More families are growing their own fruit and vegetables in response to the Iran crisis as organic producers warn Ireland could soon be ‘100 per cent reliant’ on imports.
TV presenter and founder of the Grow It Yourself (GIY) movement Michael Kelly this weekend said there has been ‘probably a 20 to 30 per cent increase’ in interest in his social enterprise in the past couple of months, with supermarket prices tied to global oil costs.
The increase is measured through traffic to their website and course attendance at their Waterford base.
Mr Kelly, who fronted the RTÉ series Our Farm: A GIY Story, told the Irish Mail on Sunday: ‘We’ve been quite vocal about the fact that food security in Ireland is a bit of an illusion, because we’re so reliant on importing produce.’
Around 90 per cent of the food produced in Ireland – mostly beef and dairy – is exported, while around 85 per cent of the fruit and vegetables we eat is imported.
The organic farmer continued: ‘For a really important part of the national plate, we’re very reliant on global trade and growers in other countries.
‘That supply is obviously very reliant on cheap oil and cheap and reliable transport, which is showing to be very vulnerable at the moment.’
The GIY founder said a trend towards growing food at home is ‘cyclical’ and was seen during the 2008 economic crash and the pandemic.
The number of commercial fruit and veg producers in Ireland has dropped from around 600 in the 1990s to around 70 today.
Growers mainly blame supermarkets selling their produce for extremely low prices.
Mr Kelly said: ‘I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say we’re going in a direction where we’d be 100 per cent reliant on imports, unless we do something to change it.
Michael Kelly told the Mail: ‘We’ve been quite vocal about the fact that food security in Ireland is a bit of an illusion, because we’re so reliant on importing produce’
‘What we’re seeing is the collapse of the indigenous veg sector in Ireland, because they can’t get a fair price for the produce that they’ve grown.’
The grower and author claimed the Department of Agriculture ‘don’t really care’ about indigenous veg producers and are instead ‘very focused’ on our export of meat and dairy.
He added: ‘That’s understandable, because it’s worth €19billion to the economy. But I would argue the veg sector is strategically important and needs protection.’
Kenneth Keavey, owner of the veg producer Green Earth Organics, said ‘nobody’ is getting into veg growing anymore.
Weather events such as the Beast from the East in 2018 show how fragile the industry is now
He told the MoS: ‘People are getting out of it. And if the current trajectory continues, there’ll be nobody left. And what happens if everybody’s gone out of the industry? Where does our food come from then?’
Mr Keavey, whose company does not supply supermarkets but delivers to homes nationwide via greenearthorganics.ie, said the Iran crisis ‘highlights the dependency we have on external food producers and importing the food into the country’.
Kenneth Keavey, of Green Earth Organics, pictured here with Eileen Bentley of Bord Bia
He added: ‘It doesn’t take much to knock it out of kilter. Two or three days and supermarket shelves will be empty. We’ve seen that before during other crises, like the Beast from the East [the storm in 2018].’
The vegetable producer said rises in oil prices drives up fertiliser costs, meaning a double-whammy effect – along with transport – on food costs.
Last month, Hughes Farming and Agriculture in Co. Kilkenny – one of the country’s biggest carrot producers – declared bankruptcy, with 45 jobs lost.