Joe McNamee: Can we fix our broken food chain?

Some 83% of the fruit and vegetables we consume are not Irish. We now import 70,000 tonnes of potatoes each year — as well as tens of thousands of tonnes of apples, carrots, onions, and cabbage. In a Special Report, we investigate where our food comes from and why it matters.

Our domestic production of vegetables, fruit, and food-quality grain has fallen drastically over the last three decades.

A nation’s food security refers to its capability to feed itself, to grow and produce sufficiently to satisfy the national appetite, without being dangerously overdependent on imported foodstuffs.

You’d imagine such a concept was moot in a country once marketed globally by Bord Bia as “The Food Island”, a country that has gone from famine to feast over 175 years in such dramatic fashion, that we are now the second most obese country in Europe (26% of the population, way above the EU average of 16%, and second only to Malta at 28%).