Farmers need to take control of the land, collaborate with butchers, chefs, and independent retailers and get more money for the ingredients they produce, according to Anthony O’Toole.
O’Toole is a specialist in local food and drink, and founder of Fat Tomato, an edible garden and kitchen food brand and edible garden honesty farm shop at Carrig Rua hill in north Co. Wexford, which has just launched its online store.
“I spend my time working on many projects that are linked to getting chefs, farmers and producers to collaborate and cut out the middle man.
“The food supply chain has become complicated with so many errors. Look at the recent tomato scandal in Italy in the news,” said O’Toole who is also a chef and writer.
“As consumers, we have put too much trust in supermarkets and big pharma companies producing food. As Slow Food always says: ‘They are giants, but we are millions,'” he said.
O’Tootle believes that “consumers want to support and buy locally, especially with climate change, but food has become too confusing for people.
“A chicken is not a chicken anymore. We have chicken that is masked as chicken, with very few eating food quality nutrient-dense chicken at all.
“There are lots of great farms out there adding value to their farms by selling directly to customers or working with a handful of producers and chefs who use their ingredients and become advocates for the work they do on the farms,” he acknowledged.
The Wexford man always been interested in where food and drink came from, having grown up reading food, gardening and cookery books and watching food programmes:
“I am the eldest grandchild on both sides, so I spent a lot of time on my grandparents’ farm and smallholding.
“My grandparents used to produce some of their food. My dad’s parents had a smallholding and grew potatoes, rhubarb, soft fruit and reared pigs and sheep, while my mum’s parents were dairy farmers and raised some poultry for the table.
“We lived in London when I was young. My parents had to leave Ireland in the early 1990s as my dad is a contractor and had to look for work in England as there was none in Ireland.
“I remember coming back on the boat for the summer and spending time on my mum’s family dairy farm, helping my granny – we all call her Betty – my grandad who loved sprinkling sugar on his buttered brown bread, and my uncle, who drinks tea as thick as treacle.
“I’ve fond memories of working on the farm, milking the cows, making soda bread, foraging wild berries for the yearly hedgerow jelly and plucking turkeys for the winter table.
“When we returned home after 9 years in London, my parents kept sheep and rescue horses. We shopped at the local butcher and grocer in Camolin, where we had tabs running so we, as kids, could pick up dinner on the way home from school,” he said.
According to O’Toole, all of this “is now lost with so many supermarkets taking life away from towns although there is a food store in Camolin, just a few doors down from Christy Byrne butchers”.
Driven by curiosity, biodiversity, and flavour, O’Toole draws inspiration from his edible garden, now home to over 500 varieties of organic heritage seeds and plants.
Open all year-round, seven days a week, his edible garden honesty farm shop stocks fresh heritage herbs, fruit and vegetables, rainbow eggs, potted plants, and bottled and jarred flavours.
The shop also showcases hand-picked produce and local crafts from like-minded artisans. The focus is on growing for flavour rather than yield.
“To preserve the authentic flavours of my garden, I use my homemade apple cider vinegar, organic raw cane sugar, local raw honey, organic spices, and citrus fruit sourced directly from growers in Sicily, Italy, and Spain through the CrowdFarming platform,” he said.
O’Toole has big plans for the future. He started the garden at the back of his parents’ home with a bigger vision from the start – to begin again.
“It will be a new place for living, a smallholding, a home for sharing, a garden and workshop where chefs, farmers, writers, and other creatives can escape, hide, breathe, energise, and get time to dream and most importantly, grow, cook, and eat.
“It will be an edible forest of new and old Irish flavours, where you never know who you might meet, what you might taste, or what might happen, adding an element of excitement to your stay,” he said.
One of Ireland’s food ambassadors, he co-founded the Taste Wexford food tourism network and the worldwide #thisisirishfood campaign designed to celebrate Irish food and the people and places who make it.
He is a member of the Guild of Sommeliers in Ireland, the International Association of Culinary Professionals, the United Nations Chefs’ Manifesto community, and the World Food Travel Association.
O’Toole is the outgoing head of the Food Council for Euro-Toques Ireland (2018-2023), a network established by leading culinary figures in Europe in 1986 to help protect and promote small food and drink producers and bridge the connection between chefs and producers.
He is also a member of the Seed Sovereignty UK and Ireland programme and a supporter of Irish Seed Savers and Brown Envelope Seeds.
Fat Tomato products are available through the online shop, the honesty farm shop, and shortly can be bought at select small independent stores.