, it is unfortunately a reflection on how we as a society have evolved. Our eating habits, working habits, exercising habits, have steadily changed and not for the better over the last 50 years.


But what has happened to our food is very concerning. Obviously, the ultra-processed
rubbish that is designed to be irresistible is very unhealthy, and we would in all seriousness
be better off eating cardboard. But it is often said that it is not what we do occasionally that
is the problem it is what we do every day that causes the benefit or the damage. Those
things we eat everyday are one of the keys to our health.
Our bodies are amazing machines and when we are young, we can cope at least for a
while with just about anything, but as we grow older things start to take a greater tole on our
health. So it is with our food, at least in my opinion the chemicals on conventional food must
over time do damage, they hurt us on the inside and they do it gradually over years. I
remember years ago my biology teacher telling me if you irritate something for long enough
you will cause cancer.
I know I am fortunate and can afford to consume organic food as I have it all around me, I
don’t take that for granted. Ironically, for health reasons I have a restricted diet and one of
the things I can eat are blueberries. Over the last couple of weeks, we haven’t been able to
source organic blueberries as we do not buy airfreighted produce. So, I bought some
conventional blueberries in a shop. I think they tasted a little odd, I ate them anyway. But I
decided to investigate this a little and here is what I found:
In 2024 Pesticides were found on 90 percent of conventional blueberry samples, compared
to 81 percent in 2014.  80 percent of samples had two or more pesticides, versus 70
percent in 2014. A single sample of blueberries could have up to 17 different pesticide
residues, compared to 13 in 2014. Reference here.

This information is relevant to the US, but many of the blueberries on Irish supermarket
shelves come from all over the world and could have the same residues. The most
troubling pesticides found on blueberries were phosmet and malathion, chemicals known as
organophosphate insecticides. They kill many types of insects and are toxic to the human
nervous system.  

Not only are conventional blueberries on the list of items to source organically if you can,
but green beans, peppers, and kale were also singled out. We have sourced organic
blueberries again, the first new European harvest from Spain. I write this piece to once
again highlight the difference between conventional food production and organic. Don’t we
deserve to known about these unseen extras?
So anyway, I am looking forward to getting the first new season organic non airfreighted
blueberries next week. They won’t be as good as the Irish ones we had a few weeks ago,
but they will be pretty good.


As always thank you for your support


Kenneth

Will you come down the rabbit hole with me?

by Kenneth Keavey

Don’t take this the wrong way but I love chemicals.

So much so that I dedicated nearly 15 years of my life to studying and working with them, I worked for years on trying to figure how to make a new antibiotic, imagine life without antibiotics?

Without chemicals our life would be so much different and not for the better. But here is one other thing I learned whilst trying to develop a selective drug, a drug that would not have any side effects, and it was this: A 100% selective drug was impossible. Impossible as all chemicals taken into the body interact with different receptors in different ways and have side effects. This silver bullet is the holy grail of pharmaceutical research and is still some way off.

Have you heard of polyphenols? If you are interested in your health, you will certainly have heard this term. They are powerful antioxidants found in plants and may have a very positive effect on our health. More on these later.

So, in the super controlled environment of pharmaceutical development a drug that does not have side effects is impossible to produce. So, who in their right mind decided that we should take toxic chemicals and start spraying them indiscriminately on our food?

In the conventional food world now, we have farmers spraying nonselective chemicals on our food to kill insects and other plants. These chemicals kill both the target (ie the aphid) but also other insects flying around, devasting biodiversity.

Then there is the issue of these chemical being that toxic that they harm life, what do they do to us when we consume them on our food? Nothing good for sure, and there is plenty of literature out there on the damage they do.

So, let’s keep going down the rabbit hole now. Take this a step further, as some of these chemicals are “systemic” that means they are absorbed into the plant, brought inside and there they reside until harvest and eventual consumption on our dinner plates. Washing will do little to remove these as they are inside the produce.

So, we have these non-selective, systemic toxic chemicals being sprayed on our food and they are hurting us and destroying biodiversity. But there is an often-overlooked further issue here, and that brings us back to polyphenols.

These amazing compounds are produced by plants to defend themselves against disease and pests, these powerful antioxidants protect the plants, and guess what?  They protect us too, when we consume them. But here’s the issue, when plants are sprayed to remove pests then the plants have little need to produce polyphenols so not only are we getting chemically contaminated food, but the actual composition of the food is also being changed by the application of these chemicals, isn’t that just crazy?

