Local garlic, honest feedback, plus a fantastic offer

by Kenneth Keavey

We planted our garlic bulbs back in November and we have just started harvesting our very first fresh garlic bulbs with stems. They are beautiful, Emmanuel and his team, Enda and Daire, are harvesting it with such care, it is a true celebration of local food.

It is a seasonal star and will not be round for long, we have one full tunnel of it, we don’t grow garlic on a commercial scale, we simply could not afford to compete with the cheap supermarket fodder, garlic is seen as a cheap commodity crop.

Much of the garlic on supermarket shelves is from China. The reason we have Chinese garlic and so much of it, nearly 1 million kgs, or one third of all the garlic eaten in Ireland is Chinese, is about price and supply, it is cheap. There is very little Irish garlic production with a couple of notable exceptions such as Drummond House garlic and Taylors of Lusk, but how can locally grown garlic compete with this scale of cheap imports?

Our fresh garlic is about as far from the cheap imported Chinese garlic as you can get.  I love our garlic, it is delicate gorgeous and you can use the whole stem. It goes without saying that no herbicides or pesticides have come near it!  But it is more than that, here is a crop that can really reconnect us with our food.

So, it hurt a little the last week when as I was dealing with another electricity outage on our farm, getting the tractor generator out (Thanks ESB that is about three outages in as many weeks) when a customer left our farm shop saying they would come back in the summer when we had more of our own stuff. (What about the kale, spinach, chard, garlic, red cabbage, rocket, lettuce, salad, mushrooms and potatoes).

They then sent a follow up e-mail complaining about our pricing. I absolutely agree we are not cheaper than the supermarkets how could we be? They can sell organic carrots for less than what we pay to buy them, not sure how they do this? I get it though, there is a cost of living crisis and food is a hard sell, when it is so cheap, but at the same time we can find it easy to buy that coffee for nearly €6, I do it too. It is supermarket conditioning we have just come to accept. 

We love all feedback here and to be fair Darragh and Eddie in customer service get loads and they field it really well. This piece of feedback was no exception, and it reminded me of how hard the business of growing food is and how we just cannot compete on price with supermarkets. Nevertheless, some days it is easier to hear negative comments than other days, and head in hands, on this day, this left me feeling demoralised and upset. It is tough growing vegetables, and we have been mostly succeeding or at least persisting at it now for 20 years.

On the very same day (And the irony here is not lost on me) in Tesco, a man came up to me out of the blue, and said “you are Green Earth Organics, I love what you do, it’s so important, keep doing it” you couldn’t actually write it, and as I said to him, “thank you so much your timing could not have been better.”

Sometimes all it takes is a little comment to snap us out of things, it reminded me that we have a fantastic amazing loyal customer base and you support us the best you can, some every week, some whenever you can, so thank you! I know it’s tough, I know there is a cost-of-living crisis, I know we are not the cheapest, I know you could go down and get stuff cheaper in a supermarket, but you choose to support us instead, and quite frankly that is amazing, so thank you.

So, thank you for seeing past the prices and thank you for your support.

Kenneth

PS I remember having a conversation with Fergus Halpin who runs Abercorn farm and used to run Harvest Day, we were lamenting good weather, I know it doesn’t make sense does it? We love good weather, we need the good weather for the farm, but good weather means our orders drop off, and good weather coupled with a bank holiday can be devastating!

The little ironies of life, anyway as we are promised good weather and as we are coming into a week leading into a bank holiday please do not forget to support us and we have a very special treat for those of you who spend over €80, enter code CAKE80 to get one of these very special amazing cakes (they are free from lactose, refined sugar, and gluten, but they taste amazing they really do, you would never know the difference, try one and see for yourself). We have been working with Rose and Vanilla for the last three months to get this over the line and finally we are there.

Pay the farmer or pay the pharma

by Kenneth Keavey

Michael Pollan once said “eat food. not too much. mostly plants.” – good advice it would seem. I would add to that maybe do not eat ingredients you cannot pronounce. 

Toxic chemicals are on our plants, are in our food chain and are in our soil. Just this week Bayer agreed to pay out $7.5 billion to settle weedkiller cancer cases against them for not telling people Roundup potentially causes cancer, crucially they are not admitting liability or that Roundup causes cancer. 

There, is a theory that the large food corporations, large agribusiness and the pharma industry are in cahoots, I would surmise that this is not too far from the actual truth. This intersection is characterized by shared financial interests, joint lobbying efforts, and, in some cases, overlapping ownership between food companies, nutrition groups, and pharmaceutical firms. It is also worth noting that Bayer have a very significant health care division. 

There is little doubt that modern food is making us sick. 

On one hand we have an industry that manufacturers calorie rich fake food, that is designed to be highly addictive. These ultra processed products make us sick. Then you have an industry that creates drugs that help manage the symptoms of the disease this artificial food creates. It would seem like the perfect business model, make people sick, profit off that, then profit again from treating the sickness. 

