We travelled 9-5 by train and ferry, using Sailrail tickets (www.sailrail.co.uk), following the sunset across the Irish sea. From the Ferryport to the centre, then walking across the river Liffey to our apartment, the city lights came on all around us, illuminating monuments and spires galore, and tingeing the under-arches of old brick bridges lime green. Such excitement checking into the rooms! Then back out onto Temple Bar for food. Everyone else had chosen to fly, and since their planes had been delayed we didn't meet up until the morning, heads hesitantly peering round bedroom doors.

FRIDAY 8AM

Our guide for the weekend was Pauric Cannon, the co-op's secretary and founder member. He led us to Stoneybatter for breakfast. Natasha's Living Foods had prepared a totally raw menu and it was so innovative and astonishingly delightful! Sprouted flaxseed tortilla chips to dip in sprouted chickpea hummus, a chocolate orange ganache on a crushed nut base, all spread out under a gazebo on a cheery street corner. This particular street is home to the Sitric Community Compost Garden, where residents regularly put on open air parties and picnics to complement their neighbourhood gardening efforts. Kaethe Burt-O'Dea initiated the collectivisation of the triangular piece of derelict ground in the cause of composting (in her Canadian accent she pronounces it com-POST-ing), because Dublin has no domestic green waste collection service. Compost bins were installed in the tiny space and soon produced rich humus, which they are now growing brassicas, salads, herbs and other edibles in. There is also a pond and the raised beds are made from discarded airbricks and pallets. The miniature garden provides a focal point for the people living on surrounding roads, resulting in increased recognition and communication, trust,  tighter social bonds and a heightened sense of common ownership. A fellow resident approached during her presentation and told us of the legendary street parties thrown since the garden's creation, where everyone brings food and decorates and dances. Our hot beverages were paid for in 'Sitric Sense' - local currency printed on  coloured slips valid for use in the nearby Lilliput Stores. Such an initiative is also in place in Totnes, Devon, through their Transition Town initiative. Whilst standing and scoffing, it gradually dawned on me that the impressiveness of it all was due to the relation between the project's almost negligible physical size and it’s obvious success in terms of persons coming into contact with it - like something being chopped up small, it had greater surface area. This confirmed my previous thoughts on how best to work effectively towards sustainable, decentralized and self-reliant communities. 'Think Global, Act Local' and 'A small group of committed citizens…'etc. In Ipswich similar initiatives have sprung up: the Community Woodland group managing the wooded bank inbetween Suffolk College and Alexandra Park, the Maidenhall Community Allotment project, and the Wildlife Group whose volunteers maintain the coppice at Spring Wood.  

FRIDAY 10AM

Walking downhill to the rhythm of Pauric's urban histories - including the supposed door of the tallest man in Ireland, coincidentally enough  next to that of the shortest - we recrossed the river heading south towards the Dublin Food Coop (DFC) itself. (www.dublinfoodcoop.com) Like us, they spend Fridays receiving deliveries and setting up, and our programme included an indepth look at their whole operation. For the last year the Food Coop has rented it's own premises in an area outside the city centre, after many years selling products out of a school. They occupy a warehouse unit separated into a few meeting rooms, an office, and a ‘shop’ space which is quite vast. Members can place Personal Orders and only pay 15% markup on these as an incentive to buy in bulk and split with friends. The entire sales and ordering system is computerized with two laptops acting as tills at a cashdesk, which also displays out of date and low-selling product offers. Their sales markup is flat-rate 40% to cover rent and employment of two people; an Administrator for phone enquiries weekdays 10-1pm; all accounting and invoicing, and an Operations Manager who orders stock. There are five teams of volunteers on a five week rota system, who do all work with the Op’s Manager; stocktaking once a month and bagging/ pricing up items (they have a proper shop till for barcodes with prices of items on labels on the shelves for customers). Dublin Food Coop is a registered Industrial and Provident Society. Each member votes and owns a share in the business, and has the right to attend the AGM. They elect a chair and Coordinating Body (CB) to make decisions on the everyday running, on a two-yearly learn-then-teach basis. There are several founder members - greyhairs now! - still involved to a high degree, but none on the CB. These guys were particularly heartened to hear from us and about Ripple Food Coop, in that we're veggie and run on volunteer power, out of premises not our own, 'cause that's their story too. They were unsure how happy they are in DFC's current incarnation, saying it feels too supermarket-y, and not in keeping with the original aims. For example, there was a vociferous struggle to maintain the vegan principle; with one bemusing comment being; 'the eggs just appeared one day'. D

