This guy? Peter Ward is his name and he is the Chairperson of an Bord Bia Taste Council. I caught a snippet of him on the Late Late Show a couple of weeks ago but only got to watch the full thing online here. You want a definition of passion for a topic? Peter Ward is it when it comes to food. If you can take 15 minutes out, it is well worth watching the video – just scroll down to the relevant section on the RTE website.
If you don’t have time, the segment was all about his view that we should re-organise the way we produce and market food in Ireland. The supermarkets have too much control over what food we get to eat. Everything has to look the same, be packaged the same with the result that it’s all bland stuff. Farmers aren’t getting rewarded for what they do. In their never ending squeeze for profit margin, Supermarkets are driving farmers away from the land.
Peter Ward’s message for the new year – change yourself, not your supermarket. Find more interesting ways to buy food. He quite rightly says that “food is mood, the most important thing in our lives”. Yet, most of us don’t pay any attention to what we are putting in to our bodies. Going to buy a new Plasma TV will incur countless hours reading reviews and getting advice on what model to buy. Which sausages will we buy this week? Hmm, what’s on special – that’ll do.
He suggests going to farmer’s markets to get in contact with local producers. “Get a phone number. Get an email address”, is his advice. “On the other side of the fence we need savvy young producers who will sell direct.”
“If I had my way Pat, I would set up a national Ebay to link the farmer with the customer and eliminate the supermarket”.
Although Pat Kenny said it’s not likely to happen any time soon, I was sitting there watching it and wondering “Why not?” – there doesn’t seem to be a reason why it couldn’t happen. A simple site with county/town listings of farms that sell direct would be great. Department of Agriculture knows where all the farmers are all over the country. A couple of weeks work is all it would take to make contact with each farmer and ask a simple question “Are you in a position to sell your product direct to the public, and would you like us to put your details on a new website”. Ok, ok, I realise that there are probably more hoops to go through, but with a bit of determined effort it could happen.
It got me thinking some more though. Wicklow Town, in common with a lot of other small towns in Ireland, has a lot of vacant shops in the town centre. Wouldn’t it be great if farmers got together to set up co-operatives and rent empty shops and use them to sell their fresh products. I would love to be able to walk down town on a Saturday and buy my veg direct from a farmer in a shop. The range of products on offer could be more than just farmers products. Home bakers, jam makers and so on. Not the fussy, faffy overpriced stuff that appears once a week at certain farmers markets. I’m talking about the stuff we need buy in supermarkets every week at the moment.
If you had the choice between buying your farm products direct from a farmer or from a supermarket, which would you choose?
- Excited
- Fascinated
- Amused
- Bored
- Sad
- Angry
Well done for highlighting this. Peter has been a great voice for food in Ireland and works extremely hard in promoting and encouraging people to buy their produce locally. His shop, Country Choice in Nenagh is almost a tourist attraction for some people. Most people don’t realise that they would actually save money by buying direct from farmers/producers at their local Farmers Market or Country Market. You get bigger more nutritious pieces of everything. And you can be sure that the meat or chicken or fish is not pumped with water to bulk it up a bit, as how it is commonly sold in supermarket packets.
An online farmers market would be fantastic as the local ones (near me anyhow) are only on once a week. So if you can’t make it you have to wait another week to get your produce. It would probably be a logistical nightmare though trying to organise deliveries and I won’t even begin to imagine the amount of red tape that would be put in front of anyone trying to accomplish it. I’m going to stick to strolling around the stalls, sampling produce and trying new stuff.
Thanks for the comment Derry.
I was really impressed by him alright – a great food ambassador. You could see the reaction of people eating the food – how good it was.
The online logistics would be a nightmare alright – but a start would be a simple listing for the farmers that would enable people to make the first contact.
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AJ, I’d choose a farmer’s wares any day – indeed do.
Online idea is interesting – here, mainland Southern England, executed and delivered to your doorstep (organic and seasonal), no problem. At a price. One which many cannot afford. I have observed that awful gap where people would like to follow the ideology but can’t. They have stomachs to fill and have no margin to think about the life of the chicken they are purchasing at a discount price off the supermarket shelf or the vitamin content of a long since plucked carrot.
I myself rather go without the chicken if it wasn’t a happy one, flappping about, scratching and walking during its life time. But then who am I to take the moral high ground?
As to the farmers’ shops on the high street you suggest: Sure, it would be great. But we are talking overheads here – immediately – and many of us, so very unfortunately, feel entitled to food being cheap. If there is one solution to it all, AJ, people should be made to grow their own vegetables, chase their own chickens in the back yard for a fresh egg, learn how to catch an edible fish; not to mention how to slaughter a pig to provide the proverbial bacon – or, if of a sensitive disposition, go vegetarian.
Off to cook dinner,
U
For those of us who have been with Peter whilst he is promoting local food both here and overseas, his passion and enthusiasm is inspirational.
I am a keen advocate of selling direct to the consumer, and our online sales are a good part of our business, but we do have a relatively high priced product (Smoked Salmon and other smoked products) which can stand a shipping charge.
In normal high-street retailing “location, location, location” is the key; with online retailing it is “distribution, distribution, distribution”.
Solve the logistics of getting fresh product delivered next day at a fair price with a fair range of products and it could work.
It was one of the best segments on the LLS I’ve seen in a long while . he really got me thinking about food and how we buy it. I could listen to him all day and night – a great man.
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