Meat and No veg?
We need special supports for farmers supplying domestic markets
We were very sorry to hear of the recent liquidation of a major vegetable growing business in Ireland. Our thoughts are with the grower and with the more than forty workers whose jobs are affected. Farming businesses are built over many years through hard work, investment and commitment, and the loss of one sends reverberations through the entire sector and beyond.
Unfortunately it comes as no surprise. The current system is built on specialisation, scale and integration into long and complex supply chains. At the centre sit the supermarkets, pushing price and manufacturing demand.
Vegetable growers face particular challenges; not just the weather, but labour costs, below cost selling devaluing their produce, and expensive machinery and input costs. It is a highly skilled, demanding form of agricultural production which it seems our government is happy to let slowly disappear.
At the same time, conversations about food security are becoming more prominent in Brussels, often linked to concerns about geopolitical instability and disruptions to global supply chains. These discussions highlight an important reality: countries that depend heavily on imported food are more vulnerable to external shocks.
Ireland is particularly exposed. Around 83% of the fruit and vegetables consumed in Ireland are imported, leaving the country highly dependent on international supply chains for some of the most basic components of a healthy diet.
If Ireland is serious about food security and resilience, we need policies that support a larger and more diverse base of food producers, rather than continued consolidation of food production.
Public discussion often suggests that Ireland has only around 60 commercial vegetable growers left (down from 400 in 1998) However, this overlooks a much broader landscape of smaller-scale producers, market gardeners, mixed farms, and community-based growers supplying local markets, veg boxes, shops and restaurants across the country – a wider local food sector that remains largely invisible in national policy discussions.
Talamh Beo are developing Ireland’s first national database of Local Food Producers. Our preliminary work indicates there are 300 Local Food Producers supplying local markets across Ireland, 120 of which are small – to medium -scale producers growing and supplying vegetables. Despite their contribution to local food supply, this sector remains largely invisible in national statistics and policy discussions. It operates almost entirely without dedicated policy recognition or support, sustained primarily by the energy, commitment, and initiative of the people doing the work.
At Talamh Beo, we are advocating for an agroecological food system built on diversity; diverse farms, diverse crops and production systems rooted in local economies. Instead of relying on imports and a few large scale producers here in Ireland, we need a decentralised system, with more farmers, and vegetable producers in every county and every townland.
The most resilient food system is the one embedded in your community – there is precious little security if half the food on your plate is reliant on long, complex global supply chains and logistics operations.
The first step is institutional recognition of these Local Food Producers – primary producers supplying food to the domestic market. The specific needs and challenges of this sector need to be understood and met; specific support for labour, finance, access to land, and most of all supporting incomes; including through our flagship proposal – a Basic Income for Local Food Producers.
We can build a better food system because we have many working examples to build on – examples which have emerged in a policy vacuum, surrounded by obstacles. Give the Local Food Sector some support, some recognition – and watch it transform how Ireland feeds itself.
Contact: info@talamhbeo.ie
