Why don’t we grow more plant-based food in Ireland?
We know that not eating enough fruit and vegetables, and eating too much meat, is bad for our health. We also know that some production systems for meat (and indeed for plant-based foods) are far less environmentally friendly and climate efficient than others, while some have poor animal welfare outcomes. We are told that more diverse production systems are more resilient environmentally and socially, and, at least in theory, more sustainable economically.
There are all sorts of reasons why promoting more sustainably produced plant-based foods production and consumption would be a positive. This is recognised in the majority of European and global food system-based policies inspired by the UNFAO Sustainable Development Goals, including our own the Food Vision 2030 strategy. Its Mission 2 identifies horticultural production, among others, as an important avenue of diversification for farmers. Also, Ireland’s Climate Action Plan 2023 aims to increase the national area under tillage from a 2022 level of 348,500 ha to 400,000ha by 2030 to help reduce emissions, while increasing our area under organic agriculture to 450,000 ha (roughly from less than 2% to 10% of Ireland’s agricultural area).
As a (fair weather) amateur gardener, I know just how much can be readily grown in the mild Irish climate. But the right soil and weather are hardly the only factors at play.
So, why is it that our tillage area has shrunk by 2% since those targets were first set out two years ago? And why do we import 75,000t of our potatoes, 80% of our baking flour, and an ever-increasing percentage of our fruit and vegetables – including some which could be grown here? Why does the incentivised significant development in organic farming of the last two years almost exclusively attract beef and lamb farmers? Why is Ireland’s agricultural landscape quite so dominated by pastoralism and animal food production?
History and tradition
This year in Ireland, especially in Kildare, where I am based, we have been celebrating the 1500th anniversary of St Brigid’s death. Various lectures and publications around the Kildare St Brigid’s annual festival have enabled me to learn more about the goddess/saint Brigid, and her associations with agriculture, especially livestock, life, beekeeping, smithing and much besides. Many of the representations of the Saint in churches, paintings and publications over the centuries include a cow. While the beautiful new mural in Kildare Town photographed here does not, it does feature the agricultural landscape of hedgerows-bound meadows so typical of our pastoral agriculture.
Historical and archaeological research about Ireland referenced in a paper recently published by Cambridge University Press has shown that “cattle played important economic and symbolic roles as early as the Neolithic. The earliest documentary sources of the early medieval period show that cattle had assumed a primary position in trade/exchange and other economic activities”. Wealth and social status were defined by cattle and livestock ownership. This paper also highlights the fact that the cattle were kept mostly for dairy production, rather than beef or leather. Cattle were so important to the economy of medieval Ireland that the monetary value of bovines of various ages was regulated and codified in the Brehan Laws, which prevailed from 7th to 17th century AD. Finds of butter in the bogs of Ireland have been dated to at least the Early Bronze Age (1750 BC).
For hundreds of years, Ireland has been the animal food supplier of the British Empire. A paper titled Ireland, Empire and Union – 1690-1801 published in Oxford Academic states that “By the 1760s Irish beef, pork, and butter accounted for well over 50 per cent of all direct Irish exports to the British colonies in North America. And during the American War of Independence, Irish provisions fed both the British and the Continental Armies.”
And so, while Irish farmers have always produced grain, fruit such as apple to produce cider and, more recently – until the total closure of the Irish sugar beet industry in 2006 – sugar beet and protein and oilseed crops, the primary focus has been on pastoralism to this day, with a strong vocation to export which persists to this day.
Natural advantage
But tradition and history does not come out of nowhere. Pastoralism has dominated Irish farming systems because of the climate, terrain and geology which favours grass growth – admittedly assisted by hundreds of years of deforestation, and that’s another, very important debate.
Our landscape of mostly small-scale fields and meadows bound by hedgerows is in stark contrast to vast areas of extensive arable land just South of Paris, or in the US, Canada or Ukraine. Our landscapes have not been as extensively engineered to facilitate mechanisation, which has been less crucial to pastoral agriculture. Today, grassland – either managed or rough grazing – accounts for 82% of Ireland’s agricultural area (source: CSO Census of Agriculture 2020).
