Some cool drone footage, and my thoughts on food waste…

by Kenneth Keavey

First, I want to show you something: Darragh Wynne from the charity Goal Ireland was here a few weeks back and invited me to talk for a video, if you want to learn a little bit more about and see some cool drone footage of our farm (and even catch a glimpse of George and Florence check this video out.

George and Florence are happy pigs, they couldn’t actually have a better life, I really don’t think they could. Not only do they get to roam around nearly 2 acres of old and newly established forests, they have a dry straw lined shed to sleep in and probably best of all they get fed waste organic veg once a day. They are as happy as two pigs in muck could be. 

But they fit into this story very well, as they are the last step in our grandly termed food waste reduction strategy, we don’t have a formal document or anything like that, but we do have a belief system around food waste. 

So here is a crazy fact, one third of all food produced on the planet is wasted.  The area required to produce that food is 16 million km2, which is roughly an area the same size as Russia, which is a very big place. 

We all know we need to take urgent steps to reduce our impact on the planet, no surprise there, and as we pass yet another mind boggling climate record with September being the warmest month ever by a long way, that action is critical. 

So wouldn’t it be an amazing if we could cut the land used for agriculture by 16 million square kilometers and instead grow forestry? Of course, it would. 

But where is all this wasted food coming from? Well, that is where I will tell you the second part of my story, last week we took a delivery of carrots, we weren’t very pleased with these carrots, they were Irish, they were organic, but they were massive, and I mean they were big but we got our heads together and figured out how we could prevent them ending up in the bin. 

So, we set about trying to use them to sell them, to make sure we wasted as little as possible. There is one thing I can absolutely guarantee had these carrots landed at the door of a supermarket they would have been rejected, sent back, or wasted. 

Herein lies one of our bugbears, supermarkets insisting without remorse on unforgiving specifications and when produce does not meet them refusing to sell it or accept it. We have been there many moons ago, once upon a time having supplied supermarkets.  In the growing season we have had this year, produce may come out maybe a little smaller or bigger or twisted or forked and that in our view is the beauty of nature.  We wont grade out twisted parsnips, or forked carrots. 

Of course, there is still the possibility that produce will not meet our quality requirements, and this is where we do have a very well-defined system and we put a fair amount of effort into it to make it work. 

Maciek our quality manager has done amazing work creating his “Rescue boxes” each week these boxes are filled with “Class II” produce.  If we can’t use the produce in the rescue boxes our team get it, and if it is unusable it ends up in one of two places, actually one of three places! 

It either A. Goes to one of our three compost bays, or B. go to George’s belly or C. goes to Florence’s belly! 

(Interesting fact: We have to make two separate piles of food when feeding the pigs because Florence always bullies George and tries to keep all the food for herself!) 

So that is the end of the story for this week, just know you are supporting a little business that manages in our own way to keep the food waste mountain from growing at least on our watch and continues to step by small step help build a better food system. 

You are making it possible, thank you. 

Kenneth

PS Darragh Wynne from the charity Goal Ireland was here a few weeks back and invited me to talk for a video, if you want to learn a little bit more about and see some cool drone footage of our farm (and even catch a glimpse of George and Florence check this video out.

Two generations ago, intensification …

by Kenneth Keavey

Two generation ago my Grandad farmed this land, it was a mixed farm, some tillage, some veg, some animals, he had two workhorses and I remember one was called Snowball.  He had an array of horse drawn implements to help with the work, and from what I have heard from my dad, there was a lot of work.

Of course, the advent of the tractor on farms and more complex machines helped reduce that work and I can’t imagine anybody lamented the demise of some of the back breaking tasks that were once part of the daily grind. From what I have heard though, I don’t believe it felt like a grind at least not all the time, there was I believe a degree of satisfaction in this local model of food production and the community it fostered.

Those days are gone, but It is fair to say that the model of the traditional Irish family farm worked at least to a degree.

Several years ago, I was invited to attend a rural development meeting and a manager from either the Dept of Agriculture or Teagasc stood up and asked amid much talk about intensification, “what was so wrong with the traditional family farm, why are we hell bent on driving ever faster towards the American model of intensification?” The room was silent and there were no comments, maybe a few tumble weeds blew through the conference room.

