Why we do it without chemicals…

by Kenneth Keavey

On recent days it has been pleasant and invigorating to walk the farm and experience the soft warm rain on our faces. An unusual experience for the west coast of Ireland if the truth be told, cold biting wind and stinging rain being the more customary Irish weather! The warm weather has been gratefully accepted and unlike many places we are happy to receive the rain at least now, at this point in the year, when many in other parts of the world are suffering from drought.

The rain has made sticky muck out of the dusty dry soil, The land is now slippery, and sticky and you must move with care, lifting and carrying heavy crates is a more fraught affair.  Nevertheless, there is an enlivening feeling in the warm rain and without it there would be no growth.

The rain and heat have brought on growth at an astounding place.  We have observed unimaginable crop and weed growth in the space of a week, and we are now presented with the unenviable fact that there is a lot of hand weeding to do.

Many would say that weeds have their place, and they do, but it would be naive on a commercial organic farm to take this laissez-faire approach to weeds, we would have no harvest. Weeds compete for light, nutrients, and oxygen, they harbour little creatures (and especially slugs) that will eat the crops and they can restrict airflow leading to increased disease.

Not all weeds are “bad”, weeds provide a haven for good creatures, for wildlife, birds eat their seeds and hide in their shade. It is when they get out of control that you have a problem.

Weed control is one of the key distinctions between organic and conventional farming. Conventional farmers are not faced with this relentless pressure to weed. Their weed control comes out of a white plastic bottle, sprayed onto the crops and the ground to kill the unwanted plants.

In conventional farming, the farmer sprays, he starts with roundup to “clean” the land then may apply pre and post crop emergence chemicals/herbicides.  Crops can be sprayed several times in their lifespan. All these chemicals can reside in the food that is ultimately produced. The impact on of these chemicals on biodiversity is large and destructive. There are no chemicals used on our farm nor will there ever be, but despite our best efforts we now face days of hand weeding.

So we walk the farm feel the rain on our faces, touch the warm courgettes on the plants, examine the healthy and vibrant lettuces (Of which we have too many) taste the first baby carrots, pull the best beetroot we have ever grown on the farm and all in all, although there is still plenty of work to be done we are grateful for the beautiful and healthy bounty of the land. The food feels clean and healthy and powerful, and just to hold it whilst standing in the rain feels like you are increasing your life energy.

We are harvesting this produce every day, from tomatoes to beetroot, we are picking and bringing it straight to our pack house to be packed into your boxes. We hope that you at home are feeling a little bit of that energy we are feeling and are enjoying your positive contribution to you and your families health and know that you are making a meaningful positive commitment to the planet.

Thank you.

Kenneth

This is a plea…

by Kenneth Keavey

It is always with a great sense of irony that we head into July. It is the official end of the hungry gap. We are catapulted from a frenzy of farming activity and a dearth of harvest in early June to a level of activity bordering on the insane and an overflowing harvest basket.

July is the time when we have a plentiful harvest, and it is the very same time that many of you our customers break your routine with cooking and many people are going away on holidays and are taking a well-earned break.

It is hard to assess our harvest need a year in advance and the last three years we have seen so much volatility; we are not sure what way is up anymore. But plans were made back in November and now we are harvesting the fruits of our labour.

This summer is proving to be a big challenge; We have so much of our own freshly harvested food right now and we have developed relationships with other local organic farms and now when the time of Irish plenty arrives, we find that you our customers are taking a break for all the usual reasons, holidays, not cooking, routines out the window and we understand completely.

The downturn this summer for us is leaving us with surplus harvest with nowhere to go but back into the ground.

This time of every year we also see a large increase in labour costs on the farm. It is a double downturn for us, as our costs go up and our sales go down. Anybody will tell you this is not a good way to run a business.

The initial start of the growing season on our organic farm, seeds, plants, fertiliser (organic), compost, contractors and labour are high, before you harvest even one bean. All of this is necessary to make the food in the fields happen.

Growing food at the best of times is not a money-making enterprise, far from it, we only ever expect the farm to break even and most years this is a stretch to achieve. We grow the food, because we love to do it, because sustainable agriculture is something we strongly believe in, and we believe is the key to a healthier future.

