Home-grown hummus and heritage grain sourdough: meet the growers and producers testing the limits of local food

With global food insecurity now a serious threat, we talk to the people finding innovative ways to reduce our reliance on imports, cut the carbon footprint and test the limits of ‘local food’

John Keane and Donal Keane with Margaux Dejardin and Rose Greene from 4 Hands Food Studio visiting the Keanes’ farm in Summerhill, Co Meath, where their crop of yellow peas is grown. Photo: Jeff Harvey

Aoife Carrigy

What might ‘local Irish food’ look like? It’s a question worth considering as discussions of food security and food sovereignty take on new urgency. It’s also a question several proactive Irish food producers have been asking as they test the accepted limits of ‘local food’. The delicious results range from home-grown hummus and heritage grain sourdough to groundbreaking food products that repurpose spent brewers’ grain or coffee grounds in innovative ways.

Ireland’s food security took a dramatic turn this year. Rising energy and food costs and shortages of animal feed and fertiliser exacerbated by war in Ukraine and sanctions on Russia played out against an already urgent backdrop of climate change and biodiversity loss. Meanwhile the inherent fragility of highly specialised, interdependent supply chains was exposed across many sectors during the global pandemic. Last month, Minister for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue set up a wartime National Fodder and Food Security Committee. His new €12m targeted intervention package encourages Irish farmers to grow more tillage crops (think barley, oats and wheat) and protein crops (peas, beans and lupins) to feed farmed animals in the face of supply-chain shortages. The package also encourages planting red clover as a nitrogen-fixing cover crop to reduce reliance on exorbitant imported chemical fertiliser.