The true cost of cheap food : Kenneth Keavey, Green Earth Organics

You picture a farmer, me, going out into the field, spraying the crops with a chemical, and I do that to stop all the little creatures from eating the food, and then I harvest the food and bring it into my kitchen, and I consume it myself.

And where is the sanity in that, you know?

Yeah.

It's not something that makes a whole pile of sense.

Kenneth is a Cambridge-trained chemist who, more than 20 years ago, made the life-changing decision to leave his career in science and return home to take over his family's farm in Galway.

Together with his wife, Jenny, they founded Green Earth Organics, an organic enterprise that today employs 45 people and delivers fresh produce to homes all over Ireland.

In this conversation, we explore the true cost of cheap food, what organic really means, and how our relationship with food has changed over the years.

But more than anything, this is a conversation about becoming more aware, about asking questions, understanding where our food actually comes from, and I think it's gonna leave you looking at your next food shop that bit differently.

Last Friday on your Instagram page, you decided to record a video and post it, and it was re-shared by, I mean, I don't know how many people it was re-shared by, but certainly a lot of people that I follow.

I was seeing that video appear again and again and again, which was wonderful because Green Earth Organics is a page that I've followed for years.

I mean, I, I don't know when exactly.

Was it pre-COVID or during COVID? But it's been many years now since I've been following your page.

Huge supporter of-

Thank you

... of you, the farm, the work that you do.

And when you came on and you were so vulnerable in your share, I found it very moving, but the response from people to it was equally moving.

Yeah, I, I think it was a very difficult thing to do.

As you say there, you're kind of exposing yourself to kind of a situation where it's not a situation you want to be in.

It's not how you want to be, I suppose.

But I think the remarkable thing that came out of all of that was, and I think the Irish people are very good at that, is when, you know, the level of support and the level of compassion that people demonstrated, I think, because I guess, you know, you see it when somebody's in trouble or whatever, and you don't really wanna be admitting that type of thing, then people are very good at responding to that, and the response was huge.

Mm-hmm.

And so I think that demonstrates that, you know, trying to be, you know, authentic or trying to say, like, this is a, you know, a serious situation, or whatever the situation may be, and I suppose we, we just felt, or I felt at the time, that, yeah, it seems like the right thing to do, at the time anyway, you know? And it just felt difficult to do it, but nevertheless, I think, yeah, we've just been blown away, over-

By the response

...whelmed by the response of people.

Yeah.