We have PV cells generating our electricity, we have invested in a zero-emission electric van, we collect our rainwater, we plant trees, and hedgerows, we use only plastic free packaging. We educate people on how important biodiversity is with free farm walks on the first Saturday of every month. To get everybody involved in thinking about the planet and the environment, where our food comes and how it is produced is our critical philosophy.

All of this takes time and energy, it all costs money and at the end of the day although everybody wants to enjoy their job and although nearly everybody that works with us believes in our values and our mission, they still need to get paid.

So, this is a plea, a plea to ask you to order next week, to find a way (if you can at all) to continue supporting us over the summer, to tell your friends and family to order from us, or let us deliver to you if you are on holidays in Ireland, (we deliver to every county with sustainable packaging).

The boxes next week are loaded with the most amazing fresh local Irish organic produce, including, spinach, salad, lettuce, courgettes, cucumbers, kale, scallions, tomatoes and we even have new IRISH organic potatoes.

So please if you can at all place an order.

Your support as always is very much appreciated.

Thanks

Kenneth

Madness descending…

by Kenneth Keavey

The week has been busy and intense, it has been the final push before the season settles into something that resembles a routine. The farm from March to July has a way of consuming you, it is non-stop with never an end in sight. There are so many different jobs to do, and so many plants to plant.

You are either contending with not enough water, or too much water, not enough heat or too much heat, not enough crops or too many crops, no weeds and then weeds everywhere.

There is fun too at times, but finding those moments of fun when there is so much pressure can be tricky. Emmanuel our farm manager seems to have an abundance of energy, enthusiasm, and cheerfulness, on days when you are covered in muck, wet through to your bones and your wellies are caked in wet clay that is priceless.

This week has brought its share of challenges: A key piece of equipment finally failing us at a crucial moment then getting it fixed to find it breaks again the next day. Luckily plan B or was it C? worked reasonably well, and we got through the big back log of plants that are now securely planted in the land.

Unrolling nets to keep the pigeons from our crops is always fun, especially when you end up hauling heavy wet mucky nets over fields to find out they are the wrong size, arrrgh and a few choice words generally spring to mind on those occasions.

The wind it seems has decided to get under quite a bit of our biodegradable ground cover and has ripped it and damaged the crops that were under it, whilst the crows (and here again I have a choice non-zen like expletive I use to describe these creatures) are having their usual fun with us.

They walk down a bed of leeks pecking out random leeks to discover (to their chagrin I imagine) they are not worms (or maybe they know all along and do it anyway!) and they then throw the little leek plants onto the tractor tracks. We then spend the next 4-5 hours filling the gaps with new leeks to have them repeat the endeavour the next day. I feel we will not win this particular battle.

There is a wise expression that says: for every seed you sow there is a percentage that will not germinate, a percentage that will not mature properly and a percentage that will be pecked out by the crows! Or maybe I just made that up to make myself feel better.

But on the most magical of notes, we have seen a resurgence of birds of prey around our farm, which is amazing and this week a buzzard tried to strike down a pigeon before our very eyes.

So, it seems we have crested the hill of madness or very nearly anyway (there is a little voice at the back of my head whispering that there is more to come, something else is about to happen, but I am ignoring that for now), and now the full flow of the Irish harvest starts.

We are already seeing our cold-rooms fill with the finest Irish organic produce you can get anywhere from our own farm and other Irish organic farms too. Today we are harvesting kale and courgettes. Tomorrow it will be tomatoes, salad, lettuce and cucumbers and we have lots and lots of produce.

Growing a diversity of crops keeps us on the wrong side of too busy, it is hard to keep on top of everything, it is also fiercely labour intensive, all the crops are harvested by hand and whilst we endeavour to do as little hand weeding as possible it is inevitable that some must be done.

So, it is after a full 6 months of preparation we finally start to see the fruits of our labour, and it is at this time, the start of July that we always see our orders drop off due to holidays. But if you can at all please don’t forget about us, we will continue to be here fighting with the crows, harvesting lovely fresh produce; the supermarkets won’t miss you, but we will.