It is so easy to ignore all of the above, as when we see produce on the supermarket shelf it looks amazing (and it is without doubt better to eat fresh produce than not), but if there is an option at all, and I understand for some this is not possible (But you can always try our rescue box, which is always sold at a greatly reduced price) then choosing organic is just always, always going to be better for you, if you can choose local organic then there are all the other benefits also of supporting a local food economy.

So please for your own sake and the sake of our fragile planet, if you can at all choose organic.

As always thank you for your support. 

Kenneth

What do you think about all this?

by Kenneth Keavey

What do you think? We believe food production should be about respect for the land and the celebration of the produce it gives us. Of course, behind the scenes there is stress and weather and people and broken machines and all the other things that can be challenging but fundamentally the initial thought in our food growing should be one of love, love for our land and ourselves.

This may seem like a stretch in today’s world. I certainly have no love on certain days especially when we cannot compete with the big supermarkets and their juggernaut of food devaluation and a food system that is inherently broken and never more than one step away from falling apart. The supermarkets have the power to drive farmers out of business and where will we all be then?

Our mission in connecting people with the food they eat has been burning now for 18 years. After such a long time of talking about how important sustainable food production is, you can get tired and disillusioned, because what changes? Well, the reality of our farm walk last Saturday and of the fact that so many of you take the time to read this, is that a lot changes.

I learned something amazing from the people who attended our farm walk last and it was: that there definitely is an intense appetite to understand and connect with how our food is produced.

I was inspired and uplifted and felt reenergised to see so many people come out and visit us. But it was the energy, the interest and the amazing questions from you our readers, visitors and customers that showed me we are on the right path.

My favourite quote from Margaret Meade, sums up our farm walk and our growing community right here.

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed individuals can change the world. In fact, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

The stars of the show, and there is no doubt in my mind about this, were the children. They demonstrated such an abundance of interest and fun. There lies the essence of what our lives and indeed our relationship with food should be: fun and happiness.

But delve a little deeper in our modern food supply chain and you find exploitation, biodiversity destruction, food that has literally been poisoned with chemicals and wrapped in a myriad of plastic. This I am afraid is what props up our modern-day food system. But we are all so busy it is hard to spare a thought for what, where or how our food has been produced.

But last Saturday on our farm walk plenty of thought was given. And you who follow us and interact with us and read our e mails or in the ultimate show of support buy from us, you care, and you represent the energy of change. We may not change the world today,

but we will change something, something that may be the small stone that starts the avalanche.

So, as always, thank you for your support.

Kenneth

Something that really annoys me…

by Kenneth Keavey

Something that really upsets me is the fact that supermarkets not only sell fresh produce for next to nothing, but they also reject perfectly good produce, leading to increased food waste.

Have you ever seen a head of broccoli like the one in this video that weighs close to a kilogram and looks a bit wonky on a supermarket shelf? You will not, I think. They will never allow something like that for sale. More than likely the broccoli you get in supermarkets will be imported, will always be 400g, probably won’t be that fresh and will be wrapped in plastic and will usually be sprayed with chemicals and be very cheap. Did you know that a broccoli plant is quite big and will produce just one head in its lifespan? It takes quite a bit to bring a broccoli plant to harvest.  

During the week I had a conversation with our potato grower, Cameron from Battlemountain Organic Farm. We needed to discuss potato pricing, we had a frank discussion and came to a fair agreement for him and for us, one we were both happy with. 

If that conversation had went differently and it could have, then that would have been the end of our relationship and would have caused hardship for his farm.  It would not have been fair, and it is certainly not our way. We are growers and we know a little about the costs and the challenges involved in producing and selling fresh organic produce and believe in paying fairly.

Supermarket buyers take a different approach to paying for their produce and this has led to the decimation of the Irish horticultural industry. Only 2% of farms in Ireland now grow vegetables.

The most recent national field vegetable census showed that the number of field vegetable growers fell from 377 in 1999 to 165 in 2014. That is a contraction of 56%.

But supermarkets want it all their own way, there is few countries where fresh produce is as devalued as it is here in Ireland. It really bothers me, obviously it bothers me because it makes it so difficult to stay in business with this backdrop, but it also bothers me because it undermines our food security and has caused untold damage to our indigenous vegetable industry.

Supermarkets demand the cheapest possible price and the most rigorous specifications leading to hardship for growers. 

It is a broken food system. The funny thing is it would take very little to fix it, what if for example the specification on broccoli was relaxed to be above a certain weight, and if there was a slight increase in the price of the product and that went back to the grower and not to the supermarket, then that would fix a lot.  

Your support keeps us in business and supports not only our own organic farm but many other Irish organic producers too.

