Climate campaigner Gibbons challenges Ireland's food security 'myth'

YOU may have heard how Ireland produces “enough food to feed 40million people”.

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It's repeated by politicians and State agencies to argue how our massive problem with agricultural pollution is the price we have to pay for our vital role in helping to feed the world and ease hunger.

It's not true. Ireland is a major exporter of beef and dairy produce, but virtually none of this goes to feed the world’s hungry.

Our explicit national export policy is to sell luxury foods as ‘premium’ products to prosperous middle class customers.

IMPORTS

Ireland imports more than four-fifths of all the fruit, vegetables and cereals we eat, including nearly a million tonnes of fruit and vegetables a year.

This includes around 75,000 tonnes of the most Irish of crops: potatoes.

In late 2022, a ship containing 33,000 tonnes of Ukrainian grain was unloaded at the port of Foynes in Co Limerick, having beaten the Russian blockade.

The entire shipment was then sold as animal feed.

By selling high-emissions luxury food to the rich, while fattening animals with grain that could otherwise feed people in poor countries, we’re now a major international exporter of food insecurity.

We import 100,000 tonnes of feed for livestock every week, as well as about 1.5million tonnes of chemical fertilisers annually.

Were not providing for our own domestic food needs, let alone “feeding the world”.