As always thanks for your support.
Kenneth

The problem with plastic

by Kenneth Keavey

As I stand out in this amazing field of flowers, biodiversity is buzzing all around me. Our impact on the planet, on biodiversity is closely linked with how we produce and package our food. You don’t have to look too far to see the impact of our food system on the local countryside all around us, and the more disturbing images of birds and marine wildlife choking on pieces of our food system.

We are on the cusp of “Plastic Free July”, and in case you hadn’t guessed I am talking about the impact of plastic on our planet and on the creatures and ecosystems we share this planet with.

Plastic is everywhere. Can you really imagine your life today without plastic, look around you, open your fridge, what is not wrapped in plastic?

It wasn’t always like this. But something changed. Plastic has infiltrated every aspect of our lives.

Plastic is a big problem, but it is indicative of a bigger one, the food system we rely on and trust to put nutrients into our bodies has become so disjointed and complex that we cannot possibly begin to know how and where our food has been produced anymore.

When my grandad farmed this land, only two generations ago, food was in the main plastic free.

Don’t get me wrong though I am a realist too and I understand that we cannot return to those days, there simply would not be enough food if we did, but we can certainly make some significant changes to reduce our plastic consumption.

If we follow the trail back though we can see who the clear winners from the plastic revolution are, these are the guys that really don’t want things to change, the same ones that on one hand extoll the virtues of what they are doing to deal with plastic waste whilst continuing to create more and more of it. You know the ones.

The supermarkets, and the giant global retailers, they are the ones that make large amounts of money from the plastic polluting food chain that they have so expertly curated.

Responsibility for change will of course be pushed back onto the consumer, the end consumer they argue are ultimately responsible for their choices. This simply doesn’t cut it I am afraid, giant profitable corporations need to take responsibility for their waste, it is their responsibility to tidy up their own mess.

The single use type plastic, the use for 2 seconds and throw in the bin plastic, it is everywhere and that is the problem. How can this change?

Retailers can start with the fresh fruit and veg in supermarket aisles.  (ALL our boxes are PLASTIC FREE and have been since 2018)

There were some serious promises made by large retailers to appease consumer demand after David Attenborough’s blue planet documentary in 2017. Big business has become tremendously adept at hijacking good causes to improve the bottom line (I believe the term is Greenwashing and it is endemic these days) Where are these plastic promises now? What has changed on supermarket aisles? Not very much it would seem.

In March 2018, we said goodbye to plastic for good in our fixed boxes– we were the first company to do that in Ireland. We sourced compostable plant based bags, we launched our ‘Plastic Free’ shopping aisle and we made a commitment to never include any plastic wrapped produce in any of our set boxes ever again.  

Thank you in supporting us on our journey.

Kenneth

PS Reuse is so much better than recycling and we have always championed this, our boxes are the ultimate reusable container. We collect them and reuse them every week, and where we can’t we have invested in reusable and compostable packaging.

PPS Can you help us “Save Our Summer” please remember we always see a downturn in our customer base during the summer months when we have the very best Irish produce, head to our website now to see how you can “Save Our Summer”.

“You will need a touch of Roundup to make this work…”

by Kenneth Keavey

Over the last couple of months, I had forgotten how grounding growing food is. On a sunny day walking through the crops, you feel alive.  It’s the vibrancy of nature that recharges us, don’t we have a duty to protect this fragile system of life?

“You will need a touch of Roundup to make this work” some friendly advice 18 years ago imparted to us on our vegetable growing journey. Needless to say, we did not take it!
 
Using chemicals to fight nature will never work. In the short term it may give a temporary reprieve from a certain disease or pest, but that pest will come back stronger and more resistant next time. It is in a way a self-perpetuating industry.


I spent a good percentage of my early life studying and working with chemistry and I am thankful for the many benefits modern science makes possible, but synthetic toxic chemicals have no place in our food chain, end of story.

Our organic farm is situated in rural Ireland and it is beautiful in its own way it’s vibrancy is defined by a myriad of greens, and flowers and it overflowing with life.

