irish organic horticulture has been given a major boost with the announcement of a new promotional board.

The membership of Foras Organach, named last week by horticulture minister Trevor Sargent, includes a number of individuals with experience and expertise in fresh produce, at both grower and wholesaler level.

According to the minister, they were chosen “for what they can bring to the task, and I am expecting a lot from them”.

The board’s task over the next three years is to help achieve the minister’s policy target of increasing the amount of Irish farmland given over to organic production to five per cent by 2012. At present, the figure is just over one per cent; the lowest level in Europe.

The new board replaces a national steering committee that drew up an organic action plan, one that had disappointed growers in that it virtually ignored horticulture, concentrating instead on beef, sheep and dairy. “We felt we were being treated as the poor relation,” said Padraig Fahey, who has been nominated to the promotional body. “One of my priorities will be to change that.”

Fahey brings undoubted expertise to the job. With his wife Una, whom he met at college while both were studying for a diploma in organic horticulture, he runs a 14-acre organic farm in Ballinasloe, County Galway, producing a wide variety of fruit and vegetables. He is an executive member of the Organic Growers of Ireland, a body that was recently established to give growers a more effective voice in decisions affecting them.

Fahey said: “Obviously, we are happy that we have been recognised by the minister and given a place on the new board. The problem has been that with an acreage target to be met, the emphasis has been on areas other than horticulture, which operates on a relatively small scale in terms of the land required.”

Like Sargent, he is an enthusiastic supporter - and supplier - of farmers’ markets, describing them as “incubation units” for growers eager to get into the multiples.

Chair of the new board is Noel Groome, who is said by the minister to see “major scope for increased production of organic fruit and vegetables”.

Another board member is Lorcan Bourke, a horticulture development and marketing executive with Irish food board Bord Bia.

The membership also includes representatives of Irish government departments and agencies and of farm organisations and advisory services, as well as soil and environment experts.

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