Kevin Myers article (Irish food & farming)

Muckit

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/kevin-myers/kevin-myers-it-is-as-if-irish-people-arrived-here-with-their-cattle-and-learned-nothing-about-the-land-2981437.html

6/1/12

Interesting article in the Indo yesterday by Kevin Myers. Read it in the actual paper itself but found this link to it. Can't open it though:o, maybe some of ye that are interested in it might be able to

Muckit



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Rovi

Interesting stuff, thanks for posting it here.

Here we go:

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/kevin-myers/kevin-myers-it-is-as-if-irish-people-arrived-here-with-their-cattle-and-learned-nothing-about-the-land-2981437.html

Kevin Myers: It is as if Irish people arrived here with their cattle and learned nothing about the land

Friday January 06 2012
Something odd is happening. In the middle of the greatest economic slump since the 1950s, Irish agricultural land-prices are soaring: €10,000 an acre. This is an astounding figure, but at least it does reflect the success of the Irish food industry. Our beef and lamb are superb. I recently did a blind, multi-national butter-tasting: Irish was easily the best.

We humans might find the Irish climate infuriating, but the livestock and the wildlife with which we share the land do not. Irish grass is rich and kind, while the untamed Irish landscape is rich in neglected foodstuffs: in rabbit and pigeon; in wild duck and pheasant, and on our uplands, grouse and partridge. Our rivers teem with neglected eel and pike and other finned and uneaten eatables. Watercress grows in our streams unharvested except by the incredulous Chinese, stunned at such bounty. Blackberries rot on the bramble each autumn.

I was in London before Christmas. I ate in three restaurants -- Simpson's on the Strand, Wilton's and Rules -- whose menus boasted steak and kidney pies and puddings, oysters, scallops, Dover sole, roast beef, pheasant, partridge, widgeon, goose, steamed puddings, and of course, Stilton, the emperor of traditional cheeses. These are quintessentially English foodstuffs: the feather, fin and fur of field and stream, and the beef and cream of the pasture. (And the staff in all three restaurants, though for the most part central European or African in origin, are impeccably English in manner: which is how it should be.) London boasts dozens of such restaurants.

How many Dublin restaurants specialise in dishes based on Irish produce, Irish seafood and Irish wildlife? Well, if you want to know the meaning of poverty, a good way is probably to open a game-only restaurant in Dublin. Men might eat well-hung pheasant, but most Irishwomen will generally shy in horror at a wildbird corpse with its feet attached.

Next, the sea. The first item on the Anglo-Irish Treaty talks in 1921 was the control of the Irish marine waters: after an hour, it was hived off to a sub-committee as being too trivial to waste time on. Half a century on, and almost the first concession the Irish delegation made in its negotiations with the EEC was the surrender of Atlantic fishing rights to Spain as a quid pro quo for Madrid supporting our demands for higher beef quotas.

Our neglect of the sea and its riches is both pathological and dysfunctional, yet also defining. It reaches its apotheosis in the two Galway Oyster Festival banquets, neither of which serves oysters as a course, for the girls won't eat them (perhaps because the very deed seems rather sapphic in both taste and technique).

Moreover, for all the quality of our beef, most basic dishes -- roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, hot-pot, steak and kidney pie -- are English in origin. Despite the eminence of the cow in Irish culture (all those cattle-raids) there are almost no traditional Irish ways of preparing beef. Contrast with Spain, with a comparable reverence (hence the bullfighting) but with both a rich, beef-centred cuisine, and two industries based on the by-products of cattle: leather and cheese.

Despite centuries of cattle-raising, instead of Ireland becoming a centre of shoe and belt-making, there are no traditions of leather-working here: none. So what happened to Irish hides? Likewise cheese. Until the 1970s, the only Irish cheeses were pseudo-cheddars: usually industrially processed horrors that resembled elephant ear-wax. Per capita, we produced more milk than any other country in Europe -- but with no Stiltons, no Emmenthals, no Camemberts to show for it. Yes, in the past 30 years, some great Irish cheeses have emerged. Cashel Blue is now a world-class cheese; Milleens and Gubeen, likewise. But aside from the quite wonderful Veronica Steele -- easily one of the greatest Irishwomen of the 20th century, and still scandalously unacclaimed -- our cheese-makers have tended to be Irish Protestants or immigrants.

