Mick Kelly is a man on a mission

Perhaps you’ve seen him on social media. Maybe you’ve bumped into him in his lovely GIY Café. Soon, he will grace your TV screens in a series for RTÉ. Chances are, you know of Mick Kelly. Mick is on a mission to take down the global food production industry single-handedly. And he’s getting closer every day.

The phrase "build it and they will come" comes to mind when you meet Mick. He’s not one to wallow in despair. He had a problem with the way food was grown so he started his own enterprise to educate people about sustainable food practices. He realised that a café and education centre wasn’t enough, people needed year-long access to fresh vegetables so he leased the largest walled garden in Ireland.

Mick sat down with the Waterford News & Star to tell us all about what he's getting up to. 

As soon as Mick saw the walled garden in Curraghmore, he had to have it.

“It was like walking into the secret garden.” 

Curraghmore’s walled garden hadn’t been used in forty years, renovating it completely will take a lot of time…and money. 

In its heyday it would have fed about 400-500 people. There were 50 gardeners employed. It was a place of innovation; they grew pineapples there in the late 1800s. Now, it's back to basics, which is innovative in itself. Seasonal, organic food that’s not wrapped in plastic or costs an arm and a leg.

In the last five years, Mick has noticed that the seasons are changing.

“Extreme weather events are more common. We’ve had droughts three in the last five years in the summer, which you never really had in Ireland before. And now we have the extreme rain at the moment.”

All this makes it very difficult for growers in Ireland. 

According to Mick, in 2000, there were 500 field-scale vegetable growers in Ireland, now there are just 74.

“The Irish vegetable sector is collapsing in front of our eyes. Part of that is climate change. The main reason is aggressive price promotions on vegetables.” 

Although it might seem like the price of everything is only going up, according to Mick, the price of vegetables has actually plummeted in the past 25 years.

“We’re lucky because we have a lot of strings to our bow, but if you’re a guy producing broccoli or tomatoes for supermarkets, it's disastrous." 

We’re going to turn around in five years' time and there’ll be no Irish veg in the supermarkets.” 

According to Mick, there’s 60-70% less nutrients in the same vegetables than from the 1960s. He pointed to the increased use of pesticides in farming.

“Not only are the chemicals bad for us but they also mean that the food itself is less nutritious.”

When asked whether he felt any hope for the situation, Mick initially responded with a profanity not fit for print – with all he’s facing, I get it. But then he gave a more measured response.

He said: “I think it's going to get worse before it gets better. The food system is broken. It needs to be torn apart and put back together again. The only bright spot are the little clusters of very small local farms where they can feed 100 families. 7-10 acres of land feeding a hundred families with organic regenerative food. That’s the future.”

“A lot of people are waking up to the fact that supermarket food is not terribly tasty and the reason for that is that it's often shipped from the other side of the world and it has spent three months in the back of a container ship.”

Grow’s new project is hoping to change this system. Weekly ‘veg boxes’ are now available and can be collected from GIY Headquarters or delivered to your home.

“We’re harvesting here in the morning and it's for sale in the afternoon.”

Each box is around €25 and feeds a family of four and contains seven to eight different types of seasonal vegetables.

Mick said: “It's really important to us that people have access to really nutrient-rich food that’s grown in living soil.

“The soil out there is off the charts. It's unbelievable.

“That’s the way it was for years. People used farmyard manure and compost to replace the nutrients they used to grow their food.

“The soil is so healthy, our only job is to not fuck it up basically.

“If you’re thinking about making your euro go further, spending it on nutrient-rich food is the way to go. You can pay the farmer or the pharmacist.”