National radio interview and a few thoughts…

by Kenneth Keavey

During the week I was asked to come on the Sean Moncrieff show to talk about the supermarket practice of loss leading with fresh produce. Only 1% of farms in Ireland now grow veg, there are only 60 commercial growers left in the country down from over 400 in 1998.   

You can listen to the interview here

Not as glamorous as talking from a box in the middle of the field I think, but we gave it a go anyway!  

And if you are inclined to listen to my rant from a box in a polytunnel CLICK HERE

Here’s an example to illustrate exactly why this is happening, a few years ago most of the celery and scallions during the season were grown in Ireland, now that situation has changed dramatically. This year there has been a massive decline in Irish grown celery and scallions on supermarket shelves, and why is this? The bottom-line growers, who are struggling to cover production costs (they have gone up by 43% in the last 3 years!) could not negotiate a very small cost increase, and we are talking cents single digit here, as a result the farmers decided to stop growing the produce.

Two years ago one of the biggest sprout growers in the country closed after three generations due to lack of supermarket support.

The irony of this situation is that as supermarkets continue to practice squeezing the primary producer here in Ireland for short term gain, they must look to source the produce elsewhere.  But there is pressure on growing systems everywhere due to climate change and as a result they can end up paying more for imported produce.

Because after all, with the disastrous growing year we had last year, if you cannot put a little aside in the good years how do you survive the bad years and if your only outlet is the supermarkets, and they won’t help out then there is no other viable choice but to stop growing food.

We, who once were a nation of food producers and vegetable growers have let our primary vegetable growing industry virtually disappear.

I strongly feel that it is a very sad reflection on this retail model and the mindset and expectation it encourages in us as consumers that fresh produce is worthless. Not only does it make the craft of growing food financially unviable, but it is highly demoralising to growers to be told that their produce is essentially worthless.

At the very same time that fresh produce is used to get consumers in supermarket doors by devaluing it to nothing, you have a production and retail industry that thrive on making high margins on junk food. This food, ultra-processed rubbish, is nutritionally worthless and is making us sick and lines most retailers’ shelves.

The solution is simple, primary producers need to be paid more for the produce they grow, this can come about through the celebration of fresh produce, food that will make us well and healthy and in the long run ironically will save us all money and will save an industry.

As always thanks for your support.

Kenneth

PS We have amazing Irish organic produce now, from our own farm, kale Green, Black (Cavolo Nero), Purple, salad, lettuce and courgettes, we have Irish produce from Joe Kelly in Mayo, Padraigh Fahy in Beechlawn, Marc Michel in Wicklow, Enda Hoban in Galway, Mick and Audrey in Millhouse, John Mc Ardle for mushrooms, and so much more.  See our IRISH SECTIOH HERE

It just won’t work or will it? ……

by Kenneth Keavey

This week there has been plenty of room at times for few choice expletives and having a bit of a tantrum, especially when it comes to machines. Each year when certain machines leave our farm shed they illicit a sense of foreboding. They put whatever patience we may have remaining, in this business of growing vegetables, to the test.

This was to be the case this week, we have three or four machines that “should” work but often “decide not to comply” with our ideas of what they should do. This week the machine that lays our compostable biolayer took us to the brink of giving up, but right at our breaking point we managed to bend it’s will to our way of doing things!

There is also our planter, it is temperamental, old and cranky and every year there is a requirement to find mutual common ground between farmer and machine, this year that ground has been hard to find and has led to moments of promising our faithful machine that its days are truly numbered. (Of course, we didn’t really mean it, all was said in the heat of the moment!)Nevertheless, if farming has thought us anything and it teaches a lot, is that perseverance is an absolute requirement to succeed no matter what happens. In the end we know we will produce beautiful healthy sustainable food.

But there are some who say organic farming will not feed the world, that it is an idealistic pursuit and just won’t work.I imagine that the same people who say these things are busy buying up the world’s seed bank and patenting the seeds they genetically modify. The same people who make quite a lot of money from selling an idea of how our food system should be and on the back of that selling the chemicals and making quite a lot of money, and in the end gaining control of our food system.

Once a diversified market, Corteva, BASF, Syngenta, and Bayer four enormous corporations now dominate the seeds sector. These industry giants have seized power quickly and currently hold more than half of the seed market. Furthermore, they control almost 67% of the world market for agrochemicals.Did you know four firms or fewer control at least 50% of the market for 79% of the groceries. For almost a third of shopping items, the top firms controlled at least 75% of the market share.Couple that with the fact that four corporations’ control 75% of the worlds global grain supply, and we see that the future of our food, our health and our planet lie in the hands of a few.