It is as if the Irish people arrived here with their cattle, and colonised the landscape without ever learning much about it. Land almost became merely something to build bungalows on, one in every field, plonk, plonk, plonk, from Bloody Foreland to Carnsore Point. Meanwhile, the gamebirds went unshot, the fish uncaught, the rabbits untrapped, the shellfish unopened, the herbs untasted, the hide untanned and the curd unpressed. Moreover, a binary magic wand is usually waved to explain these extraordinary failures; the penal laws, and landlordism. But neither prohibited cheese-making or tanning: and anyway, the peasantry of all of Europe groaned under the insufferable burdens of a parasitic and slothful nobility. How desperately hungry must you be to eat songbirds, snails and frogs? Ask the French.

Still, we need not be the prisoners of our past. The first instrument to freedom of any kind is the iron-file of awareness with which to cut through the bars of inherited ignorance, superstition and timidity. The Celtic Tiger was killed by insane land-speculation, for we forgot that the only value that land really possesses is in the wealth it produces. Natural riches galore still surround us. That basic lesson should be at the core of our recovery.

CJhaughey

Eel isn't neglected it has been made illegal to possess.
I agree with a lot of his article in general though, look at the hullabaloo when Rachel Allen showed some pheasants she shot and how to make a terrine.
by and large people have a profound disassociation with the process of food in this country.
Of course not everyone is like that but many people think that food comes on plastic trays.

pakalasa

I remember Peter Ustinov on the Late Late a few years back, when asked about Irish food. He said it was so fresh that it would 'go off' on your plate. One of the reasons why we contribute so little to world cuisine is that we eat plain food, no fancy sauces. We don't need them. Sauces are there to mask the lack of taste of not so fresh food. Intro Chinese cuisine...
Still if all we have to offer is bacon and cabbage, you'd have to wonder..

sean2012

<trolling>

bbam

A huge dis-service to developing more artisan food producers was to put a stop to the Leader funding going to any food production projects.

Its a numbers game, start more small artisan food producers and some will make it big and generate decent revenue and jobs.

Farmer Pudsey

Leader funding is a joke. The term's and conditions make it near impossible to apply for it. Then you have the conditions that you cannot be in competitions or distort markets. In reality it has become a sort of social fund. However because of the rules involved it is impossible to drawn down. Another issue is when you get your project complete you may get held up on payment due to small red tape issues.

They have found it nearly impossible to distribute the funding during this term. Instead they have decidec to hand it over to local Co Councils because of co-funding issues. So it will dissappear in there funds.

20silkcut

Myers raises some good points in that article.

Why isn't there an industry in hides in this country?
Where do all the hides go???
Has no Irish person ever thought of making use of them and turning them to leather?

People used to make cheese and butter in local creameries years ago you can see the apparatus used on display in museums up and down the country.
Amazing but not surprising that the technology stopped dead and the industry regulated out of the hands of the house wife. Egg production, cheese and butter making on the cottage scale were all killed off by the big food company lobbyists in this country. The barriers to entry to these industrys are high. Where as 40 or 50 years ago they were vital to every family farm.

It's incredible, why are we such poor fishermen???? Surrounded by water and rivers everywhere.. It should be a massive industry in this country employing tens of thousands. Why isn't it???? Maybe we don't need the jobs.

Horticulture and Market gardening is woefully under developed in this country as well.

We pour hundreds of thousands into sheds and concrete yards and fancy milking parlours taking up acres of ground. If the same money was poured into sowing carrots, spuds, cabbage etc just think of the possible immediate return.
But I detect a negative attitude to tillage in this country possibly dating back to the enforced tillage drive in the 40's/50's.

I remember suggesting getting a plough one time to my father and he nearly went into a depression at the thoughts of it.
Very hostile irrational reaction to it that obviously came from the dark distant past.

Bizzum

CJhaughey wrote: »

Eel isn't neglected it has been made illegal to possess.