Kenneth

National Organic Award, and rain…

by Kenneth Keavey

This week we got the news that our business and farm has been shortlisted for a national
organic award, and we are grateful and humbled by the acknowledgment.


I’m afraid Jenny my wife will stop talking to me if I don’t stop going on about the weather.
But I just can’t help it, maybe I have a condition, but it has been so bad. And to be fair to
me, I need to talk about the weather, I really do. I feel traumatised by the relentless
darkness and rain, I am sure I must not be alone, and somehow getting the knowing nods
that you are right and, in a group, (and for farmers there is nothing more conversation
worthy than the weather) that feel the same way is comforting, it changes nothing though.
True enough, I suppose there is little we can do about it, as the weather will be the weather,
the same cannot be said for what we mankind are doing to our climate…


The last time we had a summer this bad was last year! Two in a row. And before that I
remember 2012 being a summer where we saw virtually no sun, temperatures were low,
and it rained nearly every single day. We should be lucky I guess there are many that have
no water and here we are in the West of Ireland with enough for half of Europe. But luck
will not help our already late harvest of tomatoes ripen.


It has been 13 months now, in my slightly twisted view, it started raining last June and
hasn’t really stopped, has it? We have struggled recently and certain crops that love the sun
are not loving Galway weather at moment.


There is muck stuck to everything, the land is wet, saturated, we could give the “Tough
Mudder” race a good run for its money. Now, it is not all bad news, the leeks, celeriac,
parsnips, swede and brassicas are doing quite well, and we are certainly grateful for that. In
fact, Emmanuel is harvesting the very first of our parsnip crop this week, which is quite
frankly amazing! But the increasing unpredictability of our weather is another challenge in
an already challenging industry.


So it is with this backdrop that it is lovely to be acknowledged that we are doing some things right. To have external validation, that it is worth persevering, despite being a very small cog in a massive and unforgiving food machine.


To that end Simone and Lilly will both be in Dublin this weekend at Merrion square
for the national organic food festival, and I will be there for a few hours from about 12 on
Saturday if you would like to come along.


Not only that but we are having our first and only farm walk next Saturday the 7 th of
September starting at 11am, and all are welcome, you can book a free ticket here.
Hopefully see you over the next couple of weeks!
Thanks as always for your support.
Kenneth

OMG two very exciting announcements!

by Kenneth Keavey

I distinctly remember being encouraged to use Roundup as we embarked on our fledgling enterprise 18 years ago, “a touch of roundup” to use the exact phrase. Well, I nodded my head and went about my business, there was little point in trying to explain that in my view this was madness. Certainly, never in my lifetime will it be used on our little 20-acre patch of land in the west of Ireland. We are never going to apply a toxic weedkiller, no matter how easy that might make our lives.

This year and last year the weeds have got the upper hand, and the reason is straight forward: the rain. We have been challenged at ever turn, we have not been able to get the machines out into the fields to do our usual work as it has not stopped raining. There will be some casualties as a result, but I have to say if you look at the broccoli we are harvesting from our farm now, the weeds are certainly making no difference to the yield and quality, it is some of the best we have ever grown. You will be able to come and see for yourself on the 7th of September….. but you can meet us earlier too in Dublin, we’ll be at the National Organic Food Fair in Merrion Square on August 31st/Sept 1st!

Roundup provides a “Clean field” or an “Empty field” but in my view using it creates a landscape devoid of life, a landscape that could not be dirtier in terms of actual chemical contaminants.  I believe the organic approach to producing food is certainly more difficult, more challenging, but it gives you imperfect perfection, which may seem a little ironic, but it is true. Perfect vegetables, but maybe to the naked eye the scene in the field does not look perfect. Maybe the vegetables do not always meet the exacting criteria of supermarkets, but maybe the produce is perfect just as it is and what is missing is the chemical contaminates, this is what makes our produce and the produce of all the other amazing Irish organic farmers that supply us perfect.

You have to ask the question with the overwhelming wave of chronic and serious illnesses that are sweeping society today, could the increased use of chemicals in growing our food and in producing our food have a role to play (and there certainly is no one reason for sure). As a medicinal chemist I would have to say these chemicals are not improving the situation, and the cocktail effect of consuming hidden chemicals in our food is for sure having a negative impact on our health.  Just think if you saw a bottle with the description: irritant, toxic, harmful to aquatic life, carcinogenic, would you even consume a tiny bit of that. I certainly would not, would you? Chemicals that kill bugs and plants are toxic, they destroy life.

