It seems we had lost the run of ourselves

This week’s Mediauis Irish regional newspapers’ column.

Michael Commane

The bogs are back in the news. Just before Easter Tánaiste Leo Varadkar said that proposals about cutting turf could be paused, which  caused something of a hullabaloo. Some people were saying you could cut your own turf for use, maybe give some to a neighbour but it seems the commercial distribution of turf is now for the history books. 

I began to get interested when they started talking about turbary rights. I never heard of the word until I discovered I had turbary rights on an acre of bog in West Kerry. At the time I thought it would be easier to buy oil from the Arabs than to organise the cutting and transporting of turf from the side of the mountain. These days I have to admit I’m having second thoughts with how expensive oil has become.

In summer 1999 I went to the bog with friends and filled a trailer load of turf. My elderly father stacked it into the shed. 

Modern science has discovered that burning turf is not a good idea and similarly denuding our bogs is damaging our environment. I leave such matters to the experts and am guided by what they say.

But the current turf furore did set my mind wandering back into my childhood. I spent idyllic holidays on my maternal granduncle’s farm on the Tipperary-Kilkenny border. I can still remember going out in the evening and picking wild hazelnuts.

These days when I buy them in a supermarket they are perfectly manicured and I have no idea whatsoever of their provenance. They may have travelled on a gigantic oil-guzzling cargo ship half way round the world. I wonder is there anyone picking wild hazelnuts anywhere in Ireland today?

And it’s the same with so much of the food we eat. When we bought cheese the shop assistant would cut it from a large block, weigh it and then wrap it in greaseproof paper. The eggs we bought were marked with the hen’s individual stamp, and I’m not talking about the sell-by-date.

The milk was neither homogenised nor pasteurised.

I’m not for a moment saying that we should return to those ways. Life always involves change and again we have learned from science the importance of food hygiene. Modern technology, as with all aspects of our lives, has revolutionised agriculture.

And the proof of the pudding is in the eating as life expectancy is higher today than it was when we were drinking unpasteurised milk.  Hygiene, health and life expectancy go hand in hand.

But in our rush for efficiency, financial gain and development have we lost the run of ourselves?

Does it really make sense to import products from thousands of kilometres away when we could produce them here ourselves?

The looming advance of climate change and the war in Ukraine have shocked us into realising that quenching insatiable appetites comes at a price and sometimes the price is too high. 

I’m reminded of that seldom heard idiom today, ‘cutting your cloth to suit your measure’.