Some months back, one Saturday morning, I chanced upon John McCormick, an organic grower who farms in north Co Down, and supplies Holywood's Camphill Organic food shop. Asked "How are things?", he replied: "Great, couldn't be better, can hardly cope with the demand" - a happy, successful farmer with a devoted band of customers. Now, when did you last hear a farmer say things were great? If you talk to conventional farmers, the people who produce the beef herds and the dairy quotas on which our agricultural economy is based, you won't find much satisfaction. Instead, you will be confronted with a bunch of people who feel victimised by low prices, and not merely unappreciated by the rest of society, but removed from it and suspecting, correctly, that it is hostile to them.
The alienation of the farming community is a serious matter for food-lovers for a simple reason. If more farmers are persuaded by difficult conditions to leave farming - as is predicted and expected by the Government - we will wind up with large agri-business farms, producing bland food they will sell to the beef processors and coops and directly to the centralised purchasing systems operated by the supermarkets. This will lead to a diminution in food quality, as the same system has done in both the US and the UK, and to a diminution in choice, the very thing which gives us the splendid food culture we enjoy at present.
You can see that food culture in operation at a new farmer's market in Midleton, brought together by Darina Allen and now into its first season's trading. This lovely little market is a collaboration between the long-established Country Markets Association and a gaggle of local growers and producers. There is lovely baking from Marog O'Brien's Farmgate Cafe stall, where she also sells Declan Ryan's Arbutus Lodge breads. Dan Ahern sells fine beef from his farm, which is currently in conversion to organic status: I bought some mince and it made some seriously good meatballs for our dinner the next day. Wendy England and Ann Moore have some lovely baking - "all with free-range eggs!" - and do look out for their super granola. I also bought Fingal Ferguson's superb smoked bacon, and an Ardsallagh goat's cheese, which had been smoked by Frank Hederman of Cobh, whose fish stall was buzzing, as you would expect. "After 16 or 17 years in the business, things have never been better," says Frank. You tour these markets and you find happy growers and producers selling their foods to people who want to buy them, and enjoying themselves in the process. Whether it's Temple Bar or the Cork Covered Market or the Dublin Food Co-Op or the Galway market, our street markets offer a complete contrast to the situation in the conventional world of farming and retailing.
The reason why there is such a contrast is simple: selling directly from grower to customer works. Meeting the punter is fun, getting to know the person who is going to take your produce home and cook it for the family. If you are proud of your work, a farmer's market gives you the opportunity to show why you are proud of what you do. Look at the case of Willie Scannel, a potato and vegetable grower from Ballycotton who used to sell his produce straight into one of the Midleton supermarkets. Then the supermarket chain introduced centralised purchasing, which meant Willie had to somehow get his spuds up to Dublin, so they could then be sent back down to east Cork to be sold a few miles from where he had grown them in the first place. Sheer madness! So, there was Willie with his van and his handsome "Ballycotton Potatoes" sign, standing at a table, doing brisk business with his spuds and vegetables on a Saturday morning. By 11.30 a.m. all the veg was gone, and the local folk were snapping up his British Queen potatoes at a fair old lick. "They were dug this morning," said Willie, proudly.
If you wanted more exotic fare, then Darina Allen was selling gorgeous tomatillos and chillies, and superb free-range chickens (expensive, of course, and worth it). Kate O'Donovan had her lovely Marble Hall marinades, and Minseach produce had lemony, marinated goat's cheese and some lovely organic vegetables. There were excellent cakes and bakes, and flowers, and chutneys and cheese and, of course, a Real Olive Co. stall. You can't have a farmer's market without a Real Olive Co. stall.
Myrtle Allen officially opened the market - before sitting down behind her own little stall to sell some Ballymaloe brown bread mix and a few other foods and vegetables - and spoke of how "the solution to the crisis in farming is for farmers to sell direct to the people who want their food, thereby getting a price that will make them comfortably off".
There is a problem here, of course. If the farmers sell directly to the punters and get a price that will make them comfortably off, that will mean less of a slice of profit for the beef barons and supermarket lords, who control most of the market in such a way that it makes them obscenely well off. Well, that's a problem the farmers could live with, I reckon.