I digress, roundup and all modern herbicides are used to destroy life. They destroy any vestige of plant life that all other biodiversity relies on for their homes. What then? Where will the insects live? Where will the birds find their food when there are no insects? And how indeed will whole ecosystems survive when we remove all the critical natural environmental pieces of life they rely on? The answer is simple, they won’t.

We need to urgently look at how we are growing our food, I am not saying that organic is perfect, it certainly is not, but it does at least put environmental considerations at the centre of the food production journey.  That was and is and has not changed in 18 years our central mission, to protect our beautiful biodiversity, and protect the environment whilst producing clean healthy imperfectly perfect food.

Thanks you for your support,

Kenneth

PS We are harvesting amazing broccoli amongst many other things, click to see them all here: IRISH SECTION HERE.  

PPS: VERY EXCITING ANNOUNCEMENTS!   

Announcement 1: We are going to be in Dublin for the national organic fair on the 31st of August and the 1st of September, please come by and visit our stall in Merrion square, more info here.  

Announcement 2: We are having our first and only farm walk to mark the essence of the Irish harvest season on Saturday the 7th of September, put the date in your diary, details to be announced closer to the day! 

No Chemicals. Ever.

by Kenneth Keavey

‘No chemicals ever in our food chain’  It was a pretty simple idea, and before the thought of having to get certified or go down that regulation route (which you must do if you are to use the word “organic”)  that was the cornerstone of our belief. No chemicals because chemicals, (and as somebody once said on Instagram all things are chemicals, and that is true enough), so let me clarify no synthetic manmade, toxic chemicals that kill living beings, kill plants, kills insects and bees, and damage our health, none of those chemicals will ever be used on our farm because they hurt us and they hurt the environment, they hurt the living things we share this planet with and it turns out they even damage our microbiome.

During the last few weeks as we were waiting patiently for our field of wild clovers and phacelia (For the bees) to come into its own there was a distinct absence of insect life. But in one particular part of our farm where we have our brassicas planted there was an abundance of bees and flies and butterflies. In this particular patch of ground (about 3 acres) the previous year we had sown the same mix of wildflowers we were waiting for in another field this year. These flowers had reseeded themselves and came up with the crops of broccoli, and cabbage and kale. They were earlier to mature and to flower as the seed was already in the ground and now, they were providing food and homes to 1000s of insects and bees.

If we had started our year as many conventional farmers do, then the first step would have been to treat this field with Roundup to kill all the plant life that resided there. There then would have been applications of more herbicides to supress any plants that survived the Roundup, followed by multiple rounds of pesticides and fungicides applications. You certainly would have had broccoli and cabbage and kale, but nothing else, no bees no flies, no wildflowers, no weeds here and there that provide homes to all these amazing pieces of our biodiverse puzzle.

So, it is with chemicals they remove parts of our ecosystem, and they are exceptionally good at being nonselective. From my days studying pharmaceuticals, the silver bullet was the holy grail, a highly selective therapeutic that would only target the disease and not healthy cells. An impossible panacea with traditional chemistry, and here farmers are being Advised to go out into fields with bucket loads of toxic chemicals and unload them on our food and nature indiscriminately. And I don’t care one bit for MRLs (maximum residue limits, which are generally set in conjunction with the manufacturer) they don’t protect us. Current predictions estimate the market for these crop chemicals to be nearly $330 billion by 2030! When there is that much money involved lets me clear it is not the planet that these companies want to take care of, it is the same as the petrochemical industry or the tobacco industry.   

So here is to food and a food system minus all these toxic destructive chemicals.

Kenneth

Where have all the insects gone?

by Kenneth Keavey

It was on a very rare occasion that we used to make a trip to Dublin from Galway. Back in the 80s it was a long journey, there were no motorways back then and the all too familiar bottle neck in Athlone could often cause long delays, but it was always exciting. Stopping along the side of the road to eat homemade sandwiches also gave us a chance to clean the windscreen of the mass of insect debris, that would at times stop my dad from seeing ahead. Cleaning of the windscreen was expected and was an inconvenience, how things have changed in 30 years.


If the level of insect splatters is a measure of the health of this very important ecosystem, then by all accounts today it is only one step from total annihilation. Test it for yourself, next time you drive down the motorway, how many insects splatter on your windscreen? Virtually none you will find. So, what has happened and where have they gone?


This year on our farm up until relatively recently there has been a noticeable absence of butterflies and bees. The decline in butterfly populations and diversity is well documented.  Not only that but Experts estimate that flying insects across Europe have declined 80 percent on average, causing bird populations to drop by more than 400 million in three decades, these are astounding figures. Insects are also the world’s top pollinators — 75 percent of 115 top global food crops depend on animal pollination, including cocoa, coffee, almonds and cherries.