The manager I assume was close to retirement because he was most definitely not toing the company line. That was probably 7 or 8 years ago, and how much has changed since then? The speed of change in our agriculture sector has been eye watering, consolidation, intensification, growth, pushing of yields and so on. It seems we have stepped onto a conveyor belt, and it just keeps on getting faster, the famers have no choice but to march ever faster just to stand still. So, this is our food system now. I wonder though at what point do we say no more, we can’t possibly intensify any further.

After all, nature is finite, is it not? The last time I looked you couldn’t create matter from nothing, that kinda goes against the laws of science. Well in my view we have gone too far already, just look at the damage done to Loch Neagh in Northern Ireland, look what happens when we pass the tipping point and ecological systems break down, the main driving factor here is the runoff of excess nitrogen from farms.

The quest for ever cheaper food is the driver here and to an extent part of the problem. Whilst everything else is getting more expensive, food and I mean basic food here, the likes of raw potatoes out of the ground or the oats harvested from the field are staying the same or getting cheaper in some cases. How can this possibly make sense (There is no doubt that there has been some greedy grubby profiteering by the big corporate food giants, yeah, these guys are not to be trusted as far as you can throw them) but otherwise primary producers are still getting a raw deal no doubt about it.

So, what to do about all of this? I am not claiming to know what the answer is. But I do know that taking care of the land whilst producing food is the sane way to proceed. Plant trees, plant hedgerows, reduce stocking density, reduce fertiliser application, grow more clover in grass swards, but for all of this to make sense it would mean an increase in the price of primary food, is this acceptable? Well that really is the question?

If you are reading this and are supporting our food model you must believe things can be different, in fact need to be different. So, until the big solution offers itself up, we will keep plugging away here doing what we believe in, and always being thankful for your support. 

Kenneth

Reflections and the future

by Kenneth Keavey

This week has seen another reasonably dry week on the farm which has made life that little bit easier, our harvesting machine for parsnips has worked well, and we are pulling them out of the ground fresh and clean, the kale is vibrant and amazing and we are harvesting lovely sized heads of broccoli. The tomatoes, cucumbers and courgettes have nearly run their course, our weekly harvest of courgettes is down from a near high of 500kg a week to just over 100kg now, soon they will be finished for the year. 

It is at this time of the year I often reflect on our food system as a whole and whilst there is plenty of good I find myself wondering that there must be a better way to grow our food, there needs to be a better way. The planet simply cannot sustain business as usual. Amongst other things, our food system as run by giant food corporations is crippling out planet, not only that it is destroying biodiversity. Loss leading of fresh food by supermarkets, simply does not leave enough on the table to allow farmers to protect the land, to work with nature, it is a road to nowhere.   

What will we do when we have exhausted the soil, when we have polluted the rivers and lakes, when we have pumped enough greenhouse gases into our atmosphere to cause the planet to warm up beyond critical tipping points. We will not be able to sustain ecosystems never mind a healthy balanced food system. 

What then? All that profit and greed, and short termism will mean little. Where do we look then for fresh water, for healthy food, how will we feed 8 billion or more people? How will all the other life we share this planet with be sustained? 

Can we continue to consume resources and food as we do now? Do we not need to consider what we are eating (and how it is produced) now.  The animal industry consumes a disproportionate amount of our land mass and contributes relatively little relative to grains and plants to our calorie and protein intake:    

Of our habitable land, 46% is used for agriculture, of that land area 77% is used for animals, and this only produces 18% of our global calorie supply and astoundingly only 37% of our protein consumption. (Source: UN Food and Agriculture association) 

And that is without even beginning to talk about animal welfare in the large factory farms that produce the cheap meat? When did chicken literally become cheaper than chips?  

Clearly this is not just unsustainable, you can imagine that future generations may look back and wonder at our insanity. Using land to grow more vegetables and eating more plants allows us to reduce the land mass required to produce our food. This is not an argument for not eating meat or dairy it is simply a fact that we need to use our land wisely and cut down on the consumption of foods that have a high land high carbon footprint, low calorie output. 