We think our food system should not be controlled by the few, and in our own little way we have been doing what we can to make that happen. We have been very busy planting and sowing and supporting other Irish organic farmers that are doing the same. For the last number of weeks we have been planting kale, cabbage, Romanesco, broccoli, lettuce, and celery. We have been sowing, salad, beetroot, spinach, chard, carrots, and parsnips, not to mention the nearly 1000 tomato plants that are finally starting to make some headway.

There is no way to rush nature, we need to have patience and get our timings right, take good care of our crops and the nature around as the crops grow, and the harvest will come.

So, we work, we wait, and we harvest, and we know that sustainable food is our future.As always thank you for your support.

Kenneth

PS Thank you to everybody who took the time to login and place an order last week. Every week with our new system, we are improving and again this week we will have offers and as usual the very best of Irish organic produce anywhere, so please if you haven’t yet do login and place an order. We think you will be pleasantly surprised. Keep an eye on your inbox over the weekend for extra special offers! Thank you so much without you we would not be here.

“Out of sight out of mind” and a mini plea……

by Kenneth Keavey

I was asked to give my opinion the other day on why organic food is better for us and our planet and why it is a little more expensive.

And here’s a question for you: if you have a garden at home do you or would you spray your food with chemicals, then harvest and eat it?

Much of our food system today manages and survives because of the ‘out of sight is out of mind’ principle. The giant ultra processed food factories, where vats of sludge are transformed into irresistible snacks, the giant inhumane animal factory farms, the massive intensive conventional vegetable farms that spray and coat our food in chemicals, we see none of this and if we were to, I think it would leave an implacable lasting impression that could change our food habits forever.

Supermarkets want to make the highest possible margin on as many products as possible, but they also want to entice the greatest number of people to shop with them. To do this they often loss lead with fresh produce. Now from the point of view of the consumer this may seem like a win-win, but it may not always be as good as it seems, and as they say there is no such thing as a free lunch.

Inevitably the supermarket will have put pressure on the farmer to supply at lower costs, and whilst again you may say that’s the rules of the marketplace, it can have more serious consequences for us the consumers. Setting aside the fact that for local producers it means many will go out of business and this will have an impact on our ability to source local produce in the future, leading to more imports, and less food security, it has other serious financial implications that we pay for indirectly. These costs are externalised as they say.

Low prices, always have a cost, and this cost will be factored in somewhere along the food chain. Look at the kick back of farmers against the green deal that the European parliament is trying to get over the line at the moment. Farmers do not want to bear the pressure for the environmental costs, as they will make it more difficult for them to compete against cheap imports. But, if they were paid a fair price for their food then they would be more likely to accept a deal.So right here we see the cost that is borne by the planet, by the land, by the environment, by biodiversity. We end up with polluted water ways due to high intensity pesticide and fertiliser application, leading to algal blooms that kill the fish, look at lough Neagh last year.

Conversely if there is money in the pot, to plant trees, and hedgerows, and tend to bees and plant tracts of wildflowers and leave areas to go back to nature, and not use single use plastic, as we do, on our farm then that is what can happen. It has been estimated that over half a trillion dollars of food production relies on pollinators annually, without them we would be in real trouble.

Then there is the application of chemicals in our food system, remember our kale was tested for 870 chemicals, that means a possible 870 toxic chemicals could be used on conventional food.

I cannot overstate the impact not using chemicals has in the production of our food and I know a thing or two about chemicals. Without chemicals there are weeds, and biodiversity depends on weeds for survival, just look at the decimation of the Monarch butterfly in the Americas, a major contributing factor is the use of Roundup. When chemicals are used, they get into the food and they destroy all diversity, leaving vast monocultures, that require more and more chemicals to control, weeds, bugs and fungi. The more chemicals in our food system, the less life in our food system it is as simple as that. There are now 44,000 species on the IUCN red list.

We need biodiversity. As farmers we are given the responsibility of producing food but also of protecting the land we were given, my dad and granddad believed that. What has happened to modern agriculture that we have strayed so far from this path?

As always with help from people like you we are creating a better fairer food system, thank you.

Kenneth

PS Since we have introduced our new website we have suffered a substantial loss of customers, if you are one of those customers that is grappling with resetting your password or are not familiar with the way the new system works, please, please give it a try, we the 38 people who work here rely on those orders each week, as does our farm and our network of Irish suppliers. So please if you can have another look. Once you get set up it is actually much much better and we have some exciting offers to help out with the cost too. Keep an eye on your inbox this weekend for some fantastic offers.

