Gilfresh and the AFBI



Our last day was the most jam packed in terms of diversity. We started our day at a food processing facility. Gilfresh is a midsized vegetable processer that moves a lot of the produce in Northern Ireland. We learned a bit about how Northern Ireland is an extremely small territory, the entire Irish peninsula is smaller than the state of Michigan. Northern Ireland also has a very small horticulture industry, a majority of their agriculture is dedicated to forage grass for sheep. We got to tour their facilities and see how carrots straight from the earth are made into cubes for soup. we were not able to take pictures in the facility.


We then headed to the AFBI research station for a cider tasting. These are the various ciders we tried, sweetness is an important factor in determining taste in cider.


We toured an orchard and saw the differences in how Michigan apples and Irish apples are produced, they don’t need irrigation and their density is much lower.

  They also use bumble bees rather than honey bees because of their climate, bumble bees work in colder temps and cloudy weather.

Finally we toured a mushroom facility, also at AFBI, that was researching how to best grow the buttons. One important bit of research that is being done is about reducing the amount of peat moss consumed. Globally there is pressure to reduce the use of peat moss because it is unsustainable.


 They are also looking at how they can change their irrigation to drip, however I wonder if mycelium will grow into the emitters.

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