Ireland Archives - Agricultural and Rural Convention

Ireland | Lessons from the “Poor Man’s Cow”

January 30, 2026 Shane Casey

We are back with Shane Casey in The Burren, Ireland, where lambing season is in full swing. Shane has been busy with the next generation on and off the farm too, visiting schools with a herd of Old Irish Goats. Once a common sight in the Irish countryside, this rare native breed is helping to revive a cultural heritage that has lessons to teach us today, on biodiversity, wildfire management, and the transmission of knowledge from one generation to the next. Over to Shane in the lambing shed. […]

Ireland | Feeding Ourselves, breaking new ground for the local food movement

December 19, 2025 Oliver Moore

Every year the Feeding Ourselves movement joins more of the dots in the local food ecosystem. This year especially it has broken new ground – digging into Ireland’s difficult colonial past and building bridges to a more resilient future by consolidating ties with unlikely partners and anchor institutions. To give us a taste of where the movement is at, Oliver Moore reports from Ireland. […]

Why Is the Local Food Economy in Ireland So Weak?

October 21, 2025 Oliver Moore

Ireland’s weak local food economy is not simply a modern oversight or the result of consumer preferences. Instead, it is deeply rooted in historical and structural forces—chief among them, colonial extractivism. The foundations for this vulnerability were laid centuries ago, and they have laid down tramlines of extractivism which still operate today. Analysis by Oliver Moore. […]

A European Land Observatory – What’s In Sight?

May 7, 2025 Oliver Moore

Despite moves towards simplification, a Land Observatory is coming this summer. What’s more, there is broad consensus from both the Commission and farming organisations on the need for some more harmonised monitoring of land transactions. But how much power will – or should – such an Observatory have? What will it try to do? And which tools are in place at national and regional level? Oliver Moore takes us through the terrain. […]

Letter From The Farm | Community Farming in Ireland

April 25, 2025 Oliver Moore

On Cloughjordan Community Farm it takes a village to grow 50 sorts of vegetables. The member-owned farm produces high quality, nutritionally dense veggies using agroecological methods. Community is central to the farm’s work, from its CSA scheme to volunteering, and most recently a big effort to plant 2,000 trees for syntropic farming. Letter from the farm by Oliver Moore. […]

Letter From The Farm | All In A Day’s Tree Planting

April 4, 2025 Martino Newcombe

We’re back with Martino Newcombe in the West of Ireland, where he reflects on a winter’s day of planting a shelter belt of native tree species. Not on his farm, but on that of his neighbour, a retired farmer, with the help of another neighbour – echoing the traditional Irish practice of helping each other out that is known as “meitheal”. As a wildlife corridor connects flora and fauna, local networks of knowledge and skills spawn opportunities to build resilience. Martino shares the insights of a day’s work. […]

Letter From The Farm | The West of Ireland Never ‘Dewilded’

December 20, 2024 Martino Newcombe

Martino Newcombe runs a small farm in Co. Galway in the west of Ireland. Biodiversity is a central focus of his work. He practices conservation grazing on marshy terrain with Kerry cattle, a hardy ancient Irish dairy breed. In his stewardship of the land he is careful to heed the inherent understanding of deep ecology passed down from previous generations. In this first letter from his farm, Martino explains that you don’t have to be a cow to tell milk from cream. […]

Eleven Member States make last bid to save EU’s nature restoration law – but will it bear fruit?

May 14, 2024 Natasha Foote

A coalition of 11 EU countries have banded together for a last ditch push to save the EU’s nature restoration law – but this is unlikely to move things along before the EU’s June elections, according to sources close to the matter. Natasha Foote brings us the latest on the law. […]

The Case for a Land Observatory in Ireland

May 1, 2024 Daniel Long

Quite quickly, Ireland has seen the kind of land concentration more familiar in other parts of Europe. Various pressures are coming to bare on access to land, including the desires of the very wealthy to build up an asset bank. Daniel Long is a young dairy farmer from south Tipperary, which has seen hugely inflated prices paid by billionaires for land. What impact does this have, including on how young people and their future in farming? Long also outlines the beginnings of a campaign to draw attention to this issue, while making the case for a Land Observatory in Ireland. […]

Sustainable Food Systems | Feeding Ourselves Across Europe

April 24, 2024 Alison Brogan

Local communities in rural and urban areas can be powerful changemakers when it comes to food system transformation, even when national and EU policies fall way short. At Feeding Ourselves 2024, a roundtable on Bottom-Up Approaches to Sustainable Food Systems brought together actors engaged in the development of fair & ecological food systems in Germany, France and Ireland. ARC2020 was joined by Ann-Marie Weber of kollektiv von MORGEN (DE), Henrik Maas of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft bäuerliche Landwirtschaft (DE), Thierry Lohr, elected representative in the Municipality of Plessé (FR), and Fergal Anderson of Talamh Beo (IE). […]

Feeding Ourselves 2024 – A Food Revolution Starts With Seed!

April 16, 2024 Adèle Pautrat

Our Seeds4All project was back in Ireland in March to be part of Feeding Ourselves 2024. We are inheritors of a genetic commons that we have to protect. While working on the ground we need to be vigilant about what is happening at legal level – and work together. In partnership with the Irish Seed Savers Association, Seeds4All brought a European perspective to Cloughjordan, Co. Tipperary. Adèle Pautrat reports. […]

Feeding Ourselves 2024 – Unlocking Local Food Economies

April 4, 2024 Oliver Moore

The Feeding Ourselves gathering 2024 saw a diverse range of people and topics over four days in the Irish midlands. From policy analysis to deep listening, tactile workshops to building bridges the four days were a full spectrum of experiences. Here we summarise Friday, a local food economies experience for activists, enablers and organisers in this area. So what’s needed, and what can be done to help embed and amplify agroecological local food provisioning by communities, for communities? Oliver Moore reports. […]

Feeding Ourselves 2024 – Unpacking Protest, Agroecology and Local Food Economies in Ireland

March 1, 2024 ARC

From March 21st – 24th, Feeding Ourselves is an opportunity for people and organisations working to strengthen local food economies and build a movement for agroecology, food sovereignty and rural resilience to convene and collaborate. […]

Feeding Ourselves 2023 – Building Bridges for Rural Resilience

July 7, 2023 Alison Brogan

ARC2020’s Rural Resilience project explores the possibilities for Europe’s territories to become more resilient from the ground up, so we were keen to visit Ireland in March 2023 to support the Feeding Ourselves gathering in Cloughjordan Ecovillage. Alison Brogan shares the rich learnings for rural infrastructure gleaned from this weekend in the Irish midlands. […]

Letter From The Farm | Restoring Nature, Improving Productivity

June 23, 2023 Shane Casey

We’re back with Shane Casey in The Burren, where it’s been a good Spring. Family and farm are thriving. For Shane, nature conservation and productivity go hand in hand. As the debate rages around the EU Nature Restoration Law, he is sympathetic to the farmers who are being asked to undo a lifetime of ‘improvements’ to make space for nature. […]