Summary of ideas submitted in the Agriculture and Food category…

• An educational campaign nationally aimed at changing people’s behaviour around the use of household detergents which are destroying wildlife throughout rivers and streams.
• Turning the country’s farming to organic methods, increasing our profit intake and reducing our subsidy dependency and giving our farmers a competing edge.
• For the creation of a Green Zone where plants and vegetables are grown on all rooftops, there is communal gardening and a sustainable living quarter.
• Open more abattoirs to encourage butchers to operate in small villages and towns.
• Invest in helping people to grow their own food. It is an opportunity for people employed in the home to source an income they otherwise wouldn’t have.
• Replace or use low quality suckler cows to breed high quality heifers through improved (higher success rate) embryo transfer or use a ‘cull’ dairy cow scheme where cows identified with superior genetics are retained on non dairy farms for the sake of exploiting there progeny to max effect.
• Transform the Irish agriculture industry to be exclusively organic.
• Large areas of public parks should be designated for use as allotments. E.g. Malahide Castle, Marley Park, Donabate Demense, St Anne’s Park could be used. These areas then could offer allotments for rent.
• Towns/Villages/Cities and their rural hinterlands to adapt a “Sustainability Charter” - a commitment to purchasing food from either a 50-kilometre radius or from a predefined hinterland.
• Transform the Irish agriculture industry to be exclusively organic.
• Look at what Ireland could produce in terms of new crops and seek out new opportunities.
• Creating a supplier/food maker to supply proper home-made apple pie/crumble, decent dry floury eating potatoes, proper baked bread etc
• Develop a scheme where dairy farms could be used as a tourist attraction whereby people can visit and camp at the farms.
• An extension of REPS to a group of contractors that would go out to the rural environment to landowners and offer to build stone walls, cut roadside hedges and bordering fences and clear derelict sites etc.
• Proposal for the development of a new voluntary organisation (PLANT - plant land and new trees). This would encourage the development of forests and the use of land for agriculture.
• Develop a co-operative amongst local communities to set organic vegetables on underutilised land in their communities.
• Urban dwellers could receive a patch of land to grow food on and provide assistance to farmers living in isolation.
• Produce organic vegetables and fruit via an intensive greenhouse method using unutilised land and parks.
• The creation amd encouragement of companies that would develop gardens and convert waste land into vegetable plots.
• Increase the number of milkmen and encourage the use of reusable glass bottles.
• Investing in community development projects which train the unemployed how to set up allotments for growing vegetables. They in turn will set up their own business developing and maintain gardens into vegetable plots.
• Make use of unused housing estates by using them to grow food and build wind generators.
• Government and/or local authority money could be used to purchase agriculturally zoned land around the city to provide additional allotment spaces. This would encourage the development of a food culture and a connection with the land that has been largely lost.
• Create a classified page within the newspaper “Inshore Ireland” whereby training, job opportunities, and work experience within the aquaculture sector can be advertised for free.
• Encourage young farmers by offering incentives such as access to local markets for their produce.
• Encourage farmers to grow quick yield crops and for the government to supply seeds etc, to the unemployed to trigger production.
• For bus stops to state what time it will arrive at each bus stop as opposed to when the bus leaves the terminus.
• For farmers to lease allotments so that people can produce their own food.
• Set up a business that would grow every type of vegetable and fruit available under the weather conditions.
• Irish cereal manufacturers should adopt the same recipe as Dorset muesli instead of unappetising existing Irish muesli’s on market.
• Use FAS programmes to teach people to grow their own food and push the allotment movement.
• Let the farmers run the country instead of semi retired teachers.
• Ireland’s food export market should look at opportunities available in rapidly expanding countries, like China.
• Locate market gardens or plant incubation facilities next to industrial bakeries where there is a constant supply of heat energy.
• Use animal manure (mainly horse and cow and pig) to produce renewable energy, the energy produced could be used to provide heating/cooling/power in nearby hospitals
• Local authorities lease land (at agricultural prices) from farmers in or adjacent to urban areas and then rent it on to local people at reasonable rates. This would have the effect of: (a) giving the farmer a fixed return on his land which he will still own; (b) encouraging local people to grow and consume their own vegetables.
• Extend the appeal for Irish foods and create a board which would market specialist foods abroad, in particular promote the produce of cottage industries.This could incorporate a special ’standard’ to which all the food products would have to adhere, and possibly one recognisable brand
• Younger people have lost the skills in handling cows calving etc.Through your campaign I would love to see a return/upskilling of younger (and not so young) in these areas in order that they are preserved.
• Ireland gave away its fishing industry as a condition of entry to the EU. We should demand it back in return for a “yes” vote on Lisbon
• Ireland could easily become the quality food Mecca of the world as follows: 1.set up a National Food Department. 2. Promote local produce via grants 3.Sell our unique food Mecca idea as part of tourism.
• Promote local food production by developing community farms, horticulture/permaculture training courses and allotments. Make farmers’ markets cost effective and encourage farmers to sign long term leases with local authorities to provide allotments.
• Set up a unit within the department of agriculture and food to actively and urgently encourage artisan producers of speciality “value added” product such as cheeses, branded meats (eg. parma ham) butter, vegetable oils, smoked salmon.
• The use of small-scale wind energy for year-round production of horticultural products for export or local use. Tax incentives or repayable grants could be made available to individuals/small businesses for the purchase of small wind turbines and the greenhouse infrastructure, or alternatively the Government could consider running such enterprises under the control of an appropriate semi-state body
• We must act to make Irish agricultural produce green i.e. Irish produce = organic. The markup on organic produce is phenomenal - if production increased, prices would come down sufficiently to make it cheaper for the cash strapped buyer, but still with a good return for the producer.
• Government/EU - set targets for tonnages of bio-fuels to be produced from land left fallow. Also bring our land into full production meat and vegetable capacity. Excess over EU limits and which may otherwise go to beef mountains etc - be distributed as aid to reduce world hunger.