my latest tweets! 
Technorati Tags: St Patrick’s Day,Clonakilty,Evening Echo Column,parenting
Published in the WOW! supplement of the Evening Echo 19/03/2008
On my left marched one of the twins dressed as a pig; on my right the other dressed as a bull, and in front of me, the little one dressed as what was supposed to be a chicken. The signs around their necks read “Danish Pork”, “Brazilian Beef” and “Thai Chicken” respectively. Behind me trotted another little girl – a “New Zealand lamb”. Somehow my wife and I had managed to avoid being transformed into denizens of the farmyard, but we were given banners to hold extolling the virtues of buying local produce.
Beside us a friend had a two-week-old Irish lamb tucked under his arm – an incredibly cute and lively counterpoint to the artificial foreign imports represented by our children. Glancing around I thought Old Macdonald, eat your heart out!
I hadn’t planned on even going to a St Patrick’s day parade, much less being part of one. In fact I’d spent most of Paddy’s weekend suffering the effects of food poisoning (probably the result of eating imported meat that had been thawed and re-frozen one too many times). Then a friend called us out of the blue and asked if we could help him out. Would the girls like to dress up as farm animals and march in the Clonakilty parade? We explained that they probably wouldn’t do it unless we were with them, to which he replied the more the merrier. And so here we were, marching through Clon with the Sustainable Clonakilty contingent.
To be honest, if you have to endure a St Patrick’s day parade I’d heartily recommend being in it. For a start you can skip all that jostling for position and skirmishing for your place on the footpath. You’ve got a nice, clear open road to walk down. Then of course there’s the fact that the scenery is always changing: you bump into someone you recognise, say a quick hello, wave at someone else, and then you move on. You get some exercise. Best of all: when you’re part of the parade, it all seems to go a lot quicker than when you’re standing on the sidelines.
It was all a bit of fun, but the message was one that I happen to believe quite strongly in. We need to promote local produce, and encourage people to buy it in preference to cheap foreign imports. There are lots of reasons why buying local produce makes sense. The first, and perhaps the most important of those is that it’s fresher and almost always tastes better.
If that isn’t enough to sway you, how about the fact that more and more Irish producers are struggling to sustain their businesses in the face of cheap international imports? Or the huge carbon footprint associated with transporting food around the world?
Cutting out food miles is good for your health, good for your local economy and good for the environment. It’s win, win, win… so why do so many of us still choose the losing cards?
The lamb, naturally, stole the show in Clonakilty… but for how much longer will we see Irish lambs gambolling around our spring pastures? Not for long, says our farming friend. Unless consumers change their tune and start insisting on local produce in shops and restaurants, he maintains that many Irish food producers are facing an uncertain future.
