SUSTAINABILITY Bringing home the bacon

Bringing home the bacon


Growing your own
Chris Brown

There is great satisfaction in sitting down to a meal that has been prepared using food that you have produced yourself. Aside from the fact that you know how it has been grown and what it contains, which is an important point if you don’t fancy eating chemicals and additives of questionable material, there is also the feeling of independence from the food chain that has become such a formidable industry.
We are fast becoming sanitised from food’s origins, and a general lack of understanding of how crops are grown and how animals are reared for our benefit is evident. We now place our trust in profit-driven systems that have no place in a sustainable world, if we are to take global warming seriously.
Thousands of years of producing food at a local level have been superseded in a few short years by heavy-duty global organisations that, regardless of the environmental impact, profit themselves by moving foodstuff from countries where wages and conditions are poor to the wealthier nations which have the ability (for now) to pay a higher price for them.
These domineering institutions, which now wield so much power they dictate unsustainable policies to the governments of the world, are using up Mother Earth’s resources, like oil, gas and water, at a rate that will leave our children facing huge problems, because these finite resources will run short.
The standard of food has gone backwards, noticeable in such ways as increased obesity in the ‘fast food’ nations, and what was once known as ‘the goodness’ in food is missing from much of what we eat. We seem focused on price in monetary terms; so much so, that we have allowed such things as imported chicken nuggets and many other nasty foods into our diet.

A modern myth
Ireland is full of myths and legends. Take my family’s homeland, Mannin, for example. Finn McCool, it is said, got into a foul temper, lifted a piece of Ireland and threw it in a rage out into the Irish Sea. This piece of land now forms the Isle of Man, which sits equally distanced from Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland (the home countries), and Lough Neagh is the hole from where it was plucked.
Now Finn was a strong fellow, no doubt about it, but most likely this is a myth, and a very old one.
Let me tell you of a modern one: Farmers were the ones that benefited most out of us joining the EU.
Whilst there have certainly been benefits to the office side of life in agriculture – and of course those that draw wages from glossy-brochure/report type activities may be bringing those earnings to homes in the countryside or other areas of agriculture – at the coal face of farming, at the feeding-animals and turning-soil end of things, conditions have steadily got worse, and an erosion of independence and incomes (for most) has occurred.
Farming has become over burdened with regulations directed from the European Parliament which are being used with an ever-increasing menace; regulations, that tell those that farm exactly how they must do things. Failing to comply results in the withdrawal of grants that have been used by those calling the shots to keep prices static for over 20 years. It is not those who have to rely on grants who have profited, but those who get paid big wages to organise the sending of them.
I hope that things may change for the better soon. As the folly of moving apples from the other side of the world is noted and if Euro-crats actually develop regulations to better serve the Maigh Eo people, more of us may be allowed to bring home the bacon. Am I a dreamer?