Notes on Building a Food Culture
Towards a Food Council of Ireland
Food cultures don't happen by mistake. They take planning. They take cooperation. They take foresight, a lot of foresight. Something we seem to lack in Ireland, for a myriad of varied reasons, especially when it comes to a national policy. God forbid we might do something first in Ireland. Why do we always wait for someone else to do it? It’s like we don’t ever want to be first.
Such is our plight.
Famine and colonialism have brought much discountenance to any sense of food as a cultural experience in Ireland. We suffer today to assert ourselves through food. That is not to say we don’t have a lot of food. We are a net exporter of food, that is, we export more food (in terms of value or quantity) than we import. In other words, the total value or volume of the food products that the Ireland sells to other countries exceeds the value or volume of food products it buys from abroad.
In 2023, Ireland exported dairy products valued at approximately €6.42 billion to over 140 countries. Although this represented an 8% decrease from the record €6.8 billion exported in 2022, it still marked a 22% growth compared to 2021. Dairy exports accounted for 38% of Ireland's total agri-food exports in 2023.
Ireland is a significant player in the global beef market, being the largest net exporter of beef in the Northern Hemisphere. In 2021, Ireland exported approximately 451,000 tonnes of beef worth €2.4 billion to around seventy-five countries. Beef exports comprised 60% of the total meat exports, making beef the second most valuable agri-export category after dairy.
In 2022, Irish food and drink exports reached a record high of €16.7 billion, marking a significant increase from previous years. These figures underscore Ireland's strong position as a net exporter of food, with the beef and dairy sectors playing pivotal roles in its export economy. Yet, they belie the fact that all is not well at home when it comes to food. As I wrote previously in this Substack, Ireland has only sixty field famers left in the country growing vegetables.
How can we export so much food and have no food culture at home?
Of course, it’s unfair to say we have no food culture. I, along with many others, have championed the idea of Irish food culture for over the last twenty years. It would be fairer to say that we have no strategy for a food culture. The food culture we have, unlike other countries, is based simply on the food entrepreneurs that make it possible. It has no backing, in terms of funding, from a government to develop or improve itself.
There is currently no government body looking after food as a cultural experience on this island. We have bodies looking after tourism and food (as a commodity and export) but not as something cultural.
Why is this so?
Why can’t we fund food in the way we fund the arts in Ireland? Is this even possible?
It’s interesting to consider the difference between the two sectors in terms of cultural funding. The Arts Council of Ireland (An Chomhairle Ealaíon has a budget of €134 from the government to help fund the arts in Ireland. The Arts Council was established in 1951 by the Irish government. It was set up under the Arts Act of 1951, with the goal of promoting and fostering the arts in Ireland. The driving force behind its creation was the government of the day, led by Éamon de Valera, who saw the importance of supporting Irish cultural life, particularly in the post-independence period.
From the outset, The Arts Council was tasked with:
Supporting artistic creativity across a wide range of disciplines (literature, visual arts, music, theatre, and more).
Preserving and promoting Irish cultural heritage.
Making the arts accessible to all citizens, regardless of socioeconomic background.
Encouraging artistic innovation and expression.
It became a vital institution in shaping Ireland’s cultural landscape, providing funding and resources to artists and arts organizations. Over the decades, it has played a key role in fostering Irish talent and promoting Irish culture internationally. The success of Irish theatre, literature, and film (among many other arts forms) would not have been possible.
Imagine if a food culture had been supported in a comparable manner since the 1950s. Would the world now be speaking about Irish food in the same way that they speak about Irish literature, theatre, and film? How do we imagine people being talking about Spanish, Italian and Nordic food? It is not simply chance.
As someone who has run food festivals (Galway Food Festival, Blas na Gaillimhe) and a food symposium (Food on the Edge), I can only imagine how different the cultural landscape of Ireland would be if it were funded adequately. I say adequately because it is not that food festivals receive no governmental funding through their local councils.
But the amount of funding for food is minuscule in terms of equivalent funding for the arts. In my experience, funding for food events hovers around the €10,000-€50,000 on a local and national level, depending what county you are based in. If we can fund an opera festival in Wexford to the tune of €1,950,300, surely, we can fund food events in an equivalent manner?1
What is stopping us from doing this?
Am I completely wrong in my thinking?
Should food be treated as a cultural thing or should we leave it as a commodity, to be bought and sold. Yet, surely treating it as a commodity has brought us to this point and we need another way, a third way of thinking about food.
Is it any wonder why food is devoid of cultural substance on a national level? The body responsible for regulating food in Ireland is The Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI). Their remit covers food safety and hygiene, not culture or quality.
Is considering food as something cultural elitist? If so, should we take the same stance around opera and cease funding it? The Dublin based Irish National Opera received €5,501,130 from the Arts Council.2
Given the funding for the arts in Ireland by the Arts Council, is it not a pity we don't have a food council to support food in Ireland as a cultural experience? Why is food the poor partner to the arts in the cultural sphere? Is this a historical phenomenon?
