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Green Scene
Fingal's willow allotments
I’m writing this on Tree Day with the rain soaking down all over Ireland and no chance to plant a tree today, so I’m planning future tree planting instead. Ireland lost its forests to human activity centuries ago and we are one of the least wooded countries in Europe – in most others woodland provides employment, food and leisure opportunities on a substantial scale, and are once more being valued as a fuel source. So I was delighted to hear that Fingal County Council are offering a new kind of allotment to a few lucky people. Instead of being used to grow food these particular allotments, on marginal land around council properties, will be used for growing willow. Planted with a special mixture of fast growing varieties the stems will be cut down, dried and chipped every autumn for use in domestic wood burning heating systems. They grow so quickly that by the next autumn they will be ready to cut again. The first of these allotments will be at the Turvey Road site in Donabate, with half a dozen more beside Skerries Mills, where a willow garden showing many different varieties has already been planted, with more varieties to be added over the winter. I gather that in the future there may also be some wood lots at the Balbriggan allotment site currently under construction. There will be an open day at this site on October 20th when you can also find out about pig rearing and bee keeping at the allotments which put an emphasis on local sustainability and education. If you help to build the pig pens, put up fencing etc, on the day your work can be offset against allotment fees.
Planting under the woods
But back to woodlands which can also be a great food source. We have got used to seeing fruit trees only estab-
lished in formal orchards with the ground underneath them bare, but in many cultures they are part of a multi layered growing system with tall trees, small trees, shrubs, perennial crops and annual crops underneath them. The pioneer of this system was the great Robert Harte, author of The Forest Garden, and I recommend that anyone who is thinking of planting timber or fruit on a large or small scale look at his book or at this video (tinyurl.com/8q9t9y3). October is the start of the tree planting season – bare root trees can go in at any time from now until March and they will feed you, store carbon, produce fuel, and improve biodiversity. If you manage nothing else go for a walk in your local woodland on the first fine day.
Farmers march for big farmers
I found myself wondering this month how representative of Ireland’s farmers those who gathered in Dublin to demonstrate really are? And I wasn’t surprised that that was the most expensive display of printed posters I’ve seen at a demonstration since the beginning of the recession. Because when it comes down to it most of Ireland’s farmers are small farmers, and most of them farm marginal land. And for small farmers on marginal land flat rate payments are far more beneficial than the production based payments that the demonstrators were calling for, which will chiefly benefit larger farms in the East and the Midlands. According to An Taisce it is flat rate CAP payments that will best sustain local economies, protect family farms and boost rural employment and are in Ireland's overall best interests. In fact, a flat rate is the single most important reform to help Ireland maintain population in peripheral counties such as Mayo, to protect and develop
The Informer
By Kathy Marsh, Sonairte tourism across the West and North, and to help stem the tide of emigration which is sweeping across the West once again. The true leaders of Ireland's land struggle, from Davitt and Parnell to Healy, would take an extremely dim view of the very narrow interests currently being pursued by ‘Big Agriculture’, and so will many small family farmers of my acquaintance who are only making their holdings on marginal land pay by adding value to their produce before sale. There is nothing for them in this.
Idiocy of EU fisheries policies
Food Harvest 2020 is being touted as a potential saviour for the Irish economy but the viability of the plan has never been properly tested, nor has its impact on the environment been looked at – indeed it is possible that it could be completely blocked at EU level because of this absence of examination and that Ireland could be severely fined for ignoring the environmental impacts of government actions. Big producers interests are preferred to small producers at sea as well. I don’t think any of us missed the courageous action of Kilmore Quay fisherman Seamus O’Flaherty at the beginning of this month when he gave away a substantial part of his catch of monkfish, “discarding” it to those on the quay rather than throw it overboard at sea, dying or dead. He certainly succeeded in highlighting the idiocy of current EU fisheries policies to the world’s media. At present the rules say that fish which are too small or fall outside European quotas must be thrown overboard, although very few treated like this survive to breed or be caught again at a future date. The rules are intended to protect fish stocks but at present some 38 per cent of commercial Irish whitefish catches are thrown overboard under them.
It is time to demand that Simon Coveney, the Minister responsible, works to ensure that the Common Fisheries Policy is reformed to ensure that priority is given to applying selective fishing practices in order to avoid unwanted catches in the first place. There needs to be better management plans for all fish stocks, with effective monitoring and enforcement. We need to make sure that new rules don’t give commercial advantages to unscrupulous operators. And maybe while he’s doing it the Minister could also fight a bit harder for Ireland to have a fairer share of the quota in Irish waters.
Good news - our air is cleaner
After problems on land and water you’ll probably be glad to hear that over most of the country the air is pretty clean – Ireland has some of the cleanest air in Europe. This isn’t the case in either the centre of Dublin and Cork or in some of our towns. The causes are different in the two cases though. Despite the recession there are still enough cars and trucks in our city centres to cause air pollution from both raised levels of nitric oxide and the fine particles which are a side effect of diesel combustion, and in our towns and villages we are still burning smokey coal, adding a lot more of these fine particles. In fact our EU pollution control agreements mean that we have to cut production of fine particulate matter, AKA soot, by 10 per cent by 2020. We can thank our prevailing Atlantic winds, as well as our low level of heavy industry for our air quality, but we need to burn clean fuels if we are going to improve it in the future. And given that improving air also improves health keeping cars and vans properly serviced and not using smoky coal seems a small price to pay. You can track air quality live at www.epa.ie/whatwedo/monitoring/air/ data/. At this moment my local station is showing almost undetectable carbon dioxide emissions – I guess it is being washed out. What does it look like where you live?