It's interesting that Myres mentiones two protected fish. Both Pike and Eel are protected. Worldwide Eel numbers are in steady decline. We had a pretty lucrative Eel industry here before the legislation came in banning the possession of Eel in the mid 00's.
The Pike as a sport fish are probably more valuable to the economy that as a table fish. Pre 06 one could be in possession of 6.6lb of Pike but changes in the regulations in 06 allow only possession of one Pike less than 50cm, which is really only a very small Pike.
I'm told that angling in the UK generates more money for their economy than soccer contributes!

delaval

20silkcut wrote: »

Myers raises some good points in that article.

Why isn't there an industry in hides in this country?
Where do all the hides go???
Has no Irish person ever thought of making use of them and turning them to leather?

People used to make cheese and butter in local creameries years ago you can see the apparatus used on display in museums up and down the country.
Amazing but not surprising that the technology stopped dead and the industry regulated out of the hands of the house wife. Egg production, cheese and butter making on the cottage scale were all killed off by the big food company lobbyists in this country. The barriers to entry to these industrys are high. Where as 40 or 50 years ago they were vital to every family farm.

It's incredible, why are we such poor fishermen???? Surrounded by water and rivers everywhere.. It should be a massive industry in this country employing tens of thousands. Why isn't it???? Maybe we don't need the jobs.

Horticulture and Market gardening is woefully under developed in this country as well.

We pour hundreds of thousands into sheds and concrete yards and fancy milking parlours taking up acres of ground. If the same money was poured into sowing carrots, spuds, cabbage etc just think of the possible immediate return.
But I detect a negative attitude to tillage in this country possibly dating back to the enforced tillage drive in the 40's/50's.

I remember suggesting getting a plough one time to my father and he nearly went into a depression at the thoughts of it.
Very hostile irrational reaction to it that obviously came from the dark distant past.

We have being supplying our biggest market the UK with what they needed ie. butter and beef.
At one stage Cork butter market was the largest in the world. I liked his article and agree with the sentiment however our large milk pool for instance could not even nearly be handled by artisans.

My wife and I have eaten in Rules, what an experience!

20silkcut

What does the last sentence mean??? Damned predictive text.

pakalasa

20silkcut wrote: »

What does the last sentence mean??? Damned predictive text.

http://www.rules.co.uk/

redzerologhlen

20silkcut wrote: »

It's incredible, why are we such poor fishermen???? Surrounded by water and rivers everywhere.. It should be a massive industry in this country employing tens of thousands. Why isn't it???? Maybe we don't need the jobs.

I dont think freshwater commercial fishing on any scale here in Ireland is sustainable even in the short term, huge damage has been done to some rivers/lakes by just poachers alone during the ''boom'' years. As for the sea there was a lot of people employed in commercial fishing back 30-40 years ago. With improving fishing techniques at the same time fish stocks across most species declined to the point where it became hard to justify fishing for them and so it is the commercial fishing in Ireland is not what it used to be and probably never will be again.

20silkcut

redzerologhlen wrote: »

I dont think freshwater commercial fishing on any scale here in Ireland is sustainable even in the short term, huge damage has been done to some rivers/lakes by just poachers alone during the ''boom'' years. As for the sea there was a lot of people employed in commercial fishing back 30-40 years ago. With improving fishing techniques at the same time fish stocks across most species declined to the point where it became hard to justify fishing for them and so it is the commercial fishing in Ireland is not what it used to be and probably never will be again.

No doubt that at the current time ocean fish stocks are low but it is the Spanish/Norwegian / French etc who harvested those rewards. It was not the Irish fleet.

In 1845-47 people starved up and down the western sea board while the oceans were full of fish.

Imo it is very strange for an island nation to have such a small underdeveloped sea faring tradition that we seemed happy to dispense with at the slightest political pressure.

20silkcut

pakalasa wrote: »

http://www.rules.co.uk/

a ha most unusual name for a restaurant.

I had visions of delaval devouring A4 sheets in frustration at rules and regulations.

