Fresh ideas for a green future

GREEN DRAGON TEAM INNOVATION CHALLENGE:Students have taken up Agri-Aware's challenge to develop products and business ideas that utilise local resources

OUR FUTURE may depend on the ingenuity of our entrepreneurs. A changing climate could fundamentally transform Ireland and the rest of the world. We’ll need to use our own resources – food and agriculture businesses will be vital for the survival of both individual communities and the nation as a whole.

The Green Dragon team innovation challenge, a new initiative from Agri-Aware, is gently laying the first seeds for the emerging green revolution. The competition challenges both Junior (first to third year) and Senior (Transition to sixth year) students to develop a business idea into a useful and potentially profitable product or service.

Students can develop a new food product using local resources, or a new non-food product based on a local raw material (such as timber or stone). Two groups of students from separate schools are entering the third category, which calls for students to create a new service for the agriculture, food and environment sectors.

Sharon Beirne and Shauna O’Driscoll, both Transition Year students at Loreto Secondary School, Fermoy, Co Cork, want to bring people to the countryside. “We’re both from a rural area, about 25 minutes from Cork city,” Sharon says. “There’s a divide between rural and urban people; we often don’t get each other. Our project aims to get people from the city to come to the countryside and embrace what they can learn out there. We’re thinking of putting posters around towns and cities, or contacting school PE teachers and offering incentives for them to visit the countryside and embrace what they can learn.”

Sharon’s father owns an equestrian centre, and horses have always been a part of her life. “We hope people will experience the countryside on horseback. It’ll be a chance to come out and experience nature, and we’ll develop a programme around this.”

Sixth year students Eilish O’Dwyer, Marguerite Furlong, Carol Dillon and Elaine Carroll are all studying at St Anne’s Secondary School, Tipperary town. Back in Transition Year, they carried out a project on meat traceability for a separate project.

“It became clear that that people wanted information on where their meat is coming from, and we noticed a gap in the market,” Eilish explains. “When Green Dragon came around, we saw an opportunity to pursue the idea further. We’re putting together a business and marketing plan, with some guidance from our teacher. We’re hoping that, once our website is up and running, supermarkets, meat companies and butchers can display the origin of their meat. It will also feature recipes using Irish meat from chefs such as Darina Allen and Nevin Maguire. We’ve been in touch with the Department of Agriculture, the Food Safety Authority of Ireland, and Mairead McGuinness MEP. All have offered support, and the site will take some advertising to pay its way.”

The winner of the competition, which is now closed to new entrants, will receive mentoring and project development worth €10,000 to build up their business and a €2,000 cash prize shared between them and their school. Five runners-up will be awarded €500 each. The winners will be chosen at a final in March.

Visit agriaware.ie and click on the Green Dragon logo