Organic Company Pictures

Planorganic.com

About/Pictures
Photo Gallery the boat, the Bay, Beara, bogs and beet. Oh and a sunset, and ………..
Poetry and stories There are my poems, and then there are some by a really good poet, Patricia Cantwell.
Slievenamon (the Mountain of the Women) and how my article on Tipperary’s most famous upland helped solve a looming environmental threat at the time
The Presidential Papers After many requests, finally, here is the unexpurgated account of my solo run for the Irish Presidency in 1997. I didn’t get the job.
This website is owned and staffed solely by;
Jim O’Connor

Hungry Hill

Sandmount

Castletown Berehaven

Beara Peninsula

Co. Cork

Ireland.
Tel. 00 353 27 70717 (within Ireland, 027 70 71 7)

Mobile 086 0643008
First newspaper article about the website – Seeds of great idea grow on fertile website
Why another organic food website?

Having used the Web extensively for research into alternative agriculture and food, I felt that a guide to the better sources would be of considerable use. The collection and selection of other types of information e.g. recommended publications, articles etc, together with a relatively independent, strong viewpoint would also add to the quality of resources on the subjects.
What I do that’s different.

In some ways planorganic.com is similar to other sites but I feel the mix of information and comment on the site is different and should prove interesting, informative and stimulating to visitors. For one thing, I believe that my selected weekly news and interpretation is unique. My ambition is to contribute instead of duplicate; to critically comment rather than acquiesce in any party line. There are many good sites on, or related to, organic food production on the Web and I recommend the best of them in Links page. Sites doing a good job already, e.g. www.organicts.com, as a news provider (mainly), and www.ngin.org.uk as an anti-GM information site, I unashamedly promote rather than compete with.
No Slave to Organic

Also, although I am strenuously for alternatives to industrialised agriculture and decidedly in favour of natural food production, I do not take an automatic, pro-organic line. Indeed I have many criticisms of the organic movement. I represent, from within the general movement towards agricultural change, an independent, un-affiliated position with a distinctive emphasis. I believe the safety and quality of our food is, or should be, of paramount importance, the Issue of the Age – a basic human right. Its accessibility, especially through prices and value, is just as important. Wherever any agricultural system falls short of these ideals, organic or otherwise, I’ll hopefully be there to criticise and comment.
My Ideal

My ideal would be to see farmers change to natural food production methods because it’s the right thing to do, for themselves, their families and the wider community.

Farmers markets and direct selling from farm to consumer is probably where the ethical future lies but in the meantime the priority, as I see it, should be to get as much clean produce out there in the market-place as soon as possible and at the lowest possible cost..

My model would be Frank Newman Turner’s, “fertility farming” methods of the ’40s and 50′s which, I believe, promise the best solution to our food problems – cheap healthy food from profitable sustainable agriculture with minimum regulatory inputs from govt. and other bodies. There are many references in this site to his methods and publications. His books, are still available through an American site,

http://home.earthlink.net/~brateaver/books/index.htm

The views of Prof. Jules Pretty (University of Exeter) are ones that I am very much in sympathy with. His most recent book is Agri-Culture: Reconnecting People, Land and Nature. See Publications page for more.
Why the name “planorganic.com”?

That agriculture is in major need of reform is now beyond question. Drastic action is needed to effect this change, quickly, in line with consumers’ demands. “Action plans” to accelerate this change are being discussed universally e.g. in Denmark, Germany, Austria and the UK. The imperative tone of the phrase “Plan Organic”, given the magnitude of the problems and their health and life-threatening aspects is, I feel, an appropriate one.

The site is very much a project-in-development and I hope to evolve quickly in response to your feed-back, and as more resources become available.

I’m well aware that the site design and content are a bit raw and that there have been some problems (now largely resolved) with our server. I’m very new to all this, particularly the web-techie stuff. The design, a MS “theme” ( a nightmare apparently to some designers and servers) was practically an accident, that for simplicity’s sake, I decided to run with for the time being. My means are slim and I have to juggle the very different needs of my “beyond-organic” gardening, a life, building a house/shelter and the website.

But I’m learning as I go and I take encouragement from the support – from Texas to Thailand to Termonfecken – and suggestions that keep pouring in.

It is gratifying to find that I’m meeting a strong need, as the volume of hits, over 150,000 per month, March 2004, indicates. I still haven’t presented the site to many search engines but I have enlisted with www.google.com who give the site an exceptionally high rating in many organic categories. A large number of new visitors come via Google. I haven’t given much attention yet to marketing but I’ve more than enough to do at present dealing with the correspondence already generated and on-going site maintenance and content creation.

There’s a new design coming along in 2004 which will have a few necessary bells and whistles, like a better search facility, improved scrolling and archiving and more graphics. This will give me extra confidence to broadcast the site more widely.

I started well; I was first in the world with the report on the Danish Organic Conference in May 2001 – without attending! – which was taken up by many news’ agencies.

