Damien's Diary: keeping farming heads held high

Almost 6,000 Irish people have signed up for Veganuary – an international campaign to pursue a plant-based diet for the month of January. It has been running for seven years and this year almost half a million people worldwide have taken the pledge. It’s still a drop in the ocean and 6,000 in Ireland would represent only a middling turnout at a national league GAA match. But when you see the likes of Dublin footballer Paul Mannion declaring he is on a vegan diet in concern for the environment, it is fair to say this plant-based phenomenon is entering new territory. It can no longer be deemed wacky or extreme. When a top inter-county footballer, is serious about it, then it has entered the mainstream.

Around 1% of the population have signed up for Veganuary

Still growing from a tiny base, smart, young middle-class urban 20-somethings are the target market and they are biting. Vegan restaurants are popping up around Dublin and big food companies are now moving into the “free from”, “vegan” and “plant-based” space. Although only around 1% of the population have signed up for Veganuary in addition to possibly around the same amount again here that are already on a vegan diet, there is no doubt but more of us are certainly “flexitarian”, cutting back without cutting out.

Critical weather events like the Australian bush fires inevitably concentrate minds in that regard

The climate emergency has undoubtedly exasperated this. While farmers and environmentalists might bicker over the science and the best way of reducing agricultural emissions, the western world is slowly but surely catching itself on with regards to taking more personal responsibility and that includes on issues regarding waste, energy efficiency, transport and what we eat. Critical weather events like the Australian bush fires inevitably concentrate minds in that regard. And for the vegan movement whose initial modus operandi focused most heavily on animal welfare, its future growth as a philosophy and ideology will be borne out of the climate crises. Veganism – the practice of abstaining from the use of animal products including food, drink and other commodities such as leather and fur – has acquired a bad name with more people preferring to refer to themselves as going “plant based” rather than vegan.

That’s because for some of those evangelising for the rest of us to shift our food-consuming habits, they really need a crash course in diplomacy. I know from whenever we discuss the issue on radio that there is an unseemly and unlikeable underbelly of anger and aggression among a minority who literally – let’s call a spade a spade – detest livestock farming and detest farmers with withering diatribes.

And as a result they detest us for not being like them. They do themselves zero favours. Joey Carbstrong is a vegan activist who appears regularly on British TV. Check him out. He is the face of that uncompromising type of unlikeable vegan. But he has influence among impressionable contemporaries who believe in this anti-farmer abuse.

We should not be shamed or brow beaten by aggressive thugs and anti-farmer zealots

Indeed a line has been crossed in terms of shouting at shoppers in supermarkets and breaking into farms. It is totally counterproductive. There is no doubt more of us will be persuaded into pursuing a more plant-based diet into the future as climate change continues to focus minds and we search to do all we possibly can to slow it down. But we should not be shamed or brow beaten by aggressive thugs and anti-farmer zealots shouting down the rest of us with their confirmation bias and offensive language. And genuine environmental campaigners need to call them out too if we are all meant to be in this together.

Farmers deserve more respect and better prices. But I can tell you one thing for sure, the tractor protest in Dublin last week went down like a lead balloon among the vast majority of an otherwise sympathetic general public with whom farmers are trying to curry support.