Food production - A challenge that brings opportunity

THE co-operative movement, founded by Sir Horace Curzon Plunkett in the late 1880s, was one of the truly groundbreaking and empowering initiatives in Irish agriculture and food production.

It made a huge contribution to developing rural society and the rural economy.

It turned barely viable farms into small businesses that could more or less support a family. It offered opportunity to those who had spent their lives struggling as subsistence farmers.

It allowed many families help their children take the first steps towards education and self-fulfilment, it helped others emigrate and build new lives.

The co-ops’ legacy can be seen in today’s great food conglomerates though the movement’s founders never envisaged a situation where farmers and other food producers would face ruin because of take-it-or-leave-it prices offered by processors and dominant retailers.

Food production or processing is Ireland’s largest indigenous industry and is responsible for the direct or indirect employment of over 230,000 people.

This represents a very significant proportion of our workforce and anything that can be done to safeguard those jobs should be done. We would be foolish to do otherwise.

Yesterday over 30 of Ireland’s leading food and drink brands announced the formation of an independent organisation called Love Irish Food. The objective is to promote Irish “manufactured” food and drink. This is the kind of self-help initiative that will help us out of the mess we are in. NAMA may or may not be the answer to our banking crisis but, in terms of sustaining Irish jobs, supporting Irish enterprises and producers is vital.

Of course consumers face a huge challenge when they go to buy Irish food. They are often confused by ambiguous labelling and wonder if the prepared meal is really Irish food or Brazilian chicken or Danish bacon granted residential status just because it is processed in this country.

This process has been abused and has led to great consumer suspicion. Too often the leap from ingredient to product has been used to confer a new identity on produce. This is not honest and consumers are right to be suspicious. We may have a casual enough attitude to the origin of “Irish” soccer players but different standards must apply when it comes to food.

Consumers, however, would welcome a regime that would remove any doubt as to the origin of food they might buy, “manufactured” or otherwise. If the proper degree of certainty and quality were assured it is likely that consumers would respond positively and sustain the 230,000 workers involved.

There are quality issues to be addressed too. One of the legacies of the Celtic Tiger is that we have set the food bar higher and expect more from our processors.

For a long time it was difficult to understand how a pig or a gallon of milk became the substandard junk too many of our co-ops produced.

Our economic destiny is in our hands in so many ways and, as the nascent co-op movement proved over a century ago, unity of purpose can achieve a lot. Irish food producers produce good quality food at competitive prices but still they cannot make a living.

We must be more imaginative about how we support them and they must be more imaginative about how they satisfy consumer needs.

Yesterday’s initiative was a step in the right direction.