Once upon a time, flowers and mushrooms were commonplace in fields of grass around our lovely country, not so anymore. I don’t know about you, but the sight of a cowslip flower transports me back in time, to a time when the fields next to our family home were full of these beautiful flowers.

Sadly, today, these flowers are not to be found in most farm grasslands, they have all but disappeared (as have the button mushrooms that also used to be commonly found in meadows).

The reason sadly: the common use of artificial fertiliser and herbicides. Many of these grass tracks are sprayed to remove anything that is not grass, depriving the land of variety, variety being the cornerstone of all life. Such is the way of much of our production systems these days, large monocultures, engineered to produce at all costs.

The one common theme that can be found in all of these food systems generally starts with a application of the chemical glyphosate which as a molecule looks benign enough, but is far from benign.

The active ingredient in Roundup: glyphosate is the most widely used herbicide in human history, nearly 10 billion kg have been used globally.  It is a probable-carcinogen and it now contaminates most non-organic food stuffs. It is systemic in nature which means if it is sprayed on a crop then it gets absorbed and sits inside it.  It destroys all life, and leaves fields barren and dead.

Surely the production of food in a way that contributes to our health and the health of the planet, a way that enhances and protects biodiversity, a way that encourages working with nature rather than against it must be the best way to grow food?

The funny thing is that usually this type of approach produces food that tastes great, is better for us and is also better for our land. Your support makes it possible, and during the summer we need it more than ever, thank you.

Kenneth

Save Our Summer

by Kenneth Keavey

What a week, the gruelling physical draining farm work starts at 6am every day.  The intense heat and sunshine have taken its toll on the farm team, but they have weathered it with their familiar good nature and cheer and have done exceptional work. I had the sense this week of things coming together of the work being caught up, of shape starting to be put on the fields.

The little plants are starting to show their heads and with the help of some monsoon type downpours and intense heat there has been an explosion of growth. The shift in the climate is so clear to see, yes of course we have had warm weather in years gone by, but every year since 2018 now we have had consistent weeks of heat and near if not full drought conditions. It is the regularity of change and the extremes of the change, that are so noticeable, climate change rages on.

We are teetering on the cusp now, the real start of the Irish vegetable season is nearly upon us. This week we have caught a glimpse of what it will look like by early July, a literal explosion of amazing Irish produce.

There is so much going on right now, planting, thousands of plants went into the ground this week, broccoli, kale, cabbage, celeriac, lettuce and celery.  Weeding, sowing, side shooting, watering, surviving, thriving, planting, and yes more weeding!

We are harvesting loads of lettuce and salad. We are receiving fresh Irish scallions from Enda in Galway, Spinach and Kale from Padraigh and Una in Beechlawn organic farm, herbs and kale from Joe Kelly in Mayo, Salad and herbs from Audrey and Mick in Millhouse organic farm, very excited about the first Irish organic strawberries from Niall Whelan in Thrive farm in Wicklow. In a couple of weeks, we will be overflowing with the most amazing produce from our farm, including our own tomatoes and amazing cucumbers and other farms across Ireland. Can’t wait for the first new potatoes second week of July, from Donald and Cameron Tracy in Kildare.

It was with much trepidation that we planned our cropping schedule for this summer, after the last four years it has been a game of Russian roulette not knowing what to expect especially at this time of seasonal plenty.

So it is that we are also on the cusp of the full-on holiday season and it is a source of eternal concern that the produce we and others have worked so hard for all year will not have a market.

Usually, these Friday posts are personal views, or stories that demonstrate the values we hold dear here, but this week it is a call out.

So it is that we are launching an official “Save Our Summer” campaign to help keep our farm and all the other farms we source produce from flowing over the tough summer months.  So please support us, we have put in place a couple of things to help you to do that.

For new customers there is a 20% discount on your first order, visit our homepage for details.

For all our loyal weekly customers we have doubled reward points on all once off purchases.  If you set up a repeat order (which you can modify or pause or stop at any time) we are giving you five times the points on every purchase. The “carrot” or reward points can be redeemed for money off on an ongoing basis and we will keep this in place until the end of August.