Both business models are driven by greed (Altruism in the pharmaceutical and agribusiness died a long time ago), the mantra now is profit above all else. 

I am not so naive to think that profit is not important (we have spent many years struggling to survive and I can tell you first hand this is no fun) of course profit is important, but if that is all that is important then we have a problem. 

In fact, this single ideology is the root cause of the devastation of our planet and our health, and both are closely interwoven. 

Just this week scientists were making peace with the fact that we are on track to have to accept 3C of global warming, this will essentially make our world unliveable. The basic underlying reason for this, greed. 

Today our bodies must contend with toxic chemicals that have been sprayed on our food, and toxic chemicals being added to our processed food, we are sick and by all accounts getting sicker. 

There may be one simple solution, and it goes back to Michael Pollan’s maxim “eat food, not too much, mainly plants”. Eat fresh food, grown without toxic chemicals. Eat more home cooked food. Eat ingredients you know and recognise (Or as one person said, ingredients your grandmother would recognise). If we do this most of the time or at least some of the time and put our money into our food, then we will have to pay out much less to the Pharma’s of the world. 

With your support we are changing the food system, so thank you.

Kenneth

PS I would like to thank Jacinta Dalton from the Atlantic Technological University Galway City for the title inspiration here.

farm washing … Not again!

by Kenneth Keavey

I was at Food on the Edge here in Galway this week. This is a food festival that champions transparency of our food system, and the fight to put good food on people’s plates, from fine restaurants to farms across the country. There was such positivity and a genuine feeling of solidarity.

It was clear that there are many people doing great work to put real food right at the heart of our small country. But the backdrop was less rosy, working in the food industry is tough, plain and simple, whether you are producing, growing or cooking food there are many challenges.

Why is this the case? Why is it that when it comes to food, good local sustainable food that we mostly look for the very cheapest option. There are many reasons for this I guess, but the cheapest is best, a food culture that the supermarkets have carefully curated is a race to the bottom where nobody is a winner. We recognise the need to provide value, but how do you define value, is good wholesome fresh organic food, grown without chemicals where people are paid fairly and nobody is exploited, does that represent value?

There is no denying that value is embedded in the price we pay, and we are no exception and are not exempt from the unrelenting pressure of supermarkets. To give you our customers more value we have reduced prices on some of our fresh lines. But it is impossible to compete with the large supermarkets, they are the gatekeepers and control our food system. In the race to the bottom here are two examples that highlight what is happening: Supervalu just this week are selling organic leeks all the way from Poland.

This is shocking, I know for sure that there is at least one large organic leek grower that they are not stocking, why is that do you think? We know it is more expensive to buy Irish apples, or to grow Irish leeks, we could easily stop growing leeks and just import, or buy imported apples over Irish, but we don’t! Surely it is a great thing to support locally grown sustainable food, it is our business model.

What do you think of supermarkets who create FAKE or PHANTOM farms as a marketing tactic to make us believe they are doing the right thing, greenwashing, or farmwashing spring to mind. Next time you are in Aldi, have a look at the “Egans” brand, what does it suggest, well very clearly it suggests a family farm called “Egans” but “Egans” as a farm does not exist, it is a misleading brand. What are your thoughts on this?

This supermarket culture, and price wars have brought us to a place where fresh food is continuously discounted and used as loss leading fodder. We could certainly be forgiven for thinking that fresh food is worthless, this is extremely disheartening as any grower will tell you.

Of course, this is a race to the bottom which has put the very future of the Irish horticultural industry in jeopardy. Our farm and business model is built on sourcing and growing chemical free sustainable food, we will always support other Irish organic farms and continue to grow local Irish food on our own farm.

Only through your support is this possible,

Thank you.

Kenneth

Fake Farms, what do you think…

by Kenneth Keavey

What do “Egan’s” and “Farrell’s” have in common?

They are all brand names used on supermarket packed own label fruit and veg. They give you the impression that they are family farms, BUT THEY ARE NOT.  They are marketing mechanisms, to make us feel warm and happy that we are supporting these assumed lovely family farms.

We are working hard on our Real farm to get the autumn harvest out and the conditions are favourable; this is the same in the remaining Irish vegetable farms up and down the country the likes of Beechlawn Organic farm, or McCormacks Family farm, or Philip Dreaper’s farm in Offaly where we get our Irish carrots, or Richard Galvin in Clashganny organic farm who supplies our organic Irish apples, and many, many more.

These family names used in some supermarkets give the impression there is a real farm with a family name behind the carrots, or tomatoes on their shelf. I recently went to check this out in a large Retailer.

In their fruit and veg section I was convinced that “Farrell’s” which was labelled on much of their Irish produce was a family farm and this family were producing a wealth of produce. At least at first glance that was my impression. I’m in the veg growing business I am a grower and understand a little of how these things work and I was taken in by the misleading advertising.