 Upon entering the shopping hall you are confronted by long shelves of fresh, local Irish produce. Whilst they come from three different growers the same varieties of produce were displayed on each stall, which I thought could be controlled better. The layout was very convenience-store; the aisles and baskets, the amount of packets of goods in small quantities (the DFC re-bags many items under its own label) and in a massive range, like about forty different types of pasta. It seemed your regular overwhelming consumerist experience; being bombarded with superfluous choice, and that felt like a betrayal of ethics. You got the idea that the 'ready-to-eat' stalls that producer members run were just businesses needing to make ends meet by holding their stalls at another venue, and they weren't that interested in being part of a co-op. The lady on the bakery stall expressed a certain skepticism and lack of faith in the running of it in co-op fashion, but was then hasty to let me know she was in favour, just unsure. The prepared food stall were all mouth-wateringly tempting, but some did actively try to get you to buy meals and snacks, and a lot was expensive. I was inveigled into paying nine euros (seven pounds) for a plate of curry and rice which wasn't as great as it should have been. Also there were stalls selling craft and textiles. The Amnesty Freedom Café is a sub-letting service: the group had recently lost it's own shopfront in town and DFC had invited them to run out of their space. Their cooked food is  reasonably priced and good quality, not the bog-standard. Supplementing their café income, they sell books, CDs, campaign resources at the back - this area felt a bit crowded. I thought the focus was wrongly on the sellers and the prepared food, occupying the main space with lots of room, whereas the wholefood staples were down a ramp in the smaller side room. This affronted me! As though these items were an unfortunate embarrassment; not glamorous enough. This leads to a misconception of the co-op for passers-by with no knowledge of it's principles and ethics; appearing a normal shop trying to dazzle customers with range and novelty. Dedicated info- and joining- desks lined the entrance hall, and I think this is something we should consider putting into practice - outside on the car-park or street - as the till-person currently does all the work and it's hard to grab members of the public entering for the first time, they can stroll in and be confused by how we work and what we are. We may be losing these potential recruits, or they aren't properly 'schpiel'ed. DFC volunteers we met were all very enthusiastic and politicized, part of wider networks for social change, and had heated strategic discussion at the lunch, over soup. One of them was Anto Loserdom who writes this zine about cycling and punk! www.loserdomzine.com/index.htm