I’ve had several firsts again since then, and that was all very nice and exciting. But it’s not the main purpose of the site, about which, I have to keep reminding myself.

The Mission Statement, as they grandiosely call this type of thing on the Web, my motto, slogan, whatever, is:

Somebody offered me a job recently; this was my reply.

The fundamental reason for doing my website is to help push the organic/sustainable farming movement along as much as possible. I feel that the structure I am arriving at suits fairly well my ambition and my abilities to further this ideal.

To be honest, I would regard myself as being fairly unemployable in normal circumstances; even in the areas of environmental journalism. All my life I’ve been self-employed. In latter years I have increasingly engaged only in areas that motivate me idealistically.

I have little patience for anything that detracts from my main goal.

For 20 years I have been advocating organic and other alternatives to industrial farming.

In the last five, I’ve been experimenting with various methods.

And for the next five, at least, I am going to do my damnnedst to push the organic/sustainable cause in the communications’ media.
I am no genius, that’s for sure, but occasionally I feel I get it right and make a difference. I’ve had some success with letter-writing on environmental issues, being published in all our quality papers here and in the UK – and once famously in Time magazine. I have spoken at colleges and at food conferences, at one, delivering a paper called, The Killing Fields. This was an attempt at putting forward a vision for the future of Irish farming. I squirm a little now at its naivety but I still stand by it’s main thrust.

I am chokingly exasperated at the snail’s pace development of the organic industry generally but especially here in this so-called Green Island of ours.

For goodness sake let’s speed it up!

To do that I would hitch myself to the wagon that best promises to achieve that goal. But to be honest, the only wagon remotely in sight capable of carrying me to that objective is this website. It has been very gratifying these last eighteen months, feeling – nay, knowing – that planorganic.com is a good medium for influencing things to a significant extent.

So, although I could badly do with the money, I must decline your kind and well-meaning offer. Thanks for all and especially the encouragement in what I’m doing.
Regards
Jim O’Connor,

Hungry Hill,

Beara Peninsula.
___________________________________________________________________________________
David Storey, one of Ireland’s best-known environmental writers, featured myself and the site in, Farm Examiner, the supplement to the Irish Examiner 21st June 2001

There was a colour photo in the following Farm Examiner, 28th June.

Seeds of great ideas grow on fertile website

Hungry hill, on the road east of Castletownbere, is about as far away from Silicon valley, as it is possible to get. This windswept rocky landscape on the coast of west Cork is not a place you would expect to find innovative web designers working on the internet.

Yet the website www.planorganic.com comes from Hungry Hill. It’s not the first Irish organic website. But it is certainly the biggest and it may be the best so far. If you are interested in buying a bag of organic potatoes, reading about the politics behind GMOs, looking for a review of environmental books or if you want to read some letters on the foot and mouth ‘slaughter versus vaccinate’ debate, then this is the site for you. Don’t log on unless you have plenty of time to spare -the sheer quantity and variety of the information will keep you occupied for a good while.

Jim O’Connor is the man behind the website. He has a smallholding growing vegetables and potatoes at the foot of Hungry Hill, beside the sea a few miles outside Castletownbere. He started the site last January and, with a bit of professional help provided by West Cork Enterprise, he had it up and running by the first of May. ‘The main purpose of the site was to gather a collection of organic articles’ says Jim. ‘I wanted to provide a crash course in making people organically aware.’

Jim spent over a year looking at all the organic sites on the web. He found it very time consuming and as he says ‘there’s a lot of rubbish out there. ‘I wanted to make it easier for people to access organic information and to provide them with a guide to the better sites.’

Jim doesn’t live on his organic holding (Jim. Not quite accurate.I did temporarily rent a house near town whilst preparing the site, otherwise for the last seven years, I’ve lived on this beautiful site overlooking Bantry Bay). He cycles the few miles there everyday. Anyone who sees him on his way to work will notice he’s carrying a black plastic bag on his bike. In the bag is his laptop. When he’s not earthing up potatoes or spreading seaweed on his soil, he takes out his laptop and works on his website. The spectacle of Jim sitting on a potato drill looking out to sea and communicating with the world through his laptop could well serve as an image depicting the old Ireland meeting the new (Jim. A photo showing me with my laptop in the garden was not published with the article but in the following issue).

Although he hasn’t done any advertising, many surfers have found his site already. ‘In the first few days over 5,000 people looked at the site’ says Jim. ‘And recently I got 60 emails in one day.’

Replying to sixty emails takes a lot of time. Jim has quickly learnt that maintaining a website is as time-consuming as organic growing. ‘Fortunately I’m one of those lucky people who only need three or four hours sleep a night ‘ he says. Often I’m up at half four in the morning working on the site before I go off to my holding.’ However I’m not sure that Jim has considered how he will cope when the emails run into the hundreds as they inevitably will (Jim.They have!).

