Where does food come from?

alps

I know I rant on continually about the subtle education being delivered to our students, about where food comes from..

They are convinced it comes from a factory, not a farm...ive copied a recent advert from Kerry reaching out to potential graduate students....Can we as farmers, as the original and definitive wholesome food growers, get our act together to portray our food for what it really is...our do we content ourselves with being a raw material provider to a company who can manipulate it to their ends..

""Almost everything you eat or drink contains a Kerry ingredient or flavour.
We work with thousands of customers across the globe, including the top 10 supermarkets, quick serve restaurants and brands; in fact, any food or beverage you can imagine.
We add protein to your post workout shake, we reduce sugar, while maintaining great taste and we have the know–how to replace the "baddies" in foods with wholesome ingredients. No matter what the product is, we can improve the taste, while balancing nutrition.
Operations in 26 countries
Over 800 scientists
Supplying customers in over 140 countries
Over 15,000 products
Anyone can see the world. But what about the chance to change it? The work you will do with us will have an impact on food and beverage across the globe. That's not something every company can offer!
Join us and be part of the future of food, as we continue to delight and nourish consumers across the globe.""

Gawddawggonnit

alps wrote: »

I know I rant on continually about the subtle education being delivered to our students, about where food comes from..

They are convinced it comes from a factory, not a farm...ive copied a recent advert from Kerry reaching out to potential graduate students....Can we as farmers, as the original and definitive wholesome food growers, get our act together to portray our food for what it really is...our do we content ourselves with being a raw material provider to a company who can manipulate it to their ends..

""Almost everything you eat or drink contains a Kerry ingredient or flavour.
We work with thousands of customers across the globe, including the top 10 supermarkets, quick serve restaurants and brands; in fact, any food or beverage you can imagine.
We add protein to your post workout shake, we reduce sugar, while maintaining great taste and we have the know–how to replace the "baddies" in foods with wholesome ingredients. No matter what the product is, we can improve the taste, while balancing nutrition.
Operations in 26 countries
Over 800 scientists
Supplying customers in over 140 countries
Over 15,000 products
Anyone can see the world. But what about the chance to change it? The work you will do with us will have an impact on food and beverage across the globe. That's not something every company can offer!
Join us and be part of the future of food, as we continue to delight and nourish consumers across the globe.""

Jesus wept.


We, farmers, need to get back to basics and educate people about food.
In fairness there's a much better understanding about food and its provenance in France, Italy etc, where every parish has at least a dozen farmers selling direct to consumers.

Consumers are already educating themselves about food in a lot of first world countries, even though vegans may be misguided (imo), they are at least educating themselves.

Timmaay

This is what the ifa should be doing for us!

whelan2

Timmaay wrote: »

This is what the ifa should be doing for us!

Are bord bia not paid to do it

Willfarman

Eh no not the ifa. We are financing a quango called bird bia that's supposed to be doing this.

tractorporn

Willfarman wrote:

Eh no not the ifa. We are financing a quango called bird bia that's supposed to be doing this.

Eh aren't agri aware supposed to be going to schools showing kids what farming is all about?

Floki

Hardly expect the ifa or bord bia to educate consumers about food when the farmer him/herself doesn't know how or has no interest in eating their own produce.
How do you know what your producing when you've never consumed your produce?

Willfarman

No agri aware are to explain to the public that agri payments have a direct relation to production or environmental matters.. all totally true. Nothing else to discuss here. Move along!

boggerman1

Tesco,dunnes etc......sure everyone knows that!

Floki

Willfarman wrote: »

No agri aware are to explain to the public that agri payments have a direct relation to production or environmental matters.. all totally true. Nothing else to discuss here. Move along!

I think you're right actually.
I might have a mug around somewhere proving this.

Muckit

Floki wrote: »

Hardly expect the ifa or bord bia to educate consumers about food when the farmer him/herself doesn't know how or has no interest in eating their own produce.
How do you know what your producing when you've never consumed your produce?

Eh....You've never drank a glass of milk?

Floki

Muckit wrote: »

Eh....You've never drank a glass of milk?

I drink my own milk (well not my own. my own herd's milk).

I can quickly tell you the difference between crap and good whole milk.
Some of the stuff that passes for "milk" sold here makes me puke.

What's your favourite tastiest cattle breed Muckit and what age and sex do you like them to be?

kowtow

We have to call out the ridiculous notion that "value" is added to food by the processing industry.

Stop to think about it for a moment - it is nonsense.

Food has it's highest value - nutritionally, in taste terms, and economically (scarcity / seasonality) at the moment it is harvested and crosses the farm gate. Whatever the processor does to preserve value he does not out of the kindness of his heart, but to mitigate the natural loss of quality which his industrial volumes and distribution involve.

I'll accept that the work of a talented chef later on may add something, but there are no talented chefs in food factories.

If farmers accept the notion that processors add the value, and that food is dangerous until it is made safe by taxpayer funded authorities (both propositions which form the core of the media message surrounding food in this country) then we can hardly be surprised when we are paid as miners of raw materials and taxed and regulated as polluters.

Markcheese

To be honest, most farmers aren't producing food... They're producing commodities, Wether its barly for feed or malt, or milk for powder and caesin, that's the deal, even most of our beef is in that end a commodity, you hear a lot about grass fed beef but how much beef these days is finished out of a shed on ad lib grain...
. Would you get any premium for a three year old traditional breed bullock, Who'd never seen a lick of meal..?
.

