Food & Farming
Farm incomes are falling and the number of small farms in Ireland is in steady decline. Small farmers are threatened with extinction.
Food and farming in Ireland faces a stark choice. Do we continue to put profit first? Or adopt practices that safeguard the future of what we eat - and those who provide it.
Pesticides
Most fruit and vegetables for sale in our shops and supermarkets are grown using pesticides and herbicides- chemicals that kill pests like insects and weeds.
Some pesticides may be used just to make sure our fruit and vegetables look cosmetically perfect on supermarket shelves.
But their widespread usage is causing health and environmental problems:
- Pesticide residues in food
- Some of these can bio-accumulate in our bodies or harm our hormone systems.
- Pollution of drinking water
- These chemicals need to be removed from our drining water which costs millions of Euro each year.
- Genetically Modified food
- Genetic modification is unnecessary, imprecise, unpredictable and expensive. It will not save Irelands declining small farms but will hasten their demise.
Growing GM crops also threatens wildlife and the production of GM free foods. What's more some GM crops could allow more pesticides to be used.
Interesting fact:
We don't need GM to feed the world's poor. There are enough grains, such as corn, rice and wheat, grown each year to give everyone on the planet 3000 calories a day.
No GM crops are commercially grown in Ireland but there have been some field trials of sugar beet. Ireland has an opportunity to market its GM-free status.
Images © Declan Allison/Friends of the Earth, Tom Duddington/Friends of the Earth
