The price of eggs can bend the course of history, as contemporary politics shows.
Americans want eggs, but consumers are fuming about high prices, which spiked sharply upward due to avian flu that’s devastating chicken farms.
The Irish may be able to help, not by exporting eggs to America but by protecting the layer flocks.
An exploratory trade mission from Monaghan County, Ireland, visited Warren County with the subject of agriculture technology at the top of the agenda for possible business relationships spanning the Atlantic.
“Technology is out there to identify one [sick] bird out of a flock of 50,000,” Kilian Cawley told his local hosts at the Warren County Administration Building in a get-acquainted session March 14. Small electronic sensors stuck on each chicken connects wirelessly to a remote computer, flagging the bird in the earliest stage of its sickness to be removed from the flock before it could spread the contagion.
That leaves 49,999 hens keep on producing those profitable ovaloids packed with tasty nutrition.
After avian flu struck American poultry flocks in 2022, millions of birds had to be euthanized to protect the food supply and stem the contagion. With fewer healthy birds, eggs become scarce and prices soared.
Cawley is director for Ireland with OCO Global, an international business development and investment firm with offices in Europe, the USA, Middle East, Asia and Australia.
The sick bird detectors were just one of the cutting-edge farm technologies discussed in the session, organized by the Lodestone Advisory Group, a Nashville-based international trade consultancy.
Another useful invention would be AI-driven robots that could gently tend and then harvest edible mushrooms, Robert Burns suggested. He is the chief executive of Monahan County, a CEO position appointed by the elected county council.
The county and national government are so serious about the health of the mostly rural, agriculture-dominated economy that they offer incentives to support family farms. Increasingly, Monaghan countians are turning to commercial mushroom cultivation to supplement their traditional farm income.
Tending those delightful but delicate fungi is very labor intensive, Burns observed. Much of the time-consuming work could be handled by intelligent machines that have the added advantage of working night and day, through holidays and are rarely sidelined by sickness.
“We need more production from less land,” he insisted, calling for technological advances that could help maximize revenues and reduce costs per acre of farm production.
He shared a vision of extracting more economic value from a market food plant and even converting animal waste into usable energy. That would not only make family farming more economically secure and resilient but would improve the health of the environment.
Monaghan County and Waren County share a strong tradition of land being passed down through generations of farm families, participants in the introductory session agreed. In the face of change and uncertainty in climate and agriculture economics, science and technology can be the key to survival.
In welcoming the Irish visitors, Warren County Executive Terry Bell underscored the mutual concern for supporting the rural cultural and family farming.
Bell cited his own family history as dairy farming in Tennessee declined nearly to extinction over just a few decades, and as small operators turned to nursery production to supplement their income from traditional food and feed crops.
“We focus on bringing farmers together” to create solutions to challenges common to the rural way of life, Emily Dudley, coordinator with the Southeast Tennessee Young Farmers, told the session. Innovations and emerging developments in sustainable agriculture, supply chain optimization and “online farmers markets” are among the concepts she cited.
In an upbeat appraisal of the March 14 meeting, Don Alexander, business development officer with Citizens Tri-County Bank, expressed optimism for budding business relationships between the Irish and their newfound “neighbors” in Tennessee.
“This meeting was very exciting and promising as we were able to meet each other and compare our mutual needs and capabilities,” said Alexander, a veteran of business and trade facilitation work. “I was very impressed with them.”
“We were thrilled to be able to host Monaghan County here in our home state of Tennessee,” said Amr El-Husseini, CEO of the Lodestone Advisory Group.
“It is important to our home state and our good friends in Monaghan to develop relationships and and economic ties that extend beyond the urban centers given that both counties are majority rural communities that share the same aspirations, opportunities and challenges,” El-Husseini continued. “We look forward to deepening those ties in the coming months.”
Monaghan and Warrren counties have more in common than a rural culture and agricultural heritage. While Monoghan’s population of 65,000 is larger than Warren’s, botn are favored by modern, high-capacity highways linking them to government centers, international airports and major universities.
Through its development office, Middle Tennessee State University’s College of Basic and Applied Sciences is inviting the Irish to get acquainted with its research in state-of-the art agriculture technology.
“We look forward to to hosting County Executive Bell and a delegation from Warren County and Tennessee in Monaghan to continue building new ties and strengthening relationships in the not-too-distant future,” said Mohaghan County Chair Paul Gibbons.
“Our visit has shown great momentum that we hope both of our communities can capitalize on to collaborate and mutually benefit in meaningful ways.”
Gibbons and the other members of the Irish delegation, along with El-Husseini, discuss possible bilateral business development when they appear this week on WCPI’s weekly INSIGHTS program.
The half-hour conversation airs today, Wednesday, March 26, at 9 a.m. and again Saturday at the same time. The program is a production of McMinnville Public Radio 91.3-WCPI.
