CountryWide

How the seas and ocean around Ireland shape our lives and could change our future. 

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Prof John Bell flips Ireland's idea of itself on its head. The country is not a peripheral island on the edge of Europe. It is a large maritime nation that could become a bio-economic super power.  

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The Creative Ireland visual arts project "Dunmore Through a Lens" has captured the Waterford fishing village's people and their memories.

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Surfer and Academic Dr Easkey Britton believes that both we and the ocean will benefit by adjusting our relationship with the marine world.

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Gareth Murphy's company Oir Na Farraige has found a low impact way of harvesting seaweed for a range of uses that might actually protect marine ecosystems.

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Following her victory in the EU's most prestigious organic award we visit Kay O'Sullivan at home on Glynn Organic Farm in North Cork. 

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Only the tiniest fraction of the flour needed to bake the 50kg of bread we eat a year is grown and milled in Ireland, and the cost of what we import is sky rocketing. We take a look at what needs to be done to keep the price of bread down by making it here.

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Ireland's first certified Nest Protection Officer Training Programme was recently launched by Ministers Martin Heydon and Christopher O'Sullivan. It was developed by Owen Murphy and Donal Beagan of the publicly funded Breeding Waders EIP, with the training body Lantra, and supported by the National Parks and Wildlife Service and the Department of Agriculture.  Donal Beagan spoke about how this new qualification sets a professional standard for the first time. 

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The survey was commissioned by Agriland and the ICMSA, and it shows it isn't only older farmers who want out. One in five farmers in their late forties and early fifties, which is young in this business, say they're likely to leave. Half of those planning to exit have no successor lined up. Yet the same survey says access to land is one of the biggest barriers for people trying to get into farming. So why aren't those leaving and those wanting in finding each other? 

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During the week, a major new survey was published which suggests there will be an exodus of farmers in the next few years. In a comprehensive survey of Irish farmers - with 2,300 people responding across every sector and county - one in three farmers say they will leave farming within the next five years. Della Kilroy reports.  

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