Darragh McCullough: Quality assurance checks are a pain in the arse but they can help us up our game

The rain was soft but persistent enough to be the wetting type, and soon enough we were all feeling a bit miserable as the cold started to work its way into our summer clothing.

I blame the cameraman. He turned up in shorts. When paired with wellies, it’s a fashion crime on par with wearing sandals with socks.

When I put a call in to check out how our daffodil bulb harvest was progressing back home, I was informed that the bit of mist around wasn’t even enough to keep the dust down.

It was a reminder that the prevailing climate does vary a fair bit from region to region, even within such a small country as Ireland.

But I was still glad to be out of the home farm for a day after a fairly intense few weeks, capped off with a Bord Bia audit.

Originally, we were slated for an inspection at the start of June, which would have suited nicely when we hadn’t started into the bulb harvest.

But the audit was put back by two weeks, resulting in the auditor stepping out of her lovely shiny car into a yard coated with dust, and machines flying as we worked our way through the harvest intake.

I found myself totally distracted, fretting over whether some of the staff on the intake line were missing a hi-vis or safety footwear, or wearing inappropriate jewellery.

I had visions of them jumping up on a machine to free a lump of material at exactly the wrong moment and ending up with a court summons, nevermind a failed Bord Bia audit.

Meanwhile, poor Colm was having his head fried trying to ensure that spray records tallied with spray stocks, which in turn needed to conform with printed lists of approved chemicals with unpronounceable names.

The paperwork was mind boggling. Not only did we need to be able to document where each of our waste streams were going, we needed waste policies to state what our objectives and goals were in relation to everything from waste to quality to water use and beyond.

A big part of the challenge for us was the fact that Bord Bia’s quality assurance scheme for ornamentals is gradually being brought up to the same standard that applies to food crops.

And in turn, the food standard is constantly raising the bar in an effort to catch up with internationally recognised standards such as Global Gap.

The result is that every farmer loves to moan and whinge about the constantly evolving demands of audits, especially Bord Bia ones that often don’t have any tangible benefit.

In our case, less than a fifth of our turnover will carry a Bord Bia logo.

None of my export customers
for daffodil flowers or bulbs recognise Bord Bia as an industry standard.

This was why I often found myself over the past week wondering if it was really worth all the hassle.

But there’s also a tiny voice in my head that pipes up at times like this to remind me that internationally accepted quality assurance schemes such as Global Gap are becoming more and more a standard requirement for being able to sell any farm produce.

So by subjecting ourselves to the demands of a Bord Bia audit, we are at least in the same ball park if we are ever forced into something like Global Gap.

In fairness to Bord Bia, they’ve also developed a number of indirect bonuses for being in the club. We’ve found their Marketing Assistance Programme very useful as we try to develop our website, and they also help fund any research trips that we undertake.

And dare I say it, but a lot of the documentation and record keeping is starting to pay off when I look at the price of inputs.

Having to note minute details of every input and output can be a pain in the arse, but it does impose a discipline on the system to account for every euro in and out.

And lest I forget to say it — our auditor was a pleasure to deal with. Not that she was easy going or anything like it. On the contrary, she missed nothing and pulled us up on an embarrassing number of non-compliances.

But rather than feeling annoyed and sore about the entire day that she spent with us, I actually felt like we learned a lot about how we could up our game.

Darragh McCullough runs a mixed farm enterprise in Meath, elmgrovefarm.ie