Artist and food activist Lisa Fingleton ate only foods produced in Ireland on her 30-day local food challenge. She tells Ellie O’Byrne about her vision for a future where our season’s greetings are also homegrown, seasonal greetings.

Retail giant Iceland’s banned Christmas ad highlighted the plight of orangutans in Borneo, where slash-and-burn agriculture is starving them out of existence to produce cheap palm oil as an ingredient in processed foods and toiletries.

The viral sharing of the ad, and countless petitions online to ban palm oil, show a real consumer desire to do the right thing. But many also say that an outright ban on palm oil, with no corresponding drive to sustainability, will drive the global market to ecologically devastating alternatives, like land-hungry soya oil.

What if the answer is much closer to home? What if we stopped relying on processed imports and restored a local, sustainable food economy?

Artist and author of The Local Food Project, Lisa Fingleton, has visited Borneo and seen the palm oil plantations for herself. Now, she’s on a mission to bring back Irish food independence, starting with her own, 30-day local food challenge: she eats only foods grown in Ireland.

Read the full article published in the Irish Examiner on the 10th of December, 2018 by Ellie O’Byrne:  Read Full Article

Link to The Local Food Project Book