CLICK HERE www.greenearthorganics.ie TO PLACE YOUR ORDER FOR DELIVERY NEXT WEEK 🙂 We really need and value each order.

This is a longer one than usual I am afraid.

by Kenneth Keavey

During the week somebody raised a valid point, how can we speak about climate change with any conviction when we import food. I have been considering this since and felt it was a point worth addressing.

We do import food and especially now it is more prevalent than at other times during the year, this is the hungry gap and we simply do not have Irish produce in abundance.

We do import food during other times of the year also and yes that food arrives here on the island of Ireland by truck.  It is important to note that we never import food by plane as do many supermarkets. We also have other sourcing policies that some may find contentious such as never buying produce from Israel.

There is in fact no other option if we want to eat tomatoes or peppers or carrots at present but to import, there simply is no commercial Irish supply. This has been particularly exacerbated by the horrendous growing season last year and the equally disastrous start to spring. We are not a market garden, and we need to grow in scale to have the necessary produce to fill our boxes each week, we are commercial organic vegetable farm. I think it is equally important to point out that there are very few of our type of farm at our scale in the country, a handful maybe.

Right now we are preparing fields we have planted some of our polytunnels and have just put our first plants in the ground this week. This will mean if the weather plays ball and these days that is a big if, we will be harvesting the first kale say in July.

Can we as a result of the issues above talk about climate breakdown and how it effects our farming? Can we voice our opinions on why we think large scale factory farming is horrendous and wrong? Can we say we disagree with deforestation in the amazon to feed the animal industries voracious appetite for GM soya? Can we offer an opinion on the fact that we think trees and hedgerows should be an integral part of the farming landscape in Ireland? Can we state the fact that if there was less meat consumed and more plants that less land would be required for agriculture, irrespective whether you eat meat or not, this is simply a fact?

Our intention is to shine a light on these issues whilst being mindful of people’s preferences for food, which is deeply personal, it is a delicate balance. Whilst also acknowledging that there are phenomenal hardworking farmers of all types in Ireland. Farming is a tremendously precarious industry and that government led encouragement to intensification means many farmers have few choices to change the way they farm.

The idea of the “Green Deal” in Europe being abandoned deeply upsets me and I feel it is a sad day in European evolution, the basic principle that we look after the land and set aside more for nature is exactly what we need to do. But how can farmers who to an extent have been encouraged by certain political parties be expected to foot the bill for these changes at least to a degree, when the price of food is so remarkably low, it is not the farmers and it never is that win from inflation led food price increases or indeed the smaller retailers. It is the large corporates and giant retailers they are the only winners, and they always win. 

The bottom line again of course comes back to the system that we now function within, our food system is inherently broken, and it needs to change.

So, whilst we import produce, we also grow 11 acres of vegetables plus 7 polytunnels worth on a farm of nearly 20 acres, some of which is left to forestry, hedgerows and general rewilding. We have agreements with several organic vegetable growers across Ireland to supply crops that we do not grow, such as potatoes, and carrots, and scallions and cucumbers and many more. All grown organically and in Ireland when in season.

I started this business because my fundamental belief to change our food system and protect our planet are dear to me. We are a small farm by any one’s reckoning but we absolutely do what we can.

We will continue to talk about things that will be disagreeable to some, to many maybe, we hope too to encourage others to think that maybe there is another way, that may provide a small ray of light and that leads to a path of change, after all, we all have power and choices to make change real.

And of course, as I say each week and it is something I mean wholeheartedly, without you spending your money with us and buying the produce we sell whether it is grown by us, or some other Irish organic farmer, or an organic farmer in Spain, we would not  be able to run our farm here, and support the other sustainable ethical farmers we buy produce from and we would not have this forum to say what we believe and what we hope some of you believe too.

So, I hope to that person that raised the issue that this has helped address some of your points.

Thank you for your support you make all this possible.

Kenneth

50 today and I wonder what my grandad would say ?

by Kenneth Keavey

Today I am 50, and because of the day that is in it and because we have many new people here that may not know our story, I thought I would share it again.

The story of our farm began three generations ago, with my Grandad who was the head Gardener at the local castle.  This farm came to life in 1923, with the land act that allowed Irish tenant farmers to buy their own land for the first time.

It must have been a remarkable feeling, for the first time my granddad owned his own plot of land.  Up until then he had worked as head Gardener for the Blake family that owned Cregg castle.

He worked in the walled garden and by all counts had green fingers. He did not have access to chemicals or plastic. He grew amazing fresh organic produce for the Blake’s and for his own family. This was a time before everything was available all year round. It was a time when the first fresh new season produce was anticipated with much relish.

