A film screening exploring the lives of three Irish farmers and the future of farming, followed by a panel discussion with local farmers and food business owners.
What does the future of Irish farming look like? Who gets to shape it, and how do we make sure there is a future worth handing on?
Irish Farmers: A Love Story, by award-winning filmmaker Haven Worley, is an intimate portrait of three women farming in Ireland: Ailbhe Gerrard of Brookfield Farm in Tipperary, Carina Roseingrave of Burren View Farm in Clare and Sophie Bell in Cavan.
Moving between their farms and their lives, the film looks at farming not simply as food production, but as a relationship with land, community and the generations to come. Against an increasingly mechanised and fast-paced world, it finds resilience, curiosity and beauty in the everyday work of farming.
Following the screening, Applefest brings the conversation firmly home to Tipperary.
Dr Alan Moore of Hedgerows Ireland will chair a panel of farmers and food producers with very different experiences of working with the land: Ailbhe Gerrard, farmer, beekeeper and founder of Brookfield Farm; Daniel Long, Rathkeevan farmer, vice-chair of Tipperary Macra na Feirme and member of the European Commission expert group on the Land Observatory; Jennifer Nickerson, CEO of Tipperary Boutique Distillery; and Alice Devine, chef and organic farmer in South Tipperary.
Together they will tackle some of the difficult questions facing farming now: how family farms remain viable, how we support a new generation of farmers, what meaningful environmental action looks like on working farms, and how the choices we make about food affect the land and the people who care for it.
This is a conversation about farming, but it is not only for farmers. If you eat food, care about the Irish landscape or wonder what kind of countryside we are passing on, you are part of it too.
Haven Worley is a Dublin-based artist and award-winning filmmaker working across documentary and drama. Her work brings ecological and feminist perspectives to intimate, human stories, exploring how everyday lives connect with much larger environmental and social change.
Meet the panel
Alan Moore is secretary of Hedgerows Ireland, a voluntary group dedicated to all aspects of hedgerows in Ireland. The group’s current focus is securing both better protections and better farm payments for these vital green corridors which provide so many agricultural benefits as well as helping address climate and biodiversity challenges. He is a former chair and current member of Suircan Environmental.
Ailbhe Gerrard is a farmer, beekeeper, researcher and agricultural educator, and the founder of Brookfield Farm on the shores of Lough Derg, Co. Tipperary. With postgraduate training in sustainable development and organic farming in the UK, she returned to Ireland to build a regenerative, nature-led farm that combines livestock, bees, woodlands and biodiversity work with public learning and collaboration. Over the past fifteen years she has developed Brookfield as both a working farm and a place of exchange, convening farmers, artists, scientists and communities through the Field Exchange programme to explore practical climate and biodiversity solutions on the ground.
Daniel Long is a part time farmer from Rathkeevan just outside Clonmel and a strong advocate for sustainable family farms. He is vice-chair of Tipp Macra na Feirme and a member of the expert land group to the European Commission on the land observatory.
Jennifer Nickerson is CEO of Tipperary Boutique Distillery, a globally recognised, award-winning brand, using the premium barley from her husband's Liam Ahearne's sixth-generation family farm outside Clonmel to create genuine, field-to-bottle premium, terroir-driven whiskeys that are exported to Europe, Singapore, Japan, and Korea.
Alice Devine is a Ballymaloe trained private chef, now working in the Barbara Russell catering kitchen and the Almanage of Clogheen. Along with her husband JJ Devine, she lives on an organic farm in South Tipperary, working toward a self sufficient farming lifestyle, championing natural farming practices and forming a symbiotic relationship with it. They currently produce vegetables from their kitchen garden, Limousin beef, mountain lamb, wild Venison and apple juice in small, high quality quantities and soon embarking on an Agroforestry plantation scheme.