In his 2022 book titled ‘The Insect Crisis’, journalist Oliver Milman set out the grim scenario of how our actions as humans are causing catastrophic destruction of this critical world.  Milman describes the insect kingdom as “the tiny empires that run the world”, they are the starting point for all other higher life forms, without whose existence entire ecosystems would collapse.


Did you know that it is now relatively standard practice to eliminate all competing plants from grasslands for dairy production, leaving vast monocultures. The use of herbicides to clear plant diversity followed by pesticides to destroy insect diversity leaves very little for these amazing small creatures to flourish on. If the insects disappear what do the birds eat? What about all our pollinators? What happens to the food crops that rely on these? This typical short-term approach to intensification of global food production will hurt us all in the long run.


The good news is that reestablishing these insect populations before it is too late is easy, it requires some effort, but it is easy. Leave diversity in our fields, don’t spray everything in sight to within an inch of its life. Let’s be clear we don’t need to anyway, all this chemical spraying is quite frankly ridiculous and unnecessary.  Plant hedgerows, plant an acre of phacelia and clovers to enrich the fertility of the ground but also the fertility of the local ecosystems and biodiversity. 


It was when we started planting wildflower strips that we noticed an astounding level of bee life return to our farm. There were honeybees and several different types of bumble bee, and all sorts of other flying insects. We had created a floral reef for insects! On a sunny evening there are hundreds of thousands of bees and insects humming away, and if you stop and listen, it is then that you truly appreciate the magnificent of these little flying creatures and the amount of life a relatively small piece of land can sustain if it is given a chance.


As always thanks for your support
Kenneth

Gardening, smoking a pipe, a penknife and our food……….

by Kenneth Keavey

I doubt my grandad spent any great deal of time thinking about food provenance. But eating fresh healthy food was part of his life. It was excruciatingly hard work producing food back in the 50s, backbreaking, without the aid of machines or modern technology, but the food they grew was healthy and free from chemicals.

If you would like to listen to my little story this week from one of our fields CLICK HERE!

He worked as the head gardener in Cregg castle, and he most definitely as did my dad had a flare for growing vegetables. Now although I am sure food wasn’t something for the after mass discussion on a Sunday it would have been on their minds. Certainly, though there was no need to discuss what was sprayed on the food, was it wrapped in plastic or not, where it came from, was it sustainable, was it healthy, was it ultra processed, as none of that was relevant back then.

I do remember his garden as a child, I distinctly remember certain things such as the little seat he had, where he used to smoke his pipe, and the penknife he always had with him (incidentally an indispensable tool to even the modern organic farmer). He used to make raised beds behind the hayshed and sow all sorts of things, from potatoes to carrots, but he also sowed sweet peas on a trellis and had apples.

Another memory and not altogether a pleasant one I have is of having jam jars from the trees in the summer with water and residual jam to trap the hoards of wasps, and stop them from eating the gorgeous sweet apples.

My other grandad used to come out from town for a bucket or two of potatoes and this was part of the sometimes-weekly trip to the country side. Either that or he would visit the farmers market on Saturday in Galway, back then it truly was a farmers’ market, rough and ready though it was.

Food too was celebrated such as the first new potatoes, this we still do today and we have just started with our own amazing organic new season potatoes from Cameron in Battlemountain organic farm. A point to note here is that the prices we are paying for these potatoes is up 50% on last year.

But what has happened over the last 70 years, how has such a large chasm opened up between the person eating the food and the food itself. Giant retail businesses have grown and made it their business to create this great divide it serves a purpose of control and it drives enormous profits into the hands of investors. The shiny plastic wrappers deflect from the reality, the faces of the smiling farmers, the special offers, it all hides secrets of our food system that we are never privy to. The big mechanics behind the scenes that move vast quantities of food around the world, the hidden corners that are cut, the environmental atrocities that are committed, this is all brushed under the shiny carpet.

It does seem strange to think that the food we put into our bodies, probably one of the most important things we buy, we probably know least about and is frequently relegated to the bottom of the priority list. The connection between what we eat, our health and the health of the planet is clear, and rekindling the connection with our food could be one of the most important steps we take to improve our own health and protect our world from further environmental devastation. It is also the one thing we absolutely have control over and can change.

Thank YOU for making that change.


Kenneth

PS We are right in the middle of full harvest season and having your support during the summer is more important than ever as we always see a marked drop in orders, leaving us with a surplus of our own and other Irish organic farmers produce, please support us for the month of August if you can, click to see our IRISH SECTION HERE.