Would it help to approach our living world with a little more empathy, for the land, for the creatures we share the planet, for the environment? Things could and would be so much different if we were all to be a little more mindful and showed a little more respect for our one home. 

We all can make a difference; we can all take steps that will help. Of course, bigger stuff needs to happen, governments need to act, net carbon zero needs to occur, policy and infrastructure and systems needs to change, and they are changing but the speed of change needs to increase. 

Can our mindset around food change? Embracing the idea of eating more plants, understanding that cheap does not always mean good value, these are the things that will help save our health and that of the planet. 

We here on our farm find ourselves struggling to standstill, it is always a tough battle to compete in this supermarket dominated landscape. It is difficult to continue to support local organic Irish farmers including our own farm, it costs more, but that is the course we have taken, and one we will never deviate from.   

Your support is making a difference. You are making a difference. 

Thanks for your support. 

Kenneth

PS The autumnal winter crops are definitely creeping in now, with the harvest of swede and parsnip truly beginning, we are also delighted to have the first delivery or Irish organic carrots next week. It has been a tough year for root crop growing, but finally we are getting there.

First Prize! Well done Gerry and the bees…

by Kenneth Keavey

First prize in the Galway honey competition, what a fantastic result and testament to the amazing work of Gerry who looks after the bees who have been residents on our farm for close to 10 years now.

Gerry has a deep understanding and respect for the bees and is constantly checking in to make sure they are alright and by all accounts they are certainly that! In fact, they are a level of magnitude above alright.

A couple of weeks back while having a chat with Gerry he mentioned that out of the 6 apiaries under his supervision the hives on our farm are producing 3 times the amount of honey compared with the others!

We all know we need to look after our pollinators without them the world would be a very different place, our apple trees, the courgettes, tomatoes, cucumbers and many other flowering plants rely on our flying friends to produce food. So, it’s only right we keep an eye on their welfare too.

It seems that the wildflowers and the weeds and the general high level of biodiversity on our farm has had a very positive impact on bees and the honey they make. A great example of a healthy environment leading to healthy food. The honey was judged on colour, texture and flavour.

This year though the impact of a changing climate has had a negative effect on the bees and the professional judges all said the same thing, in show after show there was a lack of honey due to the wettest July ever recorded.

Gerry and the bees did extremely well, but we won’t be handing out little mini trophies to all the queen bees on our farm just yet though, as it seems there was one rogue amongst all the hard workers.

One of the queen bees turned rogue.  Apparently, it does happen and when it does it is not at all pleasant. For some reason one of the queens became extremely aggressive and as a result the whole hive followed suit. It really wasn’t nice, these bees were chasing people out of the fields, and Emmanuel and his farm team were stung on multiple occasions and as a result the harvest had to start before the bees came out!

Gerry stepped in and removed the rogue queen and rehoused her to a far way bog where hopefully she will live out a long angry life away from human beings!

The amazing thing is once the belligerent queen was removed everything settled down almost immediately, seems all groups are the same…..

I am delighted that the judges held Gerry’s honey in such high regard and I am also delighted to have nice calm bees back buzzing around again and that our nearly always happy bees are happy again.

Kenneth  

PS We are seeing the change now in the weather and are moving more heartily into the autumnal crops, you will see our first harvest of parsnips fresh from the fields, and we are excited about the first main crop floury potatoes coming soon, lots of cauliflower and broccoli too, as always thank you for your support. 

To forget how to dig the earth and to tend the soil is to forget ourselves

by Kenneth Keavey

We had the final farm walk of the season last Saturday. Thank you to all who came, we were blown away by the turn out. The day smiled on us too it was dry and warm and even George and Florence played their part well!

This year has been as all years are when it comes to growing and selling food in the current climate: a challenging one. Saturday helped me remember why it is we do what we do. I heard first hand, some honest and deep levels of appreciation, stories of customers that have been ordering from us for over 10 years of others who value the ethos of the business, others who were delighted to discover our farm shop tucked away here in the Galway countryside and others who just truly enjoyed the lovely organic tomatoes they got to pick in our tunnels.

