Joe McNamee: We have to bring alternative voices into the big tent of Irish food

Antonio Garcia from Spain, Patrick Hallinan and Cosimo De Matteis from Italy, help with digging a pond at Togher Community Garden, Clashduv Road. Picture: Larry Cummins

A wise man once shared a highly effective communication technique with me, as fruitful when admonishing sullen teens, as it is when critically appraising a colleague’s work, or in public, to convey a harsh truth without entirely losing the audience. 

It is very straightforward. To deliver a negative — criticism, condemnation or castigation — begin with a positive, then the negative, before finishing again with a positive. It is called the ‘shit sandwich’. Reflecting on last week’s column about the perilous state of Ireland’s food security, I am conscious that I offered a lot of shit and very little sandwich.

With a state/government favouring the ostrich approach of head in sand, I see solutions to the innate and deeply complex problems of a dysfunctional food system coming from ordinary citizens and other outsiders. There are many alternative voices in this space around Ireland offering brilliant, original and innovative thinking but most are still calling from the fringes. The next big step is bringing them into the big tent of Irish food.

The Cork Food Policy Council (CFPC) was founded in 2013, as a partnership between community representatives, food retail, farming, education, health sectors, and local authorities to create a fairer, healthier and sustainable food system for Cork, with the ultimate goal of developing a food strategy for Cork City.

I recently hosted a vibrant CFPC public consultation (I am a member) on the development of such a food strategy for Cork City Council (CCC) to adopt and incorporate into its future decision-making. A first for Ireland, if properly deployed, it could be a gamechanger, aiming for a point where the city could withstand external shocks to the food system and still provide every citizen with a healthy, sustainable and nutritious diet.

One crucial strategic goal would be the creation of a resilient and commercially viable network of local food producers to provide healthy, nutritious local produce to all, regardless of income, and produced in a way that has a positive and sustainable impact on the local environment.

Cork Healthy Cities (CHC) initiative is part of a global WHO-guided network focused on enhancing urban environments to promote health, equity, and sustainable development. Cork’s Healthy Cities co-ordinator Denise Cahill (also a member of CFPC) recently told a Safefood Ireland conference how CHC acted as a conduit to the City Council, essentially asking, ‘Can we have some space to grow food?’

This in turn led to the thriving community garden in Togher’s Clashduv Park, and there are now 25 such gardens around the city, growing veg and supplying food boxes. In Togher, biodiversity concerns turned attention to the Glasheen River, flowing alongside the garden. It was in a bad way, supporting little or no aquatic life. Tests from its source showed clear water, while samples by the garden were black, with raw sewage flowing into it at various points. Another community garden project elsewhere in the city used its own local river for irrigation and contaminated an entire crop.

Togher Community Garden founder Maria Young (also a CFPC member), of Green Spaces for Health, which oversees the city’s community gardens, engaged with other city-based activists to form the Cork River Alliance Group, and the Council is now actively focussed on returning sustainable life to the Glasheen River.

In the grand scheme, these are microscopic achievements but, if part of a city-wide policy, they have all the potential to knit together into something infinitely larger and of crucial value. City Hall would have enormous power to make a difference, enabling the current growers to step up to the next level. 

It could provide growing spaces throughout the city and support commercial growers with rate reductions and a rate-free retail space. It could offer rate reductions to restaurants using local produce. It could provide neighbourhood kitchens offering cookery classes and food education in parts of the city where entire generations have lost the ability to cook and mostly consume fast and ultra-processed foods. It could ensure transport planning incorporated adequate transport links to retail outlets from poorer parts of the city with lower car ownership. It could limit the fast food outlets in those same parts of the city. 

Once you start, the list of possibilities is endless.

Hope you enjoyed the sandwich, this time filled with hope.

Table talk

It was with a very heavy heart that I learned of the recent passing of Gearóid Lynch, chef-proprietor of The Olde Post Inn.

Gerry was an utter gentleman and a delightfully positive soul and my visit several years ago to the Co Cavan restaurant and hotel he ran with his wife, Tara, will always remain as an especially treasured Irish hospitality experience.

Not long after my visit, he was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease yet his response was inspirational, as he prevailed right to the end, never once losing that uplifting air of positivity and generosity of spirit.

Deepest sympathies to Tara and their four children.

Deliberating for our recent Irish Examiner list of Ireland’s Top 100 Best Places to Eat, I included Milesian restaurant, in Castlegregory, Co Kerry, in my original long list and would have made a very strong case for its final inclusion if it didn’t operate to such a restricted seasonal opening.

While it mightn’t have made the final list but it should certainly be on yours and chef-proprietor Frankie Fitzgerald has just opened once again for the season until late September, offering his usual excellent take on the fine produce of his South Kerry hinterland, all served up in the charming 200-year-old thatched cottage that has been in the family for generations.

facebook.com/milesianrestaurant

TODAY’S SPECIAL

La Daughter and I recently enjoyed a delicious Sunday morning breakfast in My Goodness Cafe, in the former home of the Quay Co-Op restaurant, on Cork’s Sullivan’s Quay.

In the mood for something light, I relished fried ‘f-egg’, scrambled tofu and cashew cheese in a brioche bap, every bit as satisfying as any egg-based dish, and we then tied a bow on it with wonderful sourdough cinnamon rolls, and gorgeous Three Fools coffee.

instagram.com/mygoodnessfood