The map below, produced by Teagasc shows that soil suitability for tillage is limited to pockets in the South East, North East, with a few central and northern areas also suitable or moderately suitable. In vast swathes of the Midlands and especially the West of Ireland, soil is only suitable for grazing, often rough grazing. Plants directly useful for human nutrition would not grow commercially on these soils, and animals transform the inedible plants that do grow into protein edible by humans.
The areas which the map shows are highly suitable for tillage are unsurprisingly also pretty good at growing grass. If you compare the map above with the map below, which highlights the areas of the country with the greatest concentration of cattle, you will see that there is a significant overlap.
A plant-based production sector in free-fall
Tillage currently accounts for 348,000 ha of Ireland’s agricultural area. Vegetable production around 5,000 to 6,000 ha. Around 9,000 ha are planted to potatoes – that is down from 86,000 ha 60 years ago, and from 332,000 ha immediately post famine.
The number of farmers involved in tillage and veg production has also fallen dramatically. Out of 135,000 farmers identified in the CSO 2020 Census of Agriculture, only 5,000 are full time tillage farmers, among the 10,000 farmers having some element of tillage in their farming systems.
According to Bord Bia, there are 700 registered potato growers in Ireland, of which 300 operate commercial enterprises. According to Teagasc, we are around 60% self-sufficient in vegetable, we have about 60 field vegetable growers, with a total of 200 or so growers, including those who grow produce under glass or polytunnels. This is a substantial reduction in numbers – there were 377 field vegetable growers in 1999. In a recent report from Bord Bia indicates the current number of tomato growers is just seven, with a single leek producer.
Choices dictated by economic viability and market forces
So, why isn’t there more tillage and plant-based food being grown when we have plenty suitable soils and a pretty good growing climate most years, climate change not-withstanding, which enable our tillage farmers to often achieve record yields?
Bord Bia’s Director of Horticulture Mike Neary summed it up last October in the Irish Examiner: “Key challenges (for the vegetable sector) include the high costs of energy and overall higher costs for key inputs; the difficulty of securing sustainable returns from a competitive marketplace to cover increased costs and capital investments; access to and availability of an adequate supply of labour, particularly in the busy growing and cropping season.
“These challenges all arise in the context of growing crops in a climate that can be difficult and challenging at times. We have seen that this year, with periods of drought followed by excessive rainfall, which have a significant impact on the field and harvesting operations.”
Valued at €477m at farm gate, horticulture (that’s fruit and veg production, field based and under protection, but also amenity crops such as nursery stock, cut foliage and flowering bulbs) is the fourth largest sector after dairy, beef, and pigs in terms of gross agricultural commodity output value in Ireland. The industry is labour intensive, currently employing over 1,000 people full time, but with a significant seasonal labour demand which is very difficult to satisfy in a wage inflationary context. It is also very capital intensive, which puts the bar to new entrants at a very high level. In fact Teagasc have predicted a reduction of 7% in the area under vegetables for 2023 – as a result of increased input costs such as energy, fertiliser, packaging, growing media, transport and of course labour putting pressure on margins.
Yet again, it is all about economics. Per hectare, dairy farming is by far and away the most profitable farming enterprise in this country. Tillage comes second, but a fair distance behind. And while veg growing per hectare appears to hold its own, the average veg grower only farms a few highly productive hectares and so income generation potential with a high cost system on few hectares is limited.
The fruit and vegetable production sector was given by the EU from 1996 the legal possibility and financial supports to organise itself in producer organisations (PO) with the right to manage production to adjust it to the market, and to promote and market members’ output. Successive studies commissioned by the EU (latest here) have been quite positive about the PO system’s outcomes for the sector. However, in terms of securing best possible prices from the market place, I believe growers have not been as well served by that model as, for example, Irish dairy farmers have by co-operatives.
Unlike our cattle production systems, which facilitate (or even necessitate) part time off-farm employment, vegetable production is a full-time, labour-intensive system. Unless it can sustain itself economically, source and remunerate adequate labour, and secure viable returns from a very challenging retail market place, we will continue to lose growers, and see our self-sufficiency in plant-based foods worsen further.