Muckit

Hereford or angus heifer less than 18mths old. In saying that I've had a roast from a young charolais bull while in France and thiught it lovely meat too.

It's as much to do with cooking it as anything else.

Keepgrowing

Gawddawggonnit wrote: »

Jesus wept.


We, farmers, need to get back to basics and educate people about food.
In fairness there's a much better understanding about food and its provenance in France, Italy etc, where every parish has at least a dozen farmers selling direct to consumers.

Consumers are already educating themselves about food in a lot of first world countries, even though vegans may be misguided (imo), they are at least educating themselves.

Vegans educating themselves, give me a break.

They speak only lies and mis truths.

Milk is mothers tears
Rape racks
Day old lambs slaughtered

Have you ever tried to engage with one. Totally unreasonable

Keepgrowing

Gawddawggonnit wrote: »

Jesus wept.


We, farmers, need to get back to basics and educate people about food.
In fairness there's a much better understanding about food and its provenance in France, Italy etc, where every parish has at least a dozen farmers selling direct to consumers.

Consumers are already educating themselves about food in a lot of first world countries, even though vegans may be misguided (imo), they are at least educating themselves.

A dozen farmers selling directly to consumers in your parish?

We can't even keep a shop open. They'd be fairly hungry in a rural parish in Ireland.

Not enough people living in rural Ireland to sustain this

Floki

Keepgrowing wrote: »

A dozen farmers selling directly to consumers in your parish?

We can't even keep a shop open. They'd be fairly hungry in a rural parish in Ireland.

Not enough people living in rural Ireland to sustain this

Online Keepgrowing Online.

The future is now and its now online selling and buying.
The world is a smaller place nowadays.
Even 15 years ago I was at a butcher's in scotland and the majority of his sales were abroad through online orders.

Have a good story, online presence and product and you're 90% there.

alps

Keepgrowing wrote: »

A dozen farmers selling directly to consumers in your parish?

We can't even keep a shop open. They'd be fairly hungry in a rural parish in Ireland.

Not enough people living in rural Ireland to sustain this

Think Dwags point was to do with the appreciation the French have for their food, and that may derive from the fact that they get to see where it comes from.

Irish people eat too, but mainly eat from a packet....

British people eat also, and if only we could remove some of the packaging, some of the adultration, how much could we arrest the fall from the finished food price that we receive at the farm gate......

alps

kowtow wrote: »

If farmers accept the notion that processors add the value, and that food is dangerous until it is made safe by taxpayer funded authorities (both propositions which form the core of the media message surrounding food in this country) then we can hardly be surprised when we are paid as miners of raw materials and taxed and regulated as polluters.

Class

kowtow

Keepgrowing wrote: »

Vegans educating themselves, give me a break.

They speak only lies and mis truths.

Milk is mothers tears
Rape racks
Day old lambs slaughtered

Have you ever tried to engage with one. Totally unreasonable

They would drive you insane, particularly the trolling twitter brigade.

And yet - as absurd as many vegans seem, and as offensive (to farmers) as some of the advertising they are funding - they are at least thinking about what they eat and in particular about the moral consequences of eating animals.

Civilized society has recognized for millennia that killing and eating meat has a special significance - that is why rules and rituals for meat eating are a central part of almost every religion and why the cooking of meat - so often outdoors and in public - from hog roasts to barbecues is imbued in so many cultures.

We are - most of us here - taken up from dawn to dusk with the care of livestock, often from birth, and usually to slaughter. I dare say very few if any of us are vegetarians - and perhaps the family farm scale makes a difference - but I'd also bet that there are few farmers of livestock here who don't recognize that there is something special about the beasts we care for - and that, from birth to death, they are much more than an economic asset. That we accept the familiar process of slaughter does not mean that we regard the death of an animal as insignificant.

It strikes me that if the customer cared about the animal, it's life, and it's death as much as the farmer still does - then we might all be better off.

If that is ever to happen then we need the next generation of customers to hear what the Vegans are saying, see what good livestock farmers are doing, and consciously choose a world where both farm animals and the people who give their lives looking after them are properly valued.

_Brian

Ireland has lost much of its food culture. Many (if not most) consumers want cheap n nasty quick foods.

I was shopping yesterday evening and evesdeopping on two young women. They were saying it was pointless buying anything good for lunches as the kids won’t eat it anyway.
And there’s me at home cooking home reared hams for lunch and can’t keep it to them.

Many of the frenchnin small towns that Dawg correctly referrrs to seem to have kept their appreciation and love for local fresh food. My sisters won’t eat my home reared hams, sausages or even fresh eggs, I’ve seem them turn their noses up at home made jams and ask had we “proper” jam.

Until we can address the consumers understanding and appreciation for what we produce it is impossible to sell it to them as a local produced superior product. I’ve no idea how that’s done, bord via et al seem to be an extension of the marketing wing of Kerry foods and the like with little effort in education of consumers.

We need a fine food culture, otherwise farmers are producing cheap ingredients for others to profit on.

Floki

We need our Grannies back and make it compulsory for everyone to do a stint in the ICA and learn how to pluck a chicken and skin a carrot.

Non of this moca loca choca in a disposable cup.

Edit: I was just thinking Brian. You should buy your sisters a course down at Ballymaloe for a Christmas present.
I'd say their eyes will light up when they open the card.

tabby aspreme

How many of the Kerry groups , 15000 chemical ingredients/flavours/E numbers , can be eaten on there own without being added to food produced by farmers.