I heard too  an appreciation for how our planet, our environment and how we produce our food are interlinked,  and how now more than ever our food system needs to change for the sake of our planet. We don’t have the deep pockets of the supermarkets and it is hard to compete in a landscape dominated by these corporations that control the gates to our food system.

As gatekeepers they control how much producers are paid, and they continue to devalue and ‘loss lead’ with fresh produce.  We do the best we can, but growing, packing, and delivering food (all done as sustainably as is possible) to people’s doors is an expensive business. We cannot compete with celery for 49c. But critically as consumers we need to have the option to choose food that is grown sustainably, now more than ever before, and we as growers and sellers need the breathing space to be able to survive and dare I say it, thrive, to develop truly sustainable farms and food businesses.  Here are 5 reasons why:

  1. Healthy sustainable food nourishes our bodies, naturally: Organic food supercharges our health. Unlike conventionally grown food, it’s free from synthetic pesticides, herbicides, and genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
  2. Preserving our planet: Organic farming practices are a breath of fresh air for our planet. By avoiding synthetic chemicals, we protect soil health, promote biodiversity, and reduce water pollution.
  3. Tasting the difference: Take one bite of a local organic carrot, and you’ll understand.
  4. Supporting local communities: Organic farming often prioritizes small-scale, family-owned operations, which helps create jobs and strengthens local economies. By choosing organic, we’re investing in a greener, fairer future for everyone.
  5. Protecting future generations: Organic farming practices help preserve fertile soil and protect biodiversity, ensuring that future generations can continue to enjoy our planet. 

Indeed as Gandhi said ‘To forget how to dig the earth and to tend the soil is to forget ourselves’

The feedback from you our customers brought me back to my roots and reminded me that maybe we are on the right track and that we must continue to fight for our health and the health of the planet. Thank you so much to those of you who said thank you, it is appreciated and makes a difference. It also reaffirmed my belief that we are not alone and there are many out there who care about how our food is grown and the affect it has on our planet.

You are the very ones that are changing the world.

Thank you.

Kenneth

PS A big thank you to the two ladies from St Vincent De Paul who came to the farm walk to say thank you for all the food donations. They told me how the fresh food that we deliver to them each week is making a massive difference to families who otherwise would not be able to afford fresh local food. So a massive thank you to all our customers who have chosen a “Charity box” you can rest assured that it is being put to very good use.

Turnip Juice… do you remember it?

by Kenneth Keavey

I remember as a child picking peas in my grandad’s garden.  He had apple trees, he grew his own veg. I remember sitting on his lap drinking a mug of turnip juice, (I can’t imagine trying to get my kids to do that today!) most of the food was grown on his farm. (Photo: backfired, me trying to feed my daughter broccoli many moons ago!)

Things have changed so much in a generation.

When was the last time you tasted a freshly harvested carrot, can you remember what it should taste like?  There can be such pleasure in the simple foods, and there are of course remarkable ways to cook these amazing seasonal gems.

September is a month of local seasonal plenty. The tomato season is still in full swing still, and there is a myriad of great Irish vegetables available, courgettes, leeks, swedes, cabbage, scallions, kales, beetroot, broccoli and so much more.  

As an organic farmer, the arrival of September allows a sigh of relief. The relentless pressure of the summer is finally winding down and we are settling into a routine of harvest.

The trees are starting to turn, the wild-flowers have gone to seed, the hedgerows are full of berries, the bees are slowing down too, even the birds are relaxing a little, everything seems to slow down. Something we could all do a little bit more of.

September too can be a time for reflection.  As a farmer the simple things like tree planting, growing hedgerows and leaving wild patches can give immense pleasure. This is easy stuff that pays the most amazing dividends for the person and the planet, but in modern food systems it is often dismissed as non sensical and left to one side in favour of production. The irony of course is that food production is facilitated and improved by all these positive things.