A cut-throat retail market with less than fair practices
Our grocery market is small – only 5.5m consumers – and dominated by a handful of highly competitive retailers. The latest publication by Kantar World Panel shows the top five retailers account for 92% of groceries sales, with the largest, Dunnes Stores, controlling almost a quarter, and the hugely influential German discounters Lidl and Aldi controlling another 25%.
In recent years, all have used fresh fruit and vegetables as loss leaders, with offerings of several produce each week at substantial discounts – typically 49c/kg or per pack – in all cases well below the cost of production. Remember that fateful Christmas 2016 when you could get a 1kg bag of carrots for 5c?
With the notable exception of mushrooms, of which we export over 90%, our other vegetable crops are largely destined for the domestic market. For most Irish growers, retailers active in Ireland make or break the market.
We have seen that our self-sufficiency for many fruit and veg we could produce is relatively low. Our retailers import a lot of produce, out of season, but also sometimes when Irish produce is available. Then, supermarkets have been known to use cheaper imports, produced at lower costs in larger scale units in Spain, the Netherlands or even much further afield, to displace local produce and leverage lower prices from Irish growers.
When surveyed, Irish consumers tend to express a preference for locally produced foods – whether their actions match their stated intention is another matter. However, retailers on the Irish market use this fact to their advantage, and in some cases to that of the growers, by showcasing the farmers who supply them with large posters in their stores, features in their literature or on their websites and social media. And sometimes, they abuse rather than use the fact, for example by labelling imported vegetables under an Irish sounding “brand”. To a hurried shopper with a crying toddler in their trolley, a bag of spuds bearing the “Murphy’s Farm” brand, is surely of Irish provenance. Had they more time and energy to check the label, however, they might notice the potatoes were grown somewhere in England. (This is a fictitious example to make the point we can observe in most supermarkets!)
Recent challenges to the supply chain from climate/weather events in Spain and the Netherlands leading to shortages, and impact on global logistics from geopolitical events should serve as a lesson. We need to strengthen our self-sufficiency, and to do so, our domestic horticultural producers need to be better supported.
Lack of balance in policy support
Policy supports, government initiatives, schemes and incentives play a crucial role in shaping the direction of agricultural development and fostering desirable change to improve the sustainability of the food sector. Both Food Vision 2030 and the Climate Action Plan outline ambitious targets for transitioning towards more sustainable and diversified farming systems, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, improving resource efficiency and enhancing biodiversity. Those policies include major incentives to encourage conversion to organic systems and some, more limited, to increase tillage and plant food production. Moreover, the CAP now has a stronger focus on encouraging farmers to adopt agroecological practices, diversify their crops, and explore alternative revenue streams signals a growing recognition of the importance of transitioning towards more sustainable farming systems.
The area of land under organic systems or in conversion has trebled since 2020, and the number of organic farmers has risen from around 1600 in 2022 to around 5000 including those that have applied to date to convert in 2024. But those numbers are essentially coming from the livestock sector (beef and lamb). The policy focus to promote tillage farming is, I believe, somewhat less, and the focus on vegetable growing (for market or processing) less again.
I recently had occasion to converse with two outstanding operators in the Irish vegetable sector. One a top field vegetable grower, the other a plant developer. Both are top professionals in their fields, keen to grow their business of course, but with an eye on the positives for the development of the Irish industry, its market, the economy and for Irish consumers. Both were scathing about the lack of importance they perceived was given to the development of the Irish vegetable growing sector. While they did not use those words exactly, both were effectively of the view that the plant-food sector is the poor relation in a policy landscape dominated by livestock.
Irish consumers deserve the choice to purchase healthy, locally produced sustainable food generally, and plant-based food in particular. Ireland is historically, economically and naturally heavily focused on exporting animal-based foods, but this must not deter greater focus on mostly domestic fruit, vegetable and tillage sectors which can improve our food and feed self-sufficiency given the right policy conditions.
More comprehensive policy frameworks and targeted investments are needed urgently to address the specific challenges facing plant-based food production and facilitate its growth in Ireland in pursuance of our Food Vision 2030 and Climate Action Plan strategies.
© Catherine Lascurettes, Cúl Dara Consultancy
