Lots of food outlets talk the good talk about local, seasonal and organic. Few really make a commitment to the level a new deli in Athlone has.

In light of the pesticide and herbicide restrictions being imposed on conventional horticulture and tillage, as well as the ongoing need to manage weeds on an organic farm, this column has spent the last number of weeks looking at different ways to weed without chemicals.

There are serious machines available for mechanical weeding at the larger end of the scale.

There are a number of mechanical ways to weed. Flame weeding may surprise some as permitted in organic, due to the fossil fuel use. 

While of little use to a farmer with a field full of docks, the following, from a new Green MEP letter to the European Commission is worth hearing.

Organic farming may have an old fashioned image as being anti-technology.

A new online presence for organic food companies is in development. 

The lists of substances which can be used in EU organic farming has been amended.

Clive Bright practices a style of animal husbandry called mob grazing on his 120-acre certified organic farm in Ballymote, Co Sligo.

Organic farmer Clive Bright farms 120 acres in Sligo, where he operates an unusual grazing system.

With a total organic retail market of almost £2bn (€2.5bn), and with the UK still the major market for Irish organic food, the potential impact of a Brexit on the Irish organic sector is large.

The approvals process for the widely used but controversial herbicide glyphosate has hit another stumbling block en route to its possible re-authorisation in June.

Of the 870 applicants to join the Organic Farming Scheme in 2015, 220 farmers applied to rejoin. One of these was Limerick man Thomas Finucane.

April 24 is the actual date of Ireland’s Easter Rising. It is also now the date for what is fast becoming a dispersed national gathering, one timed to coincide with this 100th anniversary.