John Smith, General Manager, Finnegan’s Farm

Love or hate them, Brussel Sprouts are making a meteoric comeback.

“They’re not just for Christmas either,” says John Smith, General Manager at Finnegan’s Farms, one of Ireland’s seven producers of Brussel Sprouts. “After beetroot, Brussel sprouts is considered the new super food with potentially anti-carcinogenic properties and lots of vitamins and minerals. It’s a vegetable that’s available seven to eight months of the year so it’s good news for Ireland. In the U.S. you’ll now find sprouts on most menus across the country, it’s the next big thing.”

And it’s not just in the Brussel Sprout corner where Finnegan’s Farm is ahead of the curve.

The 2500-acre farm includes 500 acres that brothers Joe and Paul Finnegan use for potato growing, selling directly to supermarkets. The end product has no additives or preservatives, using only 2-3 ingredients that go into their Ready Cooked Chips, Wedges, Baked Potatoes, Baby Potatoes and Mash.The remaining land is used for winter wheat, winter barley, spring barley and oil seed rape.

Finnegan’s has always endeavoured to protect the environment by adapting appropriate farming techniques to ensure that their sustainable approach to farming is economically viable, environmentally sound and socially beneficial. They have added bird boxes and bee hives to their farm to provide a safe habitat for wildlife, on their land which is adjacent to the Balrath woods. All food waste from Finnegan’s farm is processed into nutrient rich compost using a food waste digester.

“We are what we call a closed circle farm,” says John Smith. “We grow our own produce, package it ourselves, and we put any waste from our kitchen into a digester which breaks down the sprouts or potatoes into organic compost”. The farm produces about four tonnes of organic compost every week.