Cheap food has a price and a story. The real stories are hidden behind the glitzy shiny wrappers, there is always a story, a story of environmental or human exploitation.

The truth ironically can be hard to swallow, but it doesn’t have to be like this.

There are amazing and positive alternatives. Our parents chose well, they ate seasonally and locally, they ate less meat. Who doesn’t remember cabbage and turnip and the endless ways to cook potatoes!

We have more power than we realise.  

We choose our phones, our clothes, our cars, our jobs, and yet our food and our planet can be relegated to the bottom of the decision pile if they are thought about at all.  Time is short we are all busy but maybe just maybe they deserve a little more consideration because our choices matter a lot and when it comes to our food positive choices will improve our health and the health of our planet.   

What we eat and how our food is produced can literally change the world.

Kenneth

Lughnasa and returning to our roots…

by Kenneth Keavey

Lughnasa the Irish word for August represents the start of the harvest season and it is embedded in our culture and identity. It is a celebration of the harvest season.

By September we are celebrating the fruits of many months of labour in the fields it is the true month of harvest.Growing and harvesting your own food can be so rewarding. Watching the small seedlings transform into robust healthy plants that provide food is truly one of the many miracles of nature. Sometimes, it seems that the food is an added bonus, and that the pleasure and the reward of working in the soil is enough. It feeds the soul. Research has shown that putting your hands in soil can help ease depression and being outside cheers people up.

Rekindling that connection with our food and the land is something that is central to our identity. Our grand-parents knew what good food tasted like, they knew where their food came from and they knew how it was produced.We have handed the control of our food to a handful of global corporations that run an efficient feeding machine, which has disconnected us from primary food production. Supermarkets have added a layer of separation that takes us another step further away from our food. In recent years they have seen the value in putting the smiling farmer on their walls in a weak attempt to give the impression that they are reconnecting us to our food.

We have relinquished not only this connection but the skills and ability to produce our own food.We have become accustomed to the always available food culture, everything we ever need is always there on the supermarket shelves, plastic clad ready to be added to our shopping basket.We have paid a high price for this choice and convenience. If you are honest, what do you know about the food you are eating today for dinner? Where was it produced? How was it produced? How were the people treated that grew it? Difficult questions and mostly ones that don’t cross our minds.

However, the answers to these questions will not only open our eyes, they are the key to a shift in what we eat and how we approach our food. They can also lead to a healthier you and crucially a healthier planet.

We are right in the middle of harvest season now and it is wonderful. If you ever wondered if you could manage to eat with the seasons, then now is your best shot. And if you don’t know why you might start eating seasonally here are the why’s:

1. Reduce your carbon footprint massively.

2. Get more nutritious food. Freshly harvested food has a higher nutrient content.

3. Get an amazing taste experience “how food used to taste”

4. Support real local jobs.

5. Support the skills needed to grow our own food.

6. If it is organic you are supporting a system of food production that enhances biodiversity rather than degrades it.

So as with the traditional feast of Lughnasa why not get some good local food in, and celebrate the beautiful bounty of your gardens and our fields by a simple meal with family and friends.

Kenneth

Three times the amount of honey – Why?

by Kenneth Keavey

I met Gerry who looks after the beehives on our farm a couple of weeks back. He comes onto the farm once or so a week and checks on the bees. On the day we met there was two acres of phacelia (a beautiful purple flower) swaying in the wind behind us and it was covered in bees. Gerry looks after 6 apiaries and of the 6 the one on our farm produces three times more honey than any of the others. The bees are vibrant and strong, and they are in amazing health.

The reasons are not complex, they have an abundance of food, the phacelia being one major food source, but not only that, the early apple blossoms, the courgette flowers, the tomato flowers, the cucumber flowers and all the flowering weeds (good and not so good) that spring up between the plants. The bees are thriving.

The bees have little reason to roam further than our farm and as result they never encounter agrochemicals routinely used in conventional agriculture that can damage our pollinators. One class of chemical that is thankfully now banned were the neonicotinoids, these chemicals when used damaged bee health by affecting their immune system, navigation skills, capacity to forage and communicate, and ability to reproduce.

