'Feeding Ourselves' in Cloughjordan

Ella McSweeney of RTÉ’s Ear to the Ground leads a stellar cast of national and international speakers and organisations at the annual Feeding Ourselves event in Cloughjordan on Saturday May 26th.

'Rural Revitalisation through a Co-operative Approach to Farming and Food' is this year’s theme. International guest speakers from the GROW Observatory (Pavlos Georgiadis) compliment Irish experts from a range of farming, food, environmental and rural development backgrounds.

Topics for the event will be of interest to anyone with a stake in agri-food and rural Ireland. The benefits of co-operative approaches for rural revitilisation will feature, as will real life examples of local north Tipperary businesses with innovative approaches to marketing, braiding and production. These will include Riot Rye Bakehouse and Crawford’s Farm, both from Cloughjordan.

Initiatives which may suit specific farms, groups of farmers or communities will be showcased. These include high nature value farming (James Moran) social farming (Aideen McGloin), community supported agriculture (Pat Malone), all of which will feature.

The event is organised by Cloughjordan Community Farm and Cloughjordan ecovillage-based sustainability NGO Cultivate. It is supported by European agri-food policy NGO ARC2020, the Horizon 2020 supported EU innovation project, GROW Observatory, UCC Centre for Co-operative Studies, the Night Orchard and the Cloughjordan Ecovillage.

Cloughjordan Community Farm is a member-owned and operated farm in the village, supplying dozens of local families with fresh vegetables, eggs and meat, produced on part of the 67-acre ecovillage site in Cloughjordan. Membership is open to all local residents of the Cloughjordan region. 

Academic institutions such as Gurteen College and UCC’s Centre for Co-operative Studies will be in attendance, while national and European NGOs such as Food Sovereignty Ireland and food business start-up Foodture will also be making their presence felt through talks, breakout sessions and instillations.

Feeding Ourselves 2018 is to be held in the WeCreate co-work space of Cloughjordan.

“We’re overwhelmed by the interest in this already,” Davie Philip of Cultivate says. “There are over two dozen speakers, but this is primarily a participatory event, a gathering of people active in making food, farming and rural spaces work better, for their communities and their environment.”

A number of related events are to be held that weekend in Cloughjordan, including a soil salon, film screenings, and a briefing on the new organic farming regulation. On the Saturday from 1.30pm, Hannes Lorenzen  - special advisor to MEPs in the European Parliament on agri-food matters - will update participants on changes at EU level to the organic farming regulations, in the area of seeds, soil and group certification. 

Cloughjordan Community Farm and Cultivate are co-organising Feeding Ourselves. All proceeds go to these two organisations. Registration from 9.30am. For more info and to book go to http://cultivate.ie/community-resilience/1279-feeding-ourselves-2018