Irish farmers were committing to sustainability long before that word was in common use. Their domain is mystically, romantically green – deep, rich, fertile soil watered by abundant rain – but it’s also a small island, where longstanding family-owned farms are especially invested in protecting and preserving their part of it, as a matter of inherited responsibility.
On a recent trade mission to the UAE, Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine of Ireland, Charlie McConalougue, made the case for his country in these terms: “In Ireland we produce food in harmony with nature, resulting in food that is not only great tasting, but nutritious and sustainable too.” The visit was, he says, “an excellent opportunity to showcase our thriving Irish agri-food sector.” A promotional programme at Spinneys, Sustainably Sourced From Ireland, served to foreground “high-quality, sustainably-produced dairy, meat, eggs, and consumer food” shipped in fresh from the minister’s home turf.
Spinneys eggs, for example, are supplied by the Nestbox Egg Company, which began with patriarch Paddy McGuinness delivering those wares from a basket on his bike in County Monaghan more than half a century ago. Today his family, and their partners, the Eivers, produce organic, free-range, Omega 3 eggs along the lines laid down by the Irish food agency, Bord Bia, and its Sustainable Assurance Scheme – Origin Green.
To take another example from the dairy sector, Glenisk are Ireland’s leading purveyors of yoghurt, cream, and goat milk, all organically produced on the farm in Killeigh, County Offaly, where founders Jack and Mary Cleary raised their 14 children. Back in the 1970s, that fast-growing household compelled the couple to create “a family enterprise that was both economically and environmentally sustainable”, says Emma Walls, commercial director at Glenisk. They started bottling and selling their own milk, then expanded to yoghurt production with the Glenisk business in the 1980s.
There’s a vast difference between “natural” and “organic”, explains Emma, even if many don’t realise the distinction. The former “is a meaningless marketing term that anyone can use”, while the latter is “a heavily regulated standard that controls the farming, the animals, and the production process.” In the mid-1990s, the family began sourcing milk from the very few other farmers who had gone organic “purely on principle”, and persuading others to convert. “It also required pitching the idea to retailers who had no sense of any ‘trend’ around organics.”
As that trend now spreads through the industry, Glenisk are at the leading edge of it, with six of the 14 Cleary children now on the management team (and production back up and running after a terrible fire at the plant in 2021). More farms, says Emma, are joining the “conversion journey” every year. It’s a major commitment, requiring them to operate without artificial fertilisers or synthetic pesticides for two full years before being certified organic. The eco-system of the soil is fundamentally changed in the process, as the grass grows at its own pace. This makes organic milk more expensive too – with fewer animals producing it across a greater area, farmers have to charge a premium. “We don’t see cost as a downside. Our farmers are guardians of the land, and they need to be compensated for promoting biodiversity and protecting the earth.”
Another nearby corner of the Irish countryside occupies the lush, rolling landscape between the village of Kilmacthomas and the misty Comeragh Mountains of County Waterford, where the River Mahon winds through fields of oats. A water mill has stood on that site since 1785, owned and operated all that time by the same family who still live just across the road.
The Flahavans sold the agricultural side of their centuries-old business to concentrate on the consumer end, developing and launching new products that now provide some two million servings of branded oats around the world every week. (The range includes multi-seed porridge oats, sachet-packed microwaveable Quick Oats, and most recently a line of oat drinks.) But they’re no less deeply rooted in the soil that literally feeds the business – the mill itself has been fuelled by its own boiled oat husks since 1985.
“We were looking into this long before sustainability was big on the agenda,” says says John Flahavan, great-great-great-grandson of the founders, “and we were one of the first oat millers in the world to introduce this method of generating steam, which gives us a uniquely environmentally friendly production process.” In the last few years, Flahavans have installed a wind turbine and solar panels to supply the plant. “What we don’t generate from our own renewable sources, we buy in from [other] renewable sources.”
In 2021, the company completed an integrated construction wetland (ICW) around the facility – a reed-bed system that filters wastewater through a series of ponds. And if this sounds plenty hightech, the core of the business remains the same. “Not much has changed around the humble oat since the 1780s,” says James Flahavan. Back then, the grains were ground between two circular millstones, and the results were similar in texture to the “steel cut” oats that Flahavan’s customers can still buy today. The last major innovation, according to James, was in the 1930s, when they started rolling the oats instead, increasing the surface area and reducing the cooking time.
Much of the product is much more ready-toeat than it used to be, but there’s also been a circling back around to the simple, unadulterated foods that were such a health-giving part of the everyday diet in early-industrial Ireland. James cites Bord Bia’s 2021 findings that the Covid-19 pandemic intensified focus on physical and mental wellbeing that was already a growing concern in the 21st century. “We are seeing customers coming back to porridge for lots of reasons, looking at wholegrain and high-fibre in terms of their digestive health needs, and that’s what Flahavan’s is offering.”
If there is another single crop that has practically defined Ireland’s agriculture, society, history, and international profile, it can only be the potato. The Keogh family had been farming “spuds” near Oldtown, North County Dublin, for more than 200 years – supplying the capital city and country beyond. Then demand began to plummet around the turn of the millennium, as Ireland’s economic boom turned consumers to pasta and other, less “old-fashioned” staples.
“The writing was on the wall, and we needed to do something about it,” says Ross Keogh. As it happened, the concept of “premium crisps” was just beginning to emerge in the UK, which gave Tom and his brothers the idea of becoming the first potato farmers in Ireland to make artisanal crisps from their own product. Simple, and smart, as it sounds, it took about four years of research to actually start that supplementary operation. A certain division of labour was also required.
“We definitely play to our strengths,” says Tom Keogh of his siblings. “Ross on the potato business, myself on the crisp side of things, and Derek on the planting. But ultimately, when it comes to the harvesting we are all out in the fields pitching in together. My dad Peter Keogh is in charge of dispute resolution, but he hasn’t had to put his foot down too often.”
Tom’s duties involve sourcing ingredients for the flavours that make up the range. “The secret really lies in authenticity,” he says. The brothers bring their own ideas to the table, then seek source from other local farmers “who produce only the best”. Their sea salt, for example, is provided by specialist merchants O’Neills, on the Atlantic coast. And then there’s “Shamrock” flavour. Ireland’s symbolic national plant is edible, but hadn’t really been used as a food ingredient until the Keoghs had what Tom calls “one of our best light bulb moments”. “We approached a shamrock farmer who exports across the globe, including for the White House St Patrick’s Day celebrations … that flavour has really flown the flag for us, even in the United Arab Emirates.”
What customers are tasting, in the UAE and elsewhere, is the difference created by Keogh’s practice of kettle-frying their crisps in small batches. “Mass producing in industrial fryers doesn’t give you the same level of quality, there is no doubt about that,” says Tom. And while even small-batch frying demands energy usage, Keogh’s carbon emissions are tracked from the field through the crisping house via CO2 balance auditing programme. Then they’re offset, or “neutralised”, through the Irish overseas agency Vita, and a sustainable potato-cultivation project shared with partners in Ethiopia.
One more way in which Irish agriculture makes its presence felt, and its foods available, throughout the wider world, even while these farms and the families who run them seem to thrive by respecting and replenishing their roots. After more than two centuries, the Keogh boys still live less than five minutes from the original, inherited farmstead. “Farming is so intensive you have to live on the land,” as Ross puts it. “This is not a job, it’s a way of life.”
