Cloughjordan Community Farm:

Rural topic(s): Local food Chains

Type: Success story

Date of writing: December 14, 2021

Text:

Cloughjordan Community farm (CCF) is a member owned and operated agroecological farm in the Irish midlands, and the location for this event’s digital broadcast. The community enterprise centre in Cloughjordan ecovillage is developing a digital studio, and it is from here that the event was hosted. The 67 acre ecovillage also contains the 6 acres of horticulture land the farm manages, as well as an ecosystem of other interesting initiatives, including a fab lab, bakery, edible landscape, allotments, district heating system, forestry, co-working spaces and sustainably built accommodation., among other assets.

CCF is “practicing food sovereignty” as Davie and Ollie said, because it’s a work in progress. This means having 1/3 of the land in green manures for soil fertility and biodiversity purposes; it means composted farmyard manure; it means a range of other agroecological techniques from rotations to bacterial inoculations to integrating a range of long term funded internships via the ESC (European Solidarity Core).

It especially means seed saving open pollinated seeds that are regionally adapted to the soil and climate. But it also means participatory budgeting and a take-what-you-need distribution ethos (as opposed to a box scheme with set amounts of food).

Comments:

Extract from ARC2020’s article: www.arc2020.eu/regional-rural-responses-reimagined/

« Local Food – Reimagining Regional Responses was about sharing the ideas of innovative communities that are experimenting with ways to shorten, amplify and democratise food supply chains with a view to exploring how such approaches might be replicated, scaled up and scaled across.

Pioneering initiatives, impressive in size and ambition, ethos and impact joined us: Peri-urban Oosterwold, DESIRA, the Redon Sustainable Food Consortium, La Ceinture Aliment-Terre Liégeoise and Cloughjordan Community Farm. Equally noteworthy were the 100+ participants who tuned in generously to share knowledge, inspiration and food for thought, continuing the quest to re-imagine our regional responses for a better food system. »

Notes:

Cloughjordan Ecovillage: www.thevillage.ie

Informations:

Scale of intervention : Local

Keywords: community supported agriculture - CSA

Places: Ireland