Dr. Maria Snell:

It comes back to two key points. It is about taking back and educating ourselves. Many people want to make the right choice but do not understand the whole process. A huge part to be played involves looking at food security and our environmental targets. They go hand in hand. We need to enable our growers to produce the fruit and vegetables they want to produce and we need to understand the challenges they face, one of those being the change in climate and the difficulties surrounding that and the second being seasonality and the difficulty maintaining staff through a year. It is not just the cost, but it is about having and keeping a skilled workforce. It is a very small community. Having appropriate supports there is another factor.

We have an active membership and many people make the active choice to come into the horticulture sector. It is satisfying work producing a fine product in Ireland. The issue is the competing interests for land within different sectors. We have competition for housing, energy, etc. We need to look at what is value and to put a greater value on the food we produce. It all comes back to what we value. We have become disconnected from that. If we do not pay a fair price and it is too cheap, then we do not appreciate it and take for granted that it will always be there, although that may not be the case. We know from research around the world the importance of food security and the challenges we may face.

It is important we put more resilience into our food chain and look after Irish growers, particularly young Irish growers. They are the future. We must keep the skills base that has been passed down from generation to generation. We want to promote succession, which is the business transfer of different enterprises, fruit and vegetables being an important one. Given that it is shrinking, it is more important than ever that we instil resilience and look at the challenges.

We would like to see a package put in place to enable young farmers to look at transparency across the line because we need to ensure fairness across the food chain, and to look at profits. It is not that we have a problem with labour costs. All our growers have good relationships with their workers and want to pay them more than the minimum wage. It is not that we do not want to pay or look after workers. We do, but we are confined by what is happening further up. Our product is perishable so we have to accept the prices. We cannot hold on to them or we will contribute to food waste and because no one wants to look at produce they have grown perish. We want to address these issues and look at price, so we can look after the producers who want to get in, compete in the land market and look after our workers. It is essential we value our food and appreciate it and that the profits are fairly apportioned. Everybody wants to make money and profit. There is no problem in that as long as it is shared equally along the food chain.