Ireland’s food system stands on a contradiction that should concern every policymaker, industry leader and citizen (“We’re only ever nine meals away from anarchy,” Mick Kelly, Opinion, April 18th).
We are a nation renowned for agricultural excellence, yet we export the vast majority of what we produce while relying heavily on imports to feed ourselves. That is not resilience; it is exposure.
Surely Ireland’s history has already shown the consequences of failing to safeguard our ability to feed ourselves. That lesson should not sit in textbooks; it should shape policy, investment and public awareness today.
Technology, including AI, will play a role in improving efficiency, forecasting and sustainability. But it will never replace the people who work the land. Food does not begin in algorithms, it begins with growers.
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If we are serious about resilience, economic, environmental and societal, then food security must move higher up the national agenda. Not as a talking point, but as a priority backed by decisive action.
MAURA LAVELLE,
Ashford,
Co Wicklow
Sir, – Mick Kelly’s article reminds me that when I was a child growing up in a large family in the Dublin suburb of Dalkey in the 1950s, many households, including our own, grew their own fruit and vegetables or had allotments alongside the nearby railway tracks, which they planted, to help feed themselves.
There were also a couple of market gardens in the area where my mother would occasionally send me to pick up a head of cabbage in winter, or lettuce in summer, if for some reason we were short.
These were the post second World War years – long before the introduction of container traffic from all over the world which now facilitates food imports.
Given the recent restrictions on air and shipping activities because of more recent wars, we could soon be back again to growing our own. Maybe we should, anyway. – Yours, etc.,
KLAUS UNGER,
Killiney,
Co Dublin
