The Green Party is calling for “urgent and immediate” support for the horticulture sector in Ireland.
The Greens said that the sector is in the eye of a perfect storm of reduced demand due to the heatwave, reduced yields and below-cost selling in the large retail multiples and requires intervention from government to prevent more growers from exiting production.
Green Party spokesperson for Agriculture, Senator Malcolm Noonan, said that Ireland was also now “extremely vulnerable” to food security issues and that as well as immediate supports, that the government needed to put a plan in place to help diversify Ireland’s food production and embed resilience in food systems at a time of profound change.
“Fruit and vegetable growers have an immediate challenge that needs to be addressed urgently to help offset losses from this year’s drought but in the longer term, The government must convene a high level group to look at how we can develop a more resilient food system here, how we can localise production and consumption across supply chains and how we can move towards regenerative models of food growing and agriculture that are better able to withstand extremes of weather caused by climate breakdown,” Senator Noonan said.
‘Agricultural yields will be substantially down across Europe this season, and this will have a knock-on financial impact on households here. There is an urgency now to look at our farming system in Ireland and how we can grow the horticulture sector to help us become less reliant on imported foods and provide viable livelihoods for growers. Localising our food systems, supporting local markets, local abattoirs, sustainable fishing and food growing must be part of the mix.”
Senator Noonan said “in a time of a climate and nature emergency, the government maintaining a business-as-usual approach to our food security is no longer tenable. We simply don’t have the luxury of time to adapt to a changed world and this summer should be our wake-up call.”