We also offer Free delivery for over €100 and of course we deliver to every county in Ireland with our sustainable boxes and packaging, mostly plastic free.

So, if you can order or tell a friend or spread the word it will make a massive difference to us. The supermarkets don’t care and won’t miss you, but we certainly will.

As always thank you from all here for your support and as always we would love to hear your thoughts and comments.

Kenneth

P.S. To place your order, click here – every single order makes a big difference to us, and our network of organic farms around Ireland. THANK YOU for your support.

Have I gone too far this time?

by Kenneth Keavey

Are we promised rain? I went to that place this week, I said the unsayable, “We need rain”.  There is always the fear here, that once the rain comes it will never leave, and to be fair we have had plenty of experiences with rain never leaving. 

We have been out with our water tanker this week as many of our crops are stunted. Broccoli, kale, celery, cabbage and more are stunted they need water.  It is not close to the major drought of 2018 when we had to dig down 18 inches to find moisture, but it is starting to be a problem.

These extended periods of dry weather are amazing the blue sky does us all a world of good, but 3-4 weeks without rain, that is unusual, or is it? It seems to me that these extended dry spells followed or proceeded by intense rain are not so unusual anymore. Since 2018 we have had more and more weeks of intense dry or drought conditions than I remember in the prior ten years.

Right now, our farm more resembles a farm in southern France or Spain, dusty dry and stunted.

The climate is warming, it is undeniable, man-made greenhouse gases are responsible. Weather patterns are changing rapidly. 

It’s hard to grasp the magnitude of climate change, we don’t see the glaciers or the ice caps melting, the wild-fires in Europe last year or those in Canada right not are removed from our comfortable corner of the world.  

Our direct experience of climate change is relatively benign, but that too is changing. Earlier this year the lack of tomatoes and peppers due to extreme weather, affected us, but it was more of a minor irritation that a real problem. But what happens when these climate stresses increase, and they start to affect our food production?

We have such potential for diversification in our food production here and yet the market is undermining our horticultural industry at a time when it couldn’t be more important to support it. 

It may be selfish, but we need to be able to grow our food and we need to support local food growers. One critical way to reduce our burden on this planet is to think mindfully about what we eat, and where and how it was grown. Eat more plants, locally and organically grown.

We can only do what we can do. We can only do what we have the time energy and money to do. But how we spend that time, energy and money makes a huge difference for the better.  Our business was started to guarantee that what comes to your door in one of our boxes has as far as we can control, been grown or produced, ethically, sustainably, and organically. We don’t always get it right, but those principles are one thing WE WILL NEVER COMPROMISE ON.

Thank you to everybody who responded to our post and e-mail last week. The number of responses and the level of support was amazing, uplifting and encouraging and made a difference so thank you, I read them all and if you have any thoughts on the above again we would love to hear them.

Thank you for your support.

Kenneth

The Hungry Gap

by Kenneth Keavey

Ok so this is a little longer than usual please bear with me…. We grow carrots on our farm, a small amount to supply fresh carrots from August onwards. The old crops from last year are gone now. Our main carrot grower is based in Offaly and we have an agreement with him to grow our organic carrots. He supplied us the last of last year’s carrots at the end of April.

What then? You will see some of the big supermarkets are importing their carrots from Israel. The sun is shining, and the expectation is we can harvest carrots right now here in Ireland.  Well maybe on a small scale we can, early grown carrots from a polytunnel but in general we use approx. 1tonne of carrots per week we would need fields of polytunnels to supply all our early carrots.

So right now, at this moment we are getting our organic carrots from Spain. Is that ok? Is that what you would expect? Well, the expectation may understandably be: we can grow carrots in Ireland why aren’t they Irish? They are a seasonal crop, and whilst our carrots will be Irish for 70% of the year for the other 30% we still need organic carrots and they are imported.

Right now, you would be forgiven for thinking there should be more Irish produce available, the weather is great where are the Irish tomatoes?  Heat applied greenhouse grown conventional Irish tomatoes may be available. But again, in supermarkets you will see tomatoes with country of origin from all over Europe.

