Irish apples, picking apples, and the Dirty Dozen…

by Kenneth Keavey

I remember as a young lad having to climb trees to pick apples in my grandad’s orchard. Having been pruned and tended to over the years they had grown to to a very decent height (you needed a tall ladder to get to the top apples) these apples were never ever sprayed, and when they were picked they were stored on galvanised sheets in a cool shed, providing apples until nearly Christmas. Any those that had blemishes were used first.

During the week I was speaking to Richard Galvin who has been our Irish organic apple supplier for nearly 10 years. His apples are wonderful; they are Irish and organic and crucially are not sprayed with any synthetic chemicals. We have been receiving excellent organic apples from a Fairtrade co-op in France and from Darragh Donnelly in Dublin, and there have been some issues, at least if you were a supermarket there would be an issue.

The issue if you would call it an issue is that some of these apples are not perfect, they have slight blemishes on the skin, some of the blemishes are not ok to send out and as a result we need to grade and examine every single organic apple by hand. We do this and that is ok, but it takes time and people.

Now contrast this with the perfect apples that grace your average supermarket shelf. How do they end up so perfect and end up lasting for so long?

There is a reason that they look the way they look, and a big part of that is the synthetic chemicals that are used in their production.

Apples nearly always feature in the Dirty Dozen, and although this is a US survey, there is plenty of research demonstrating that European apples, or in fact many of the apples imported into Europe from further afield have plenty of pesticide residues on them. Apples are one of the most sprayed fresh products you can buy. A recent survey in the Netherlands found chemicals in every single sample they tested (1 click here for the article). Some had a cocktail of residues.

In Ireland in 2022 the department of agriculture tested 70 different samples of apples, 55 (or 79%!) had pesticide residues and over 4% had residues deemed as unsafe. If you would prefer not to have pesticides on your food (whether they were deemed to be below the safe limit or not) the fact that nearly 80% of all samples tested right here in Ireland had recorded pesticides is enough to make up my mind. (2 click here for the data and go to page 138)

There may be an argument to be had that these chemicals help reduce food waste, and that has a certain validity, but on the other hand, if supermarkets were happy to sell apples that did not need to look like shiny plastic apples, then maybe there would be less need for these chemicals.

Either way, my grandad would certainly not have agreed with spraying his apples, and certainly Richard and Darragh do not agree with using synthetic pesticides either, and we are grateful to be able to share their apples with you.

As always thank you for your support.

Kenneth

How to remove pesticides from non-organic food

by Kenneth Keavey

We assume our food is safe and government regulators set limits on how much pesticides are allowed in our food. These limits are called MRLs, but here are two interesting points. 1 We as a society accept that there are pesticides in our food and 2. These limits for the same chemical on different crops can vary, for instance it is deemed safer to eat more glyphosate in your oats then in your wheat, how is that?

In 2021 there was 3 million kg of pesticides sprayed in Ireland. The department of agriculture in that same year tested just over 1000 fresh fruit and veg samples for a staggering 474 chemicals.

And here is what they found.

For fruit, of the 528 tested, 63.8% had pesticide residues detected, 5.5% had residues detected above the MRL.

3 fruits contained a cocktail of 9 different pesticides in them.

For veg, of the 511 tested, 43.6% had residues detected, 5.1% had residues detected above the MRL. A cocktail of 15 pesticides were found in one sample.

So, the reality is that most conventional vegetables have pesticide residues on/in them, that is just the world we live in unfortunately. It shouldn’t be that way and obviously we are strong advocates to have pesticides completely removed from our food chain.

But not everybody is lucky enough to have access to organic food, and the majority of fresh produce in supermarkets is conventional and therefore will contain pesticide residues.

We have this strange situation where we don’t really know and don’t have time to think about the reality of chemicals in our food, but they are there.

So here is a way that has been shown scientifically (published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry in 2017) to work to remove some of these pesticides.

Take 1 teaspoon (about 5g) of baking soda in about 500ml of water, dissolve. Soak the produce for about 12–15 minutes After soaking, rinse thoroughly under running water.

The alkaline nature of the baking soda reacts with the pesticides and breaks them down and removes at least some of them. This method is especially effective for removing surface pesticides from fruits and vegetables with smooth skins (like apples and cucumbers). For more porous produce (like berries), a quick rinse is better to avoid absorption of the solution.

Systemic pesticides will not be removed by this means as they are absorbed into the plant. The EU are doing a good job at monitoring and reducing the limits of pesticides allowed in our food.

But why do we accept any pesticides in our food?

It would certainly be better if they were not there in the first place, better for our health, better for our planet and better for biodiversity. So, where you can, choose organic and of course please support our farm and business, we need your support to continue to practice sustainable farming and to support other farmers who also share our values. You get the very best pesticide free produce, and we get to continue championing the cause and protecting biodiversity.

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