Darina Allen is so convinced of the benefits of organic farming she says she would prefer to lose a crop than spray it with chemicals. "I am not a recent convert to organics, I have always been convinced that organically produced food is best."
That certainty about the links between good food and good health led her and her husband, Timmy, to convert their 100-acre farm to organic production. "We were certified three years ago and it has been going very well ever since," she says.
She and Timmy, an unbeliever in grants and handouts, agreed that the farm should not be subsidised by her cookery school at Ballymaloe, Midleton, Co Cork, when it converted to organic methods. "I am very proud that even after three years the farm is making a profit. It's not a huge profit but a profit nevertheless," she says.
She joined the Rural Environment Protection Scheme which delivered extra payments during the conversion period and this had helped greatly.
A life-long admirer of the Kerry breed of cattle, she now has eight of them and runs five in-calf heifers. She also has 20 weanlings of about a year old and has three free-range sows.
"I love the old traditional breeds," she says, "and I have sown the pastures with old grasses. We mix nitrogen with clover and the locals here say they have not seen pasture like this for many years."
She also grows barley not sprayed with any chemicals. Last year the yields were 1.5 tonnes an acre for which she was paid £200 a tonne, much more than conventional farmers received.
The grain was also used to feed her flock of 300 free-range hens. "We have been tremendously lucky and have had very little animal disease problems," she says.
All the vegetables and fruit on the farm are grown organically and in her one acre of greenhouses, there are 40 varieties grown with the help of the farm manager, Haulie Walsh.
"The beef and pork is killed by a local butcher under veterinary supervision and like most people in the organic field, demand far outstrips supply,
"The whole thing has been extremely satisfying and the goodness and flavour from all the produce from the farm is the bottom line," she says. "I think it is much harder to be an organic farmer because one is always learning. It's simpler to be conventional because all the answers they require are available."
The most satisfying thing of all for her is the number of local farmers looking at what they are doing. "They may follow the same path which I think they should do because there are a great many opportunities for those who go the organic route."