I can’t actually believe it. Finally, after what has felt like an eternity of rain we have sunshine, just enough maybe, to dry out the fields, at least I really hope so. It needs to be enough to get the manure out in the fields and for the ploughing to start. So far for the farm there has been no sense that things are starting, but now at last maybe we are ready to go.
It has been a long drag since Christmas; I am sure there were records broken on the greatest number of consecutive days of rain. I bet you have felt it too? The dark, damp weather would depress even the most committed optimist.
We have our first plants arriving just after Easter from our plant raiser in Dublin: John Cahil has been minding and raising our first 750 tomato plants, and we can’t wait to get them into the soil in the polytunnel as well as the first outdoor brassica plants.
So, the season begins, and you would want optimism and a high degree of financial insulation to continue in this field (no pun intended). The cost of production over the last 20 years has risen without any checks or balances, while the price paid for veg has dropped.
This coincides with three anniversaries:
- We are 20 years in business this May! We have some very, very exciting news coming on this soon.
- It is 20 years since a piece of legislation was introduced by none other than Michael Martin at the height of the Celtic Tiger Era. The repeal of the grocery order opened the gateway to below cost selling of fresh produce by supermarkets and all protections for primary producers was lifted.
- There were over 600 commercial field scale vegetable producers in 2006, today there are just 73.
The Repeal of the grocery order was a pivotal regulatory moment that allowed for the first time below cost selling, or loss leading of fresh produce by supermarket chains. Supermarkets weaponised fresh produce to get consumers in the door, it was effectively the start of the end for the sector here in Ireland.
The IFA described how supermarkets began using fresh produce as “cannon fodder in their armoury as part of the battle for market share,” saying that below-cost selling and food deflation has led to “the demise of the horticulture industry in Ireland.” The price war model, they argued, “takes the inherent value out of the produce lines, leaving it difficult to ensure sustainable farmgate prices. We all know the story at this stage.
The big question worth asking as we look to an uncertain future impacted by climate change and the reliance on imported food, what happens when there is an unprecedented shock, what happens if we have no more producers left here, where then will we look to for our food? We currently import 84% of all the fruit and veg we consumer in Ireland.
The key lever we as consumer often overlook is that we have an enormous amount of power when it comes to our food and we can choose where we want to put that support.
As always thank you for your support, it has meant we have made it to 20 years against all the odds, and for the first time I am quietly confident that maybe we have turned a corner, and that our farm and business model is working, so thank you.
Kenneth