On Monday 25th March I attend a panel discussion in Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford
This was the first time I’d seen a local event like this. Wexford Environmental Network there have been musings considering how to begin conversations with farmers for a while. We’d not really known where to start. So it was great to see an event that would make space for the complexity of the times we live in. Wexford County has a large farming population. Obviously I was compelled to go.
There was a good turnout bolstered by a group of students from Georgia University, Wexford campus. The students take an academic year of study in Ireland.
The meeting consisted of panelist’s introducing themselves, Q&A. After which small queues formed around the panelist. People wanting to meet them and ask further questions. Refreshments were generously available before and after, a thing that people may take for granted but as any community group knows a cuppa is an important invitation.
The panel was a curious one, for starters I was delighted to see the IFA and the Greens together. The event was an open healthy discourse, hell we need more of that. Obviously people were passionate, angry, frustrated but respectful.
The introductions kicked off with the ICA (Irish Countywomen’s Association), Breda Cahill a local who leads their Climate Action Committee. Breda spoke with such passion and was really inspiring to listen too. Addressing the room she talked to the founding of the ICA and reminded everyone it was Irelands first distributed education community. Founded by Anita Lett in 1910 in Bree, Co. Wexford. The historical reference to a wealthy young woman choosing a different than traditional path recognising a need in society that became the ICA’s mission to address beginning with sanitation and making clothes.
My journey is going to be different
Antia Lett ICA Founder
Breda went on to talk about the crisis of our time, climate change, exceeding planetary boundaries and the impacts on society. The ICA climate action committee has put together several information leaflets on definitions and effects of climate change. Her research has updated and reflected how the data has changed.
She put the big challenges in the room and named them
- 1/3 of food produced is thrown away – across growing, storing, transport and food waste
- 4 billion people experience water scarcity
- plastics created from fossil fuels have a low production cost and a high pollution cost
- fight on for biodiversity
- Farmers are the custodians of the land
Breda spoke about how her friends were shocked at the idea she was going to the ploughing championships to handout leaflets and talk to farmers about climate change. The ploughing championships is an Irish flagship event for the agricultural sector and its supply chain, it boasts 300,000 attendees.
The ICA has rural and urban guilds and is a formidable network in Ireland, after hearing from Breda I’m excited to see what their Climate Action Committee does next.
Jer O’Mahoney, Wexford IFA Chairman was next to speak. He started off his introduction by holding a box that would have originally been designed to hold A4 teams of paper. The box was more than half ful of the printed out requirement that farmers currently need to carry out for the year. It’s been reported in the press that Mr O’Mahoney has used this as a dramatic device in the Wexford County Council Chambers recently as part of the Just Farmers Rally, earlier in March.
For me that box of paper and the burden on farmers is a design problem. As a strategic designer with some service design experience my brain went straight to how do you take that box of paper and design it as a meaningful service?
Jer threw around some numbers that I’ve not been able to verify them all, some are down right in correct – or I may have misunderstood the number shared…
- 4000 members in Wexford (their FB page has about 475 followers)
- 2.4 billion in Revenue thru the Wexford agricultural – THIS IS NOT CORRECT. The Wexford County Development Plan 2022 – 2028 states that Wexford’s value of agricultural output is €398m not €2.4b.
Jer had an off the cuff remark at the beginning of his introduction that some of the problems farmers have could be sorted with two dry weeks. I’ll come back to this.
Here is a smattering of what he spoke about
- demonising the cow
- a farm is not a box – all farms are different
- Farming feeds people
- the level of effort required by farmers
- farmers do t have time they are too busy working
- cheap food, discounters selling food below cost – who ends up paying the price… farmers. Farmers end up paying the cost.
- a truism , Farmers will never hold money, they will always reinvest money back into their farm, their stock, machinery- Jer stated that this was the circular economy. That in fact is the economy. The circular economy is an area of my expertise and Jer demonstrated he does not understand what that term means!
- Not everything is a zero sum game
Grace O’Sullivan, MEP South East Ireland spoke to what Breda and Jer had shared, the commonality between what we were there to talk about
She talked about
- a just transition, the burden has to be shared, UN SDGs
- Wexford having good agricultural land and being coastal
- no finger pointing
- the nature restoration law
- Ireland as an Island nation being g far from being food secure, food security
- inputs to soil, addressing synthetic inputs
- build resilience, dialogue and communities
Jonathan Hughes, Sustainable Enniscorthy shared the great work this small local group is championing. He spoke about the
- diversity of back grounds and skills in the group
- air quality, the link between disadvantaged areas and air quality
- community solar
- community green hub
- current deep retrofit grants are not accessible
- flooding, water conservation and slowing down the flow of water, rain water gardens
- needs momentum & needs members to scale the impact
Dr Karl Richards, Teasgac Johnstown Castle Research Centre. Established in the 1950’s to increase food security and help rural communities. The research is focused on environment, soil and land use.
An impressive speaker that brought the latest research and science into the room. Updating some information being shared by people attending the session also.
The Q&A opened the floor to young farmers, foresters, climate activists and a healthy discourse followed.
Dr Richards stated that Forestry had a huge role in short, medium term, average forest sequestration 40 year life span.
Commodification of the land seemed to be the basis for most of the conversation, even with issues of biodiversity. Increasing hedgerows by 1metre letting them get larger and taller was advised.
There was much discussion about forestry, a local also the chairman of the Irish Forestry Association was present. He was scathing about the government and their lack of delivery on policy they committed to in the 1990’s.
In the Irish Times the following day this article on the impact of the continuous rain and change in growing season highlights a question I asked
Time drifts on, so publishing this blog before I’ve completely finished it.
Sin é.
Roisin Markham 
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