FRIDAY 1PM

Near Stephens Green we were presented with a banquet in the Feasta building. The multi-storey Georgian house is the office for many environmental NGOs and Feasta is the Foundation for Sustainable Economics. (www.feasta.org) Bruce Darrell delivered a talk on food security; (http://www.feasta.org/events/general/2008_seminars.htm) and then opened up the discussion to the room. It got very intense, interruptions and raised voices, and we three came out feeling frustrated and as if the necessarily radical solutions to the issue had been ignored (if even acknowledged) in place of a money-oriented mindset. The other exchange participants had a viewpoint resistant to the urgency of the global situation,  and were obviously from backgrounds that had no connection with the UK's activist or anti- apitalist scene. For example, the discussion revolved around expense and monetary barriers to healthy food, and the unspoken premise was that organics were by necessity a middle class phenomenon that the 'poorer elements' of society didn't prioritise or afford, or have any interest in. Thankfully Bruce brought up how organics have been a victim of consumerist corporate markets - as every consumable is - and explained how the high price currently is due to systematic discrimination. If 'conventional' producers had to by law label items with each pesticide used and the oil-based inputs required, whilst organic items were treated as the default and didn't need classification, the onus of explanation would be on the least desirable production method and the price differential would even out, if not reverse. A jaw-dropping remark - horrifying in it's connotations - from a PCT-led food access officer; 'But do we have the technology to deal with all the human waste [excrement] of a city and process it to make compost?' As if peeing in the bushes isn't enough technology?! Is this how alienated the majority of the population is from it's biological and natural processes? We were all impressed by the level of logical analysis Bruce applied to the subject and how progressive his research outcomes were. When he described the aims of Dublin Food Growing (dublinfoodgrowing.blogspot.com ) it boiled down to A) getting as many city residents growing and as much urban land in production as possible in order to B) cater for all the fruit and veg demand of the population from within the city, and C) keep all the green and bodily waste within the city for use as compost for future growing, This would address the detrimental leaching of phosphate from the food system, maintaining a closed input-output loop. Wow! How succinct and realizable! (http://foodurbanism.blogspot.com)  

FRIDAY 3PM

Tour of Cultivate Co-op in Temple Bar (www.cultivate.ie) - a CAT-style shop full of eco-home products and learning and awareness-spreading resources coupled with office facility upstairs, a permaculture urban demonstration garden outside, and a chamber for conferences and exhibitions. In the latter we sat to hear about the Cloughjordan eco-village (www.thevillage.ie) being erected in County Tipperary and a ten-part Community TV series the group got funding from the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland to produce, called The Powerdown Show, on the challenges of peak oil and climate chaos. They outline how we can adapt our lives to slow their negative impacts or endure them. Everyone was completely info-exhausted by this point, and could only clap in admiration for their energy and determination. We three slunk away to Cornucopia, a vegetarian café/ restaurant off Grafton St with lovely friendly waiters and delicious grub. (www.cornucopia.ie)

SATURDAY AM

Shopping at DFC during opening hours 9:30 - 4:30. When we’d had our fill, a forum in the meeting room wherein the exchange group introduced their projects. For us, this turned into a bit of a grilling by the other visitors and DFC members! I guess it's 'cause we were the only established consumer coop there of the voluntary type, others being fledgling or more government sponsored, or operating outreach schemes. Other exchange participants: Holbeck Food Entreprise - Chelsea Theatre Food Co-op - The FoodChain Northeast - Holly Lodge Community Food Co-op - Fieldway Food Co-op - Crowhurst Community Supported Agriculture Kathe came back to present a slideshow of scientific excursions into urban crop production and natural waste management. Apparently, if a city can convert all its available roof space into growing vegetables and fruit, that's 5% of it's ground cover, it can photosynthesise away it's total carbon emissions.

SATURDAY PM

After that, another crocodile trail to the South Circular Community Garden at Dolphins Barn, which has quite a patchwork past at different sites. (southcirculargarden.blogspot.com) The project had less of a dynamic feel to it than Sitric but the work involved had been backbreaking - removing a surface of car-park grit from the area. And it was situated on a less intimate corner. The project relies on very few people to keep momentum and this has been a drawback in terms of consistency. Plants had been donated at established growth stages enabling the gardeners to have a harvest in their first summer on the new site. Their previous home was a bank of the nearby canal, which had been a derelict eyesore until they planted hazel and apple trees there, sourced from the Burren in Galway to symbolize hope. The Burren is a man-made stone desert, a casualty of intensive agriculture centuries ago. Before planting the trees were paraded through the city streets! The guerila gardeners are steadily building up community support again, which had faltered during their landless stage. We were offered the vegetables still available in the garden to take home and cook with - nasturtiums, herbs, spinach, which Ida turned into an Italian trattoria masterpiece. For our final night; out to the Porterhouse for some quality small-brewery additive-free beer, and then bedtime for sleepy foodies. Fond farewells and the boat home the next day.