Juniorhurler

He raises a lot of good points in the article, but I would rather post about him in the "what really pisses you off" thread. I find him very annoying.

pwurple

Makes some sense, except for the barely veiled blame levied on women for the country's lack of game or shellfish. I enjoy game and shellfish, only avoiding it when pregnant.... which is a tiny percentage of my lifespan.

freedominacup

Juniorhurler wrote: »

He raises a lot of good points in the article, but I would rather post about him in the "what really pisses you off" thread. I find him very annoying.

This the first thread I've seen where the bould Kevin featured that somone wasn't having apop at him for something.

Juniorhurler

freedominacup wrote: »

This the first thread I've seen where the bould Kevin featured that somone wasn't having apop at him for something.

There is no such thing as bad advertising they say.

Farmer Pudsey

One of the reasons that we have not got an indigenous leather industry up until refrigation made it possible to store meat most cattle were exported live to be slaughtered in the UK. So there hides were in the UK. It was the same with Lamb.

Fishing was similar as we have a small population in comparrison to the amount of food we produce we exported most. If you look at what were the valuable fish in Ireland it was mostly those suitable for salting or smoking. Yes we never developed a canning industry.

For most of the 18th and 19th centuary cor was the butter capital of the world, The price of butter was dictated by supply and demand in the Cork Butter Market. The butter that was sometimes found bogs may have been stored there to await a rise in price from one year to the next.

JohnBoy

freedominacup wrote: »

This the first thread I've seen where the bould Kevin featured that somone wasn't having apop at him for something.

I have to say I like Kevin Myers.

Not because I agree with everything he says (I dont think even Kevin Myers agrees with everything Kevin Myers says)


The purpose of his articles is to be disagreeable while still including some sense or logic, thereby provoking great debate.


And debate is good.

Snickers Man

For all that this article is over a year old it is one of the occasions, the few occasions I might add, when Myers is actually right about something.

I think it is a matter of misplaced pride. We don't take any pride in our foodstuffs, which we should do. We have some of the best largely disease-free cattle in the world and yet we let a bunch of crooks in the meat processing industry destroy our reputation first with doctoring documentation to defraud the CAP up to the early 90s and more recently to contaminate the beef market with unregulated horse meat.

These people are traitors and should be seen as such. Michael Davitt would have had them all shot.

If we had more pride in what we were doing instead of the sleeveen "Let's screw the system for all it's worth" attitude they would never have got away with it.

bbam

Farmer Pudsey wrote: »

Leader funding is a joke. The term's and conditions make it near impossible to apply for it. Then you have the conditions that you cannot be in competitions or distort markets. In reality it has become a sort of social fund. However because of the rules involved it is impossible to drawn down. Another issue is when you get your project complete you may get held up on payment due to small red tape issues.

They have found it nearly impossible to distribute the funding during this term. Instead they have decidec to hand it over to local Co Councils because of co-funding issues. So it will dissappear in there funds.

In fairness Leader funding is a combination of Irish and EU tax payers money. I wouldn't want to see it thrown out to just anyone with a half cocked idea who wants handy funding. I'd fully expect that there is a high degree of accountability in the process, and judging by the number of local business/groups with the logo the funding is getting out there..

Neither would it be appropriate to 50% fund a business to set up in competition to an existing busuiness.. what would be the point, how could one compete with the new besiness when they were subsidised to get going.. that would be just swapping one set of jobs for another rather than generating new jobs in addition to existing jobs which would be real rural development..

Lastly I think that the transition to the Councils is against the wishes of the Leader groups, the % which is funded from Europe will be severly reduced as the EU see it as undesirable for local government to adminsiter the money.. that and the fact that the money will be swallowed up by the council for footpaths and lighting rather than funding any rural development at all..this is a bad move !

Dont be daft

I agree with the underlying theme of the article but I find Kevin Myers such a lazy, misinformed journalist.
He doesn't at all touch on the reasons behind any of the flaws he finds in agriculture or food culture in Ireland. Instead he just spouts out a load of dribble as to how he thinks the world should be.
Even the slightest bit of research would have uncovered the restrictions on pike and eel fishing but instead he sat down and banged out an article with little substance.