Without the bees and the other hosts of pollinators we rely on for our modern-day food system we would not be living such a life of food luxury. Our always on food system, the year-round availability is only possible due to a complex and precarious food system and a logistics chain that spans the planet. It is a system dependent on large scale production of crops, heavily dependent on agrochemicals and cheap labour in other parts of the world. We have seen this year that as the climate crisis deepens, climate shocks to our food system can be sudden and deep, the future effects of the climate crisis on our relatively fragile food system will be large.

Nature is a complex web of interactions, it is strong and resilient and can recover from manmade interference, but when we continuously damage nature, or change the climate that local ecosystems work in then we risk damaging nature and our ability to grow food immeasurably.

But, as with the bees on our farm, when we get it right and give a little back then the results can be startling, amazing and larger than anything we expect, and we reap the benefits too: as food producers we have a bumper courgette and tomato crop. The phacelia adds organic matter back to the soil when we cut it, and it allows us to grow something for nature while resting the land.

Something so simple as growing a strip of wildflowers or planting a small area of trees makes a massive positive difference to nature, surely instead of focusing purely on intensification of farming activities, it would not be so hard to weave this into our current agriculture policy as a critical requirement of all farms.

The bees are one of our constant companions here on the farm, but there is a myriad of other unsung heroes that quietly go about their business and never get the recognition they deserve. The flies and beetles, the butterflies and birds, the bacteria and fungi, this whole beautiful complex web of nature all working together help produce better food and make up a rich and vibrant local ecosystem.

Whilst there is much to be done, there is much that is within our power too. Removing chemicals from this chain of life is one clear step we can take to make an instant and recognisable difference to the diversity of nature we share this world with.  Choosing more local food strengthens our local food system and crucially reduces our carbon foot print too.

As always it is your support that makes it possible here on our farm and the farms of our other supporting farmers to do the right thing.

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

Kenneth

Crops and a broken climate

by Kenneth Keavey

This week we had a visit from our farm agronomist who has been working with us now for over 10 years, and as always it is a sobering conversation, we walk the farm assess the crops, see the ones that have done well, those that have not done so well, and try and understand why. As it stands in his own words, ‘if you get it right 70% of the time with crop growing you are doing well’, as you cannot account for the variabilities of nature.

Even with the best planning and action things can go wrong, as with all aspects of life I guess, and sometimes it can feel like the best thing you can do is just keep going, put your head down, grit your teeth and hope when you look up it will all be ok. Not the most compelling of plans, but in the absence of a better one a plan nevertheless! But nature is in crisis and this year we have seen climate records being broken all over the world. June 2023 was the hottest on record, and here in Ireland, July registered as the wettest July ever. Dealing with these extremes here in Ireland is challenging, but we have been spared the worst compared to some parts of the world.

These extremes are making it tougher and will make it more difficult to grow food in future years, and I for one am thankful for the relatively benign (if wet) climate we continue to have here in Ireland. In May and June, we suffered drought and July arrived with endless rain and this has made the season very challenging and for some growers even accessing the fields to harvest crops has become difficult, weed control too has been a problem. We have seen our fair share of weeds and in some crops, we have had remarkable success and in others we have failed, all part of the pleasure and pain of food production.

Finally, it seems we are having a small reprieve from the rain, and whatever you say about rain, when it is combined with heat you get growth, and have we seen growth, the kale, the broccoli, the cabbage, the celery, and all the other field crops have jumped in production, as have the tomatoes. In fact, we are now overflowing with an abundance of Irish crops. Tomatoes are one of my favourite crops, but they require a lot of time and a large investment in energy and labour. The plants (we have 1100) were sown at the end of Feb and now 6 months on we are harvesting the fruits of our labour, in that time we have prepped the tunnels, weeded them, fertilised them, planted the plants, each week twice a week side-shooted and trained the plants up the string and now finally after all that love and care we get 2 and a half months of harvest.