Food has never traditionally been considered an art in the ‘classical’ sense of the arts—such as painting, sculpture, music, literature, theatre, or opera—due to historical, cultural, and philosophical distinctions. These distinctions are rooted in how art has been defined, valued, and categorized throughout history, especially in the Western world.
Food has principally served a functional, biological purpose, that is, to give nourishment. Classical art, in contrast, is typically seen as existing for its own sake and meant to evoke emotional, intellectual, or aesthetic responses. During the Enlightenment, art was increasingly associated with intellectual and cultural refinement, further separating it from crafts and practical skills, like cooking and food production.
While culinary creativity has long existed, its recognition as a form of artistry has been recent. Chefs and food creators have only recently been celebrated in a manner like artists, thanks to movements like haute cuisine and food as performance art. In contemporary culture, food is increasingly seen as a creative and artistic medium, with culinary artistry recognized in food presentation, gastronomy, and even storytelling through food.
However, in terms of its funding, food has still not ascended to the level of art. If a food event happens in a gallery or theatre, it can receive funding from the Arts Council. However, it if happens in a restaurant or a field, it can’t.
We cannot expect to be become a food island if we invest nothing into this space. If we continue to follow the same path, we will only ever be a nation of food production, not consumption (in the cultural sense).
In 2003, a Taste Council of Ireland was established to empower and enable the Irish speciality food sector to maximize its contribution to Ireland's economy, environment, culture, and society.
Over the years, the Taste Council has been instrumental in various initiatives, including:
National Food Symposium: Hosting events to discuss the artisan and speciality food sector's role in the Irish economy
Food Summer School: Collaborating with Bord Bia to explore the potential of the artisan food sector.
Educational Programs: Launching ‘The Future is Food’ initiative to engage Transition Year students with Ireland’s artisan food industry.
However, current information about the Taste Council's activities is limited. The most recent publicly available data dates to 2015, detailing their involvement in the Food Summer School. There is no current information indicating whether the Taste Council is still active or has been dissolved.
Is it time to establish a Food Council of Ireland? A government body with funding to support the development of the cultural, communal, and educational aspect of food.
I believe so.
In recent decades, perspectives on food as art and culture have evolved, with chefs like Ferran Adrià, Massimo Bottura, Anan Roš, and Dominique Crenn, as well as programs like Chefs Table (2015-present) on Netflix, celebrated for elevating cuisine to a form of artistic expression. Movements like molecular gastronomy and the Nordic food movement, as well the growing cultural significance of food in storytelling, media, and philosophy have blurred the lines between food and art. Food as ‘art’ has been represented in galleries and Biennales. Yet, this has not led to any increase in the funding for food in terms of a cultural and communal activity.
Where do we go next?
A Food Council of Ireland might:
Fund festivals that highlight the cultural, communal, and educational aspects of food
Preserve and promote Irish food heritage.
Make the cultural aspects of food both Irish food and food in Ireland accessible to all citizens, regardless of socioeconomic background.
Embed food education in primary and secondary schools
Establish connections between food and the other arts (such as Theatre, Film, Literature, etc.)
Fund cross-disciplinary activities between different fields, such as Food and Theatre, Food and Visual Art, Food and Cinema, etc.
While food has not historically been included in the arts, around the world it is increasingly being recognized as a unique and complex form of artistic and cultural expression.
It is time for Ireland to act.
Best, Jp.
I love the Arts in Ireland, and they deserve everything they get. I am just advocating for a similar funding for food events that highlight our food culture the island of Ireland.
This is not an argument against the funding of Opera in Ireland. Just in the way that we categorise and fund various aspects of society.
Is it not the case that we have many organisations promoting, safe guarding, supporting and educating us on all things, food? Is it a lack of joined-up thinking? Everyone operating in silos? Sounds like a simple budgeting issue to me in that an allocation has not been made for the objectives you set out with none of the existing organisations given the role and responsibility to be accountable for and implement them. Food culture encapsulates so much that I'm not sure any one organisation could do it justice! As you've pointed out there are major gaps in funding. Maybe an agreed definition of 'food culture' should be at the center of the guiding principles that govern these organisations.
I fully support every point you make here. Successive governments have been reactionary to events instead of having a strategic outlook, it always baffles me as to why since the foundation of the state ( a late foundation for obvious reasons and a serious endeavor) we haven’t looked to other countries and learned from them and then put a strategy in place. The fact that there are so few farmers like you mentioned is a stark point that needs to be decried to our Politicians. I live in the Countryside where I am lucky to know where my meat, dairy and vegetables come from( down the road in lots of cases). It is always remarked upon by friends from other Countries on how think our Milk and beef are the best in the world and we should be prouder of that and more protective of it.