Brothers are chip off the old block
It is hardly surprising then that they are among a small group of farmers chosen by Teagasc to feature in a series of online video profiles to highlight the United Nations designated International Year of Family Farming.
The videos feature a variety of different families who tell their story and highlight aspects of their lives and why farming is an important part of their family.
Around the world, during this year, the profile of family farming and smallholders is being raised.
This is being done by focusing attention on the significant role of farming families in providing food security and nutrition, improving livelihoods, protecting the environment, and achieving sustainable development.
The Flynn brothers represent the tradition, commitment and innovative business approach of a farming family that first started growing potatoes in the 1880s.
Today, they harvest a variety of potato crops on the farm which is based in Rush but extends all over north county Dublin and into Meath.
They also produce winter and spring cereals which they grow in rotation with their potato crops and they also run a straw business which supplies mushroom composters.
Harvesting of the potatoes start in May and continues up to the end of October. The varieties grown include Premier, “Rush” Queens and Rooster.
The Flynn’s deal with greengrocers and corner shops in Donegal, Galway, Sligo, Meath, Cavan and Kildare, places where people are looking for a traditional Irish potato.
They are obviously close to the attitudes of their customers. They detected that some Irish people were turned off by the “British’’ tag on the Queen variety.
Long ago, their father, Paud, began calling his potatoes Rush Queens. It was a stroke of marketing genius — sales doubled almost overnight.
Paud’s own grandfather started growing potatoes on a few acres some 130 years ago when the crop was sown and harvested by hand, with the help of a spade and a pair of horses. The farm now stretches to nearly 1,000 acres. Three generations are involved in the business.
Four of Paud’s grandchildren are also now working on the farm, extending the family’s involvement with potato growing to the sixth generation.
Farm families like the Flynns are the backbone of rural economies. They have served society for thousands of years.
Pekka Pesonen, secretary general of Copa-Cogeca, the European umbrella body for farmers and co-ops, said family farms are a key driver for growth and jobs in EU rural areas as well as providing quality food supplies for over 500 million consumers.
There were 140,000 farms in Ireland in 2010, compared with about 280,000 in 1970, a 50% drop in 40 years. Their resilience and significance is well highlighted in the current issue of the Teagasc science publication TResearch.
Dr Lance O’Brien, foresight and strategy manager, Teagasc, notes in an editorial that family farming is the dominant form of agriculture globally, accounting for more than 80% of all farms and 70% of the world’s food.
“There is a growing realisation that this form of production is essential in meeting future food security challenges.
“This means that family farms will have to be at the heart of agricultural innovation if production is to keep pace with global food demands, which the FAO projects will require an estimated 60% increase in production by 2050”.
Dr O’Brien stresses that family farming is not unique to smallholders in less developed countries, nor is it a technologically backward sector.
“Most large commercial farms are organised as family farms, because the flexibility to adapt to changed circumstances that is the hallmark of family organisations enables them to become low-cost and efficient producers,” he says.
Meanwhile, Teagasc, and the Irish Farmers Association, are organising an International Conference on Family Farming at the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin, on November 4.
It will be the final event in the Teagasc Year of the Family Farm Programme and will bring together national and international speakers to discuss how the family farm model of food production, and attendant public goods, can be sustained.