There is still a whisper of that anticipation left in our society today, at least for a short period that attends on the arrival of the first new season potatoes. A beautiful tradition handed down by the needs of our ancestors.

I remember my grandad growing peas, and rhubarb and apples, carrots and potatoes, turnips and cabbage all from a relatively small kitchen garden here on this farm.

My dad too had green fingers and he grew much of the food we ate in the early years. Drying onions on the roof of our shed, I remember being up there on the galvanise turning the onions in the beating sun so they would cure, before bringing them into the shed for the winter.

My interest in continuing this family tradition of growing food was not to be realised for some time. A defining moment of thinning mangles with plastic bags wrapped around my knees tied with bailing twine sent me as far as you could possibly get from muck, clay and growing food.

But something inside must have been stirred and disillusionment with a career in the pharmaceutical and biotech industry lead me back to the land. 18 years ago we embarked on this journey of sustainable food production.  

I wonder sometimes what my grandad would say seeing the fancy machines we use today to keep crops weed free.

I wonder what he would say about how growing food in this country has been devalued to the point of extinction.

Or about the cheap imports, of questionable ethical and sustainable origins and exploitative labour practices which mean the Irish farmer cannot ever hope to compete.

I wonder what he would say about the reliance on plastic and chemicals. Chemicals that mean the bees are dying; our biodiversity is disappearing; and our water ways once clean, pristine, and brimming with fish are polluted with chemicals and stifled with growth of toxic algae due to soluble fertiliser run off.

He would surely be dazzled by the choice and convenience of produce available 365 days of the year.

But I wonder would he think it was all worth it, to get food at the cheapest possible price?  I would like to think he would say not.

So, in that first year, as myself, Jenny my wife and my dad Michael packed our first boxes on some pallets supported by empty Guinness barrels I wonder would he have thought we were mad?

Probably, most others did.  But I have a sneaking suspicion that he would have been proud and happy to see the farm being used to grow sustainable local food and respected in the same way as it was in his time.

Thank you, granddad, and thank you dad, without their hard work and belief none of this would have been possible.

Kenneth

One of Those Weeks

by Kenneth Keavey

Last week was a terrible week. Have you ever had one of those? Where everything that can go wrong, does go wrong. We are a small family business, we are based on our own family farm in county Galway and small things can have a big impact. 

Have you ever faced into a time when you really can’t figure out which way is up? Everything is going against you? Things are unravelling before your eyes? Well if you have then we can certainly empathise. 

Last week was the week, we have had quite a few of “those weeks” over the last two years, and we know we have been the lucky ones, many businesses have not been so lucky, we have managed to stay open and stay going. I think maybe even Florence and George our pet rescue pigs knew there was something amiss last week.

Most of you our customers will hopefully have been none the wiser that there was anything amiss.

The week started with several staff not being able to come in to work due to close contact related stuff, we were down people and were on the back foot from the start. But we got busy, the guys and girls working put in amazing effort.

Then there were delays to deliveries, disruptions to our transport partners that meant we were left with significant stock shortages. Again, everybody got pretty busy both harvesting extra on the farm and changing contents in boxes to make sure everybody got as close to what they wanted as possible.

Then in the middle of it all more of the team were out,  so we had to put a stop on most of the harvest temporarily and drafted the farm team into the packing shed to help with packing. We were working flat out. 

By Wednesday we were stretched, stressed and there was just too many plates spinning.

But on Thursday the ultimate disaster struck our whole website and all the software we rely on to keep the wheels turning crashed and was not back online again properly until Friday afternoon. That left us with a backlog of nearly 300 orders to pack in one day, as close to an impossible task as there is. 

Not only that but an already stretched customer service team were trying their very best to get back to the many queries that were coming in as a result of the outage.

It was intense, busy, stressful, and at times energised, fuelled by pizza and loud music, but the team came through in the end. 

The final icing on the cake was not having our orders ready for our usual transport link to Dublin and we had to hire our own truck, which arrived and was not big enough, so we had to make two runs though the night to get the orders to Dublin for Saturday morning delivery, 4.45 am the last boxes were loaded onto the truck on our farm on Saturday morning.

Not only that but the team were back in on Saturday again to try and mop up the missed pieces and Darragh our Limerick Agent was even packing his own orders by hand on Saturday and Sunday to ensure they were done for delivery on Monday.

It was close to the most difficult week we have had. But you know what we got through it. The team here were remarkable and did an astounding job, and I am grateful for all their hardwork. 

Thank you guys.

Kenneth