Ploughing Championships not on the tourist trail

As I mentioned in the twitter posts - you are reading those, aren't you? - I'm at the National Ploughing Championships in Athy, Co. Kildare. I've never been to this event before, although it's a huge attraction. The Ploughing Championships run over three days and this year's event is expected to attract 150,000 people.

The National Ploughing Championships are about a lot more than plowing. In my first few hours here I haven't seen a single plow. What I have seen are hundreds of exhibitions and there are at least as many I haven't seen.

The Ploughing Championships are a big deal, but what I was curious about is whether they're a tourist attraction. I think the answer is definitely 'No.' One of the first exhibitor tents I found was one labeled International Visitors Pavilion. When I saw the sign as I was walking along, I had visions of meeting dozens of visitors from Britain, America, Germany, wherever, maybe with free coffee and cake for 'us.' Unfortunately it was not so.

The International Visitors Pavilion was nothing more than a table with brochures from Fáilte Ireland, the national tourism agency. A very pleasant woman there was almost apologetic when I asked her about the the exhibit's name, but she also told me that as far as she could tell there were only Irish people at the Ploughing Championships, other than some exhibitors from England. All the visitors to her tent yesterday and so far today had been Irish people, interested in an Irish vacation or short break. Oh well.

There is one other exhibitor I want to mention now. (I'll have more later.) Kingswood Computing are selling software to farmers. I had a chat with two gentlemen selling the software because I was curious as to whether Irish farmers were had really gone high tech. The answer is that those who have, really have, but a large percentage won't touch a computer. As one of them told me, show them a modern tractor with GPS and they're all there, but try to interest them in a piece of software and, well, you can pretty much forget about it.

However, it's not like Irish farmers wouldn't benefit from computers. As I learned, the records that farmers must now keep to ensure total traceability of their products are very, very detailed. They showed me the record for one cow and every cough, chill or calf is recorded so that we consumers can have total confidence in our food. This traceability allows the supermarkets to even put the farmer's face on the packaging of their beef, which is something I'm pretty sure is not available in American supermarkets.

All of which reminded me of something I saw when I was in a supermarket near Albany, NY last month. The beef was labeled as being the product of US, Canada & Mexico. (And, yes they used the '&' sign so it's AND and not OR.}

Sure, it's "grain-fed for rich beef flavor," but where the heck did it come from? Even those Irish farmers who don't use computers to keep their records must keep the detailed records and anyone selling beef will be able to tell you all about the farm and animal itself. It's reassuring, actually.

More later - and keep an eye on the twitter posts too (above right).