Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 11 October 2023

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine

Challenges Facing the Fruit and Vegetable Industry: Discussion

Mr. Mike Neary:

In terms of promotion, our current campaigns are very much targeted at the millennial age group who engage online because millennials do not watch as much television or read newspapers as much as people did in the past. In terms of the communication mechanism, a lot of our promotional campaigns are online using social media and influencers. The initiative has met with some good success. We do a lot of action in schools because we are concerned that the next generation are under-consuming produce. Bord Bia has had the Food Dudes schools programme for a number of years and this year we will get to 1,700 schools and 300,000 schoolchildren. That is direct provision and education around trying to engage around getting portioned consumption up to where it should be. We think that young group is an important part of the overall promotion.

I now ask my colleague to comment on promoting vegetable and fruit consumption among millennials.