We have had some notable achievements in our crops, the onion crop thanks to Emmanuel and his team is one of the best we have ever seen and from the week after next all our onions will be Irish and organic of course, freshly harvested here on our farm. These days fresh onions are rare, they are milder and tastier than their dried cousins, so I am looking forward to them. A few weeks back we asked for your help in supporting our business, our farm and the farms of other Irish organic growers that supply us and you were amazing, and it has helped enormously.

The last couple of weeks have been tough as the bank holiday and holiday season in general have had a big impact on our orders, and hence on our planned harvest of crops, we have tomatoes coming out of our ears! Your order makes a difference and helps gives a home to the food we have grown, so please if you can place an order in the weeks ahead.

So as always thank you for your support and we hope you enjoy the rest of the holidays!

Kenneth

The climate crisis, our health and our food choices are interlinked…

by Kenneth Keavey

“We live in a remarkable world. Planet Earth is full of diverse wonders that nourish us in many ways. It is the place where we live out our lives, work, eat, love, play; in short, it is the place we call home. And it is our only home.”

The food we eat and how it is produced can improve our health, increase biodiversity and reduce carbon emissions. However, the food industry today and vested interests would have us thread an increasingly well-worn path to ill health, environmental damage, increased carbon emissions and pollution of our planet and bodies.

These are some of the thoughts of Dr Sean Ownes, a member of Irish Doctors for the Environment and the chair of “The Climate and Health Alliance” who earlier this year launched a new and ground-breaking report examining in detail the connection between our food health and the health of our planet, he was kind enough to provide his thoughts below:

There is currently a syndemic of unhealthy poor diets and related chronic disease paired with climate change and critical biodiversity loss. The problems with the Irish healthcare system can be summed up in one word: capacity. The problems with Ireland’s food system might also be summed up in one word: sustainability.

This report is unique it is the first time that multiple healthcare institutions, such as UCD, RCSI, ICGP, RCPI, the Irish Heart Foundation and many more have all arrived at a consensus that the current Irish diet is causing great harm to people and planet, while also recognising planetary boundaries and the need to live within them.

Our shared food environment has completely changed in a single generation secondary to unfettered market forces and weak public health policies. The standard Irish diet now exceeds planetary boundaries by over 200%. This report highlights how our dietary habits of today are taking food off the plates of the next generation, while also undermining our planet’s fragile and rapidly declining ecosystems.

The food system touches all of us, be it consumers, primary food producers who work the land, those in retail or healthcare professionals who work at the distal end of the system i.e., chronic disease, and as a multi-level system it requires multi-level action. There has been a lack of joined up thinking to date, as well as a lack of any urgency commensurate with the threat of the climate crisis. Given that our AgriFood strategy is an export growth model, while there is now more awareness and urgency, it is unlikely that Ireland will make the necessary changes to meet our emissions obligations. 

The report seeks to highlight how sustainable diets are critical for not only our climate targets, but also a viable healthcare system going forward. Adding plants to your plate isn’t just a favour to the planet, it is a heath gain for your heart, your gut and your future self. It isn’t about the usual tired debate of vegan vs farmer, rather it is about rethinking our own diet as a health pension, and everyday there are many opportunities to pay in. As pensions go, there can’t be one of better value. The report wants our policy makers to know that we can’t ask people to swim upstream and chose to eat healthy foods when they are too expensive, inaccessible, competing with cheaper junk foods and more. We urge them to engage with healthcare professionals, especially dietitian’s, but also marketing experts, public health experts, policy experts and look towards other jurisdictions that have implemented meaningful changes with Just transition at their heart. The report also asks that all farmers be given the support they need to make a transition to meet our emissions targets.

The greatest challenge will be making forward progress free from the undue influence of vested interests and powerful lobby groups. We need to see this transition as a generational opportunity for not only health and a viable healthcare system, but also for the Irish economy and for rural Ireland now and in the future. Healthy and sustainable diets don’t need to be invented; we only need the policies to make choosing them the best option.

The report is a well-researched detailed document, and you can check it out here. Thanks Sean to you and your colleagues for the great work and for trail blazing the link between diet health and planet.

Kenneth

Link to report : https://climateandhealthalliance.wordpress.com/resources/