Jim doesn’t see himself as a natural-born organic grower,’ My father was probably the first farmer to spread a bag of superphosphate in Tipperary’ he says. ‘The old people stood around watching and muttering that it wouldn’t work. In the end they are the ones that are right.’

For Jim, starting a website is probably the modern equivalent of his father’s move to progressive farming methods. Doubtless there are plenty around to tell Jim that neither websites nor organic farming will ever catch on.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the site is a page called Facts&Quotes. There I learnt that it takes 1.5 acres to feed the average American whereas in Asia, people can feed themselves on only 0.2 of an acre. Thoughts like that can grow like acorn’s in people’s minds and effect real change around the world.

Who can say what influence the work of one smallholder from Hungry Hill might have?
June 27th ’01

Now that “our” cover has been blown by David Storey’s piece above, there is no longer any point in concealing myself behind the royal, “we”. “We” are a one-man, bicycle and solar-powered, laptop-enabled entity, living in a no-mod con, temporary home, albeit with one of the greatest views in the world laid out before me. I don’t so much have a low-budget for this project as a no-budget. I am also technophobic in the extreme, more adept at wielding an old-fashioned spade making my “lazy-beds” than delving into the arcane skills of the computer age. However the attractions of the Internet are utterly narcotic for someone ambitious to speak to a wide audience, so we – sorry – I, needed to gain the basic skills and find the resources to start this fascinating exercise.

I am very grateful to friends who have helped and encouraged me in the venture and even to those who were sceptical and downright dismissive of this old free-range dog learning new tricks – I’ve always found a little bit of anger a good and necessary stimulant, to action and change.

I did have one piece of financial (€ 250.00) and professional help (7 hours) all facilitated by the ever-helpful, Deirdre Maher at the West Cork Enterprise Board www.wceb.ie

I might soon have volunteer help so the plural “we” might soon be appropriate. There are some offers of technical assistance being considered too at the moment. The plans are ambitious but I am quite certain that the energy and the means will be in place to make this a more useful, attractive and even more used website before too long.
Reviews of Planorganic.com

Some reviews since the launch. NGIN Newsletters, May, 2001 www.members.tripod.com/~ngin ” Wonderful site….just launched, this is a guide to organic/sustainable farming sites on the Web. Part Green Pages, magazine and article data-base, this Irish-located site has much original material and hundreds of recommended links. Weekly, ‘News&Comment’, is punchy, as indeed is, and unusually, ‘About Us’. ‘Facts&Quotes’ page is entertaining too, but in a shocking kind of way..”

Organic Trade Services, www.organicts.com (the foremost organic newsite on the Web) says, May, 18th; ” www.planorganic.com is a categorized guide to the best organic and related sites on the Web and carries its own selected and focused news of mainly UK, Irish and European interest.The site carries robust opinions and editorial that are a useful addition to the organic debate internationally”.

Institute of Rural Studies, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, says the site is “…lively and stimulating”.

The Southern Star carried an item on us in Gerdie Harrington’s, Beara&District, column. See below.
Southern Star 19th May

Jim O’Connor, Sandmount, put his organic garlic growing on the back-burner this season and concentrated instead on a website project that he had wanted to do for a long time. “I have to admit that I’m much more of a journalist wanting to bring about political, social and economic change than I am a gardener. But I will continue to grow my own organic vegetables for myself and family and share surpluses with friends and good neighbours”, Jim said recently.

After several months of research and writing and “grappling with this new technology”, Jim launched the website last week. It is called, www.planorganic.com , and, as the name implies, deals with all matters organic. Its main function is to provide a guide to the best sites on the Internet on organic and sustainable farming and food issues. It also has much original material by Jim himself, who has a background in conventional farming, agricultural economics, book-selling, publishing and environmental journalism. He has been lucky to have some eminent contributors volunteer articles for planorganic.com, e.g. Dr Mae Wan Ho, author of Genetic Engineering – Dream or Nightmare, publ. Gill and Macmillan, Dublin, 1999.

Planorganic.com has 14 sections including, Publications, Links (hundreds of automatic connections to other websites across the world), Foot and Mouth Disease, Farming History, Products, Where to Buy etc. But the most popular part of the site so far has been News and Comment (constantly updated) which has already produced lively responses, mostly supportive but some negative too.

The website has already experienced the mixed joys of success as, on its second day, it had so many hits (visitors) the site temporarily crashed and Terry Byrne, of Beara Computer Centre, had a lively time getting it up again.

Part magazine, part journal, news service and data-base, www.planorganic.com will appeal to everyone interested in the debate about the future of farming taking place throughout the world in these troubling and changing times for agriculture.

Jim’s biggest news item this week will be reporting on the Danish Conference whose main agenda is to hammer out an Organic Action Plan for Europe. Jim emphasises that Ireland, as a major food-producing nation, neglects the astonishing growth of the organic movement in Europe at her peril and that we in Ireland should be assuming a leadership role in organic farming research and development.
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