When ever he has written about an issue which I'm even slightly informed on, his total lack of understanding for the issue at hand is staggering.
The only conclusion I can reach is that he usually hasn't a clue what he's on about but this is disguised by his eloquent writing style and by referring to common perceptions.

freedominacup

Dont be daft wrote: »

I agree with the underlying theme of the article but I find Kevin Myers such a lazy, misinformed journalist.
He doesn't at all touch on the reasons behind any of the flaws he finds in agriculture or food culture in Ireland. Instead he just spouts out a load of dribble as to how he thinks the world should be.
Even the slightest bit of research would have uncovered the restrictions on pike and eel fishing but instead he sat down and banged out an article with little substance.

When ever he has written about an issue which I'm even slightly informed on, his total lack of understanding for the issue at hand is staggering.
The only conclusion I can reach is that he usually hasn't a clue what he's on about but this is disguised by his eloquent writing style and by referring to common perceptions.

Finally, this thread is returning to normality. 25 posts before someone had a real dig at poor oul Kevin. Has to be a record. I've seen it done in 25 seconds when the OP would take 2 minutes to read never mind reply to.

Hunchback

Our neglect of the sea and its riches is both pathological and dysfunctional, yet also defining. It reaches its apotheosis in the two Galway Oyster Festival banquets, neither of which serves oysters as a course, for the girls won't eat them (perhaps because the very deed seems rather sapphic in both taste and technique).

The bit in bold sent shivers down my spine urg

Bizzum

CKonetheonlyone wrote: »

Our neglect of the sea and its riches is both pathological and dysfunctional, yet also defining. It reaches its apotheosis in the two Galway Oyster Festival banquets, neither of which serves oysters as a course, for the girls won't eat them (perhaps because the very deed seems rather sapphic in both taste and technique).

The bit in bold sent shivers down my spine urg

Is that better:)

Dont be daft

freedominacup wrote: »

Finally, this thread is returning to normality. 25 posts before someone had a real dig at poor oul Kevin. Has to be a record. I've seen it done in 25 seconds when the OP would take 2 minutes to read never mind reply to.

Yeah I felt it was due alright:p

But seriously lets take this article,

Firstly he raises the point of land prices "soaring". That's all lovely Kevin but the fact is that land prices are still recovering from a dramatic reduction in 08/09. They can soar all they like, but they are still broadly in line with the UK.
But obviously "Land prices are slowly creeping up in unison with similar plots elsewhere in the world" doesn't have the same ring to it.

Next he mentions pike, eel and watercress. All have restrictions placed on them because people were damaging habitats and fish numbers precisely because these foodstuffs were being over utilized.

When he brings up the idea of having almost no traditional Irish methods of preparing beef he fails to highlight the fact that the vast majority of Irish beef was exported during the 18th and 19th Century. What was consumed in Ireland was mostly consumed by wealthier individuals who drew their culinary tastes from, you guessed it, the English.
So in a way English traditional beef recipes are a shared tradition with Ireland.

Next he has a go at the leather industry or lack of.
As Pudsey pointed out the live trade removed possibility of this raw material ever being used to any great extent. That combined with a very localized fashion industry make for historical reasons for no dominant leather industry.
But he's wrong, there still is one.
No mention of the now global brand Dubarry, and their success in the tradition of leather-working or the saddle makers in Ireland. Equally, if Kevin was to acknowledge the decline of leather usage in fashion and industry, it wouldn't exactly highlight his point.

Then he has a pop at the oul cheese makers. Funny how I watched a report on the BBC a few months back were a journalist went into a Chinese supermarket and was able to buy several Irish cheeses yet couldn't find one British dairy product.
They seem to think that the Irish are dominating emerging cheese markets yet Kevin seems to think our Cheese industry needs to be highlighted as needing a kick up the hole.

He never address the fact that if you ask anyone who hunts foul they'll tell you that for the cost of equipment, transport, licensing and time it would not pay to feed yourself by hunting. Its a luxury and an expensive hobby, not an alternative.

I agree with the underlying theme. We under utilize a lot of resources in this country and there is huge potential to develop, but he uses sensationalism and disregards the fundamental issues. That's the epitome of lazy journalism.