Food tourism holds key to rural renewal and growth
Taste Council urges food community to get proactive, writes
family farms and food producers offer the most tenable solution to the revitalisation of rural Ireland, the head of the Taste Council of Ireland has said.
Instead of waiting for rural-proofed government policies that ensure towns and villages are not left behind as the economy continues to grow, communities are being urged to take matters into their own hands.
Food tourists and “slight tweaks” to agricultural legislation have also been mooted as vital keys.
Kevin Sheridan, Taste Council chairman, says food is the answer to rural demise. Speaking at the voluntary group sixth annual food summer school, Mr Sheridan said: “We’ve actually got a great solution. Rural Ireland is mostly a farming, food producing, community that provides employment in extremely remote areas.
“A butcher shop is just as important for it’s social cohesion as a garda station in terms of how essential it is to a community,” he said.
He says food will always bring trade and that locals must encourage each other to set up markets, food fairs, or simply sell their own produce to local shops, businesses, pubs and hotels.
“We need to invest in our small producers and encourage activity in town centres related to food and fishing communities. We don’t need to be going around waiting for board decisions. It’s all about human contact, all those layers, that’s where the real potential is,” said Mr Sheridan while addressing attendees at Brooklodge Hotel and Wells Spa, in Macreddin Village, Co Wicklow — Ireland’s only luxury organic hotel.
Whether it’s people who bake homemade apple tarts, artisan cheese, grow their own leeks or have their own special jam recipe, Mr Sheridan says local farmers, food producers, food groups should think small and rally together to set up a weekly market or monthly fair to sell their goods.
“It’s never going to be hugely economically rewarding but it will reward you in terms of satisfaction and how it fits in with your life. It gives a sense of hope, vitality, growth and connection. You have to be proactive with your peers because lasting change can only be made on the ground,” he said.
Evan Doyle, Taste Council vice-chair and progressive proprietor of Brooklodge Hotel, built in 1999, says farmers must focus on the simpler picture.
“Instead of fishermen selling their catch locally, they’re going to a wholesaler, which means locals go buy frozen fish in the supermarket. But if that money stayed in the local community, it would have a multiplier effect,” he said, highlighting how Clonakilty has successfully adopted such an approach.
He says Achill Island, six square miles and 16,000 hectares, is another great example of rural survival.
“They have certain things they are doing right such as the local abattoirs, an independent butcher, native beer, oyster beds, a smoke house, and they’re producing their own lamb and sausages. These can all be sold in local guest houses for breakfast and feature on local pub menus,” he said.
However, he says legislative hurdles can block grassroot communities from capitalising on local production.
“In Ireland you can have a brood of up to 50 chickens and sell on your farm gate, but I’m not allowed to buy because I own a restaurant. If the producer wants to sell to me, they must send their eggs off to get stamped, which is wrong. But with little changes there are ways around this, all it would take is some talk with the Department of Agriculture and the Food Safety Authority,” he said, pointing to similar advances in France, Spain and Italy.
“When a new rule comes, it’s blanket. We need the derogations, we need the Government to realise that we can tweak things and look to examples in Europe where they are doing it all the time,” he said.
Mr Doyle, a self-professed ‘food tourist’, says culinary tourism must be promoted nationwide. Unlike the summer tourist, he says food tourists will travel all year round, whether it’s raining or sunshine.
“I’d pay good money to fly to Denmark to eat in the morning or to go to farms in Sweden. There are so many people that do that and yet in Ireland we are not attracting those people who would only love to delve into our national food story,” he said.