We pride ourselves on our cherry tomatoes, we are very good at growing them, and they are amazing, we have 1100 plants in the ground they were planted at the start of April (taking a major risk with frost threat, we had to put heaters in our tunnels to ensure they survived). These seeds were sown back in late January in heated polytunnels. Here we are nearly 4 months later, and our plants are about 1 meter high and have tomatoes on the vine. But give or take a couple of weeks (weather dependent), each year we harvest the first tomatoes mid-July, no earlier and the season runs to end of September. So, what to do? Well right now we have the most amazing organic cherry tomatoes (they are so sweet and nice) from a partner farmer in Spain.

Why is this? Right now we are in the middle of a the hungry gap and June is actually a difficult month to supply Irish produce, it is frustrating.  It is coming and soon it will be coming hard and fast, tomatoes, broccoli, cabbage, scallions, spinach, chard, onions, kale, courgettes, cucumbers, leeks and all the other vegetables you would expect from our own farm and farmers up and down the country we partner with.

When it comes to food security, we need to be realistic, all crops have their season. But to encourage an industry to invest in tomatoes back in January or for our conventional cousins in November or to invest in the infrastructure to be able to feed a nation with carrots then a fair price needs to be paid for the produce. End of story.

The supermarkets push, squeeze and destroy our industry it is their nature to push to the bottom to feed through the produce at the cheapest possible price to their customers. They create a mindset of devaluation of fresh produce by loss leading. Basically, saying it is worthless, not pleasant for those who work so hard to produce it.

They all do it. Is this a good thing? Well, it is causing farm after farm to close, it is unsustainable, farms can’t put up their prices, and yet all their costs go up. The long-term impact is unsettling.  If we want to have Irish carrots for 70% of the year or more then we need to protect our horticulture industry with fair pricing and fair practice. How else can we survive?

So as our season is on the cusp of really kicking in, all our investment is in the ground, and the schools from next week are closing and we will see a marked downturn in orders, that coupled with the fine weather (which is amazing) has a very negative impact on our business.  Please if you can at all don’t forget about us, the supermarkets won’t miss your custom, but we will.

And if you want to see and find out what is happening, on our farm come to our farm walk tomorrow Saturday the 03-June at 11am.  There will be a farm walk followed by a food demo by Lou Robbie our chef. Our farm shop will also be open 10am-5pm. So come and see and ask all your questions and see our farm.

Thanks

Kenneth

Interesting piece on Countrywide last week…..

by Kenneth Keavey

There was an interesting piece on Countrywide last week documenting the demise of our indigenous vegetable growing industry.  All the interviewed vegetable growers told the same story, loss leading and chasing the cheapest possible produce by supermarkets is destroying our industry. In some cases, refusing a very basic increase of a few cents to ensure survival of some of Ireland’s vegetable farms.

We have been led to believe that carrots at €.49 or broccoli at €.79 is the norm, or Brussel sprouts for €.05! This is loss leading as it is impossible to produce crops for these prices. The market will always chase the cheapest option, always, using cheap import pricing as a barometer to value locally grown food. 

Not only are our food growers closing doors, so too are smaller independent retailers who haven’t the scale and cannot compete with supermarket pricing.  

What happens when this short-term approach to food supply eventually leads to the last vegetable farms and independent retailers closing their doors. Where then will our food come from when there is a climate shock, as there was in Spain earlier this year.  Where then will supermarkets look to supply our food?  Where is the long-term vision and the commitment to sustainability in this food sourcing strategy? 

Here’s another interesting fact about retailing in Ireland: ‘the restrictive practices order 1987 prohibits the sale of grocery products at below net invoice price’ but this law does not include fresh produce! It is deemed permissible to allow loss leading on all things fresh, and that includes you may be surprised to learn not only fruit and vegetables, but also milk, meat, and fish.

Setting a basic requirement to sell fresh food at fair prices would level the playing field would allow a more measured amount of the sale price to go to the farmer and give independent retailers a fighting chance.