As I looked a little closer it seemed that my original assumption was not at all correct. “Farrell’s” is not a real farm; it is a marketing tool created by the supermarket to give the consumer that warm homely glow of things being done right.

Does it matter?

Well, I think it does, firstly, this is misleading, you are led to believe the produce is coming from “Farrell’s”, and it is not.  

The second interesting point that is worth considering is that this brand allows supermarkets or more frequently large pack houses and distribution centres, to take in produce from multiple farms and blend it into packs, so the carrots may be coming from multiple suppliers and you or I will never know.  This practice is now frequently called “blending”.

This is very helpful for large retailers as it gives it them the balance of power when it comes to price negotiation, and the ultimate flexibility to choose whose carrots or apples to put into their bag.

When the grower is hidden, he has less power to negotiate a fair price and as with all own branded products on supermarket shelves they are cheaper. It is this pricing structure that has done the damage to growers all over Ireland over the last twenty years.

As always with your support our real Farm continues to grow and our support for other REAL growers can be fair and transparent.

Thank you.

Kenneth

PS Thank you to everybody who donated to our Gaza appeal during the week, I am waiting on final confirmation but the total donated is looking like it was €2380, so thank you so much to everybody, we will be topping this up with the 50% of €1190 making the total donation we will make to the UNICEF Gaza appeal €3570. We will confirm this early next week and be making the donation straight away.

Our Christmas Shop is OPEN

by Kenneth Keavey

We are delighted to announce that our 2024 Christmas Shop is now open and accepting orders for Christmas week.

We have a wonderful selection of Christmas Veg Boxes, Chocolates, Wines, Gift Vouchers and an array of other Organic Christmas Goodies! Check out some of the highlights of our Christmas offering below and detailed instructions on how to smoothly place your Christmas order through our online store.  If you would like to celebrate local Irish organic food this Christmas, and support local organic Irish farms, and keep chemicals off your Christmas dinner plate, and be blown away my the amazing tastes and flavour of freshly harvested vegetables, then one of our Christmas boxes is exactly what you need. These boxes are jam packed full of as much Irish organic produce as we could get our hands on from our farm and other small Irish organic farmers. From our own amazing parnsips, to organic brussels sprouts grown right here in Galway to fantastic floury potatoes, to carrots that taste like carrots used to taste! These boxes for your Christmas order will be delivered direct to your door anywhere in Ireland on the 23rd of December as fresh as can be and exactly in time for your Christmas preparations. Read on for more info. Please get our order in as early as possible to ensure availability and to help us planning our harvest and harvest from our other Irish farmers. Christmas Order Cutoff & Delivery Days As Christmas Day falls on a Wednesday this year, we’re delivering a little differently so that everyone will receive their organic goodies in time for the festive celebrations!


We will be delivering as normal from Monday 16th December to Saturday 21st December. You can order a regular delivery for this week. CHRISTMAS BOXES WILL NOT BE AVAILABLE FOR DELIVERY ON THESE DATES.
We will be running a dedicated Christmas Delivery run on Monday 23rd December. All Christmas Boxes and regular items can be ordered for delivery on this day. Orders must be placed by 10am on Friday 20th December. Early ordering is advised to ensure we can fulfil your order, and it helps us with harvesting and planning.

 Order Process for Christmas Deliveries

Once Off Orders: You can navigate to our full Christmas selection here. Our four set Christmas boxes can only be ordered for delivery on 23rd December. You can order any items in addition to the Christmas boxes from our regular store for Christmas delivery. There are a few exceptions that are mentioned below.  When placing your Christmas order you will see the Order Type option at checkout for ‘Christmas Delivery 23rd December.’ Make sure this is ticked if you are ordering for Christmas. It will be pre-ticked if you have a Christmas Box in your order. Restricted items – some items such as milk and yoghurt will not be available for delivery on 23rd December. There are also certain seasonal items like Irish broccoli that you cannot order for Christmas week as they will not be in season by then. Any of these items will be automatically removed from your cart at checkout.

Subscription & Repeat Order Customers: If you are due a delivery on the week of 16th December, your order will be shipped as normal. If you would like a Christmas delivery please do not try and place your Christmas order through your account – this will not be possible. Please log out of your account and place your Christmas order as a one-time GUEST order. Even though you will be prompted to log in at checkout with your email address, please do not log in. We are closed from Tuesday 24th December until Monday 6th January. There will be no deliveries during this period so please stock up before then! For repeat order customers, your order will be automatically skipped these weeks and it will restart on the week of 6th January.  If you have any questions about how to set up an order for Christmas week or how to manage your recurring orders over the Christmas period, please send our customer care team an email on info@greenearthorganics.ie or give them a call on 091 793 768 / 01 460 0467.