An IFA commissioned economics report published last March, stated that retail prices compression threatens the viability of Irish horticulture which could lead to even more reliance on imports to feed our nation. 

The most recent national field vegetable census showed that the number of field vegetable growers fell from 377 in 1999 to 165 in 2014. That is a contraction of 56% These skills are lost for ever, and once they are gone are difficult to replace.

I for one am grateful for our own farm and the farmers that supply us, we aim to pay fairly for the food we produce and buy, we price our produce as competitively as we can, and we feel by removing the middleman we are able to reasonably compete with the big supermarkets. But not if they continue to sell produce for below the cost of production.

We are lucky and thankful to have our own farm and also to have a network of great Irish organic farmers that we source our food from.  We can’t wait to be harvesting more of our own produce and receiving the amazing produce from our other Irish suppliers and you can see all the IRISH produce we currently have here. 

Please remember your purchase with us makes a massive difference, thank you for your continued support.

Kenneth

Seeds of change and national biodiversity week…

by Kenneth Keavey

I got a few rare days this week to spend time out on the farm and in the tractor, it has been a pleasure. We have been sowing many direct seeded crops, such as carrots, parsnips, beetroot, swede and of course our wildflowers.

It’s been a week to the day that we sowed the first buckwheat, wildflower, and clover seeds and today they have started to germinate. I cannot wait to see the field in full bloom in 2 months’ time. It will be a haven for creatures great and small, a little oasis to fund our biodiversity bank.

We are completely dependent on this web of interconnectivity for our survival, it is that simple, without a healthy ecosystem we (humans) will not survive.  The richness of biodiversity mirrors the health of our planet, locally and globally and the news unfortunately is not good. The use of chemicals in agriculture and the large crop monocultures are directly responsible for the destruction of habitats and the biodiversity that relies on these habitats for survival. We need nature plain and simple.

Here are some key facts:

Do you remember all the insects you used to see on the car windscreens when you were younger? Where have they all gone?   Flying insect numbers have plunged by 60% since 2014 a British survey has shown, by measuring insect splats on cars. By 2015 each hectare of land in the UK received 3.9 kg of pesticides in 17.4 applications and eighty-seven percent of the total toxicity being applied to fields in 2015 was due to neonicotinoids. A six-fold increase in potential toxicity to insects in the period 1990–2015 corresponds closely with the timing of the 76% decline in flying insect biomass recorded in Germany in the period 1989–2014.

This very large increase in toxicity was mainly due to the introduction and widespread adoption of neonicotinoid insecticides from 1994 onwards. On the 27th of April 2018, this class of pesticides was banned from all outdoor use in the EU and will give our bees and insects a fighting chance at survival, at least you would think. However, in the years since, “emergency authorisations” for the use of these chemicals has been granted.  In many cases these authorisations were granted repeatedly, or without any apparent evidence of an unusual or ‘emergency’ situation as justification.

Banning the use of these chemicals was a fantastic and positive step.

Next week is national Biodiversity week and there are so many other positive steps that we as farmers and gardeners can take now to improve biodiversity and help the bees and insects.

We have beehives on our farm, and they give us so much, bumper crops of courgettes for one. It is only right that we sow wildflowers and leave our kale to flower to feed them. We purposely leave brambles along all our walls, their flowers are an early food source for the bees (as are dandelion flowers), we leave wild areas where plants can go to flower.

But it was when we started planting wildflower strips that we noticed an astounding level of bee life. There were honeybees and several different types of bumble bee, and all sorts of other flying insects. We had created a farm reef for bees! On a sunny evening there are thousands of bees and insects humming away, and it is not until you look closely that you notice.

These steps have meant that we have an abundance of insect life on our farm, and I think it may be working in our favour.  It seems that if we look after biodiversity, it will look after us and a more integrated approach to food production does work very well indeed.

Here’s to sustainable food and to the bees and to hopefully a return to the insects on our windscreens.

Kenneth

PS So don’t forget to place your order, and if there is two things you can do to support National Biodiversity week they are: “DO NOT spray your road verges with Roundup! and DO let an area of your garden go wild! Thank you”  Also remember delivery is still FREE when you spend over €100.