TULIPS are blooming in west Waterford. This is a testament to the alternative farming activities which have begun to spring up from the transnational linkages being promoted under the EU Leader II development programme.
Five local farmers are involved in the Southern Bulb Growers' Co-Op, four of them growing tulips and one daffodils. As a lucrative side-enterprise to their other farming activities, they're literally selling tulips, in bulb form, to the Dutch, an enterprise which might have been thought equivalent to bringing coals to Newcastle.
Row upon row of pink and red tulips have made the fields colourful. However, a strange machine has been traversing the rows for the past fortnight cutting the heads off the flowers (they have to be "topped" to allow the bulbs to thrive).
Before that, the farmers involved, along with experts like Mr Martin Leahy, who worked for years with a Dutch grower near Fethard, have had to walk the rows, visually scanning them for viruses.
These viruses can cause small streaks of another colour to appear on the single-colour flowers. It is a phenomenon that many people might find an attractive feature, but for the market a bulb for a pure red tulip must produce just that, a pure red flower. And so the virus-tainted plants have to be dug out.
Waterford Foods and Teagasc in the Dungarvan, Grange and Clashmore areas of Waterford were involved in setting up the project. The co-op received initial technical assistance from experienced Dutch horticulturists. It also got support from An Bord Glas and was approved for Leader funding by Waterford Development Partnership Ltd (WDP).
WDP Ltd was set up in 1991 as a joint-venture company between the Government and social partners to address the socio-economic problems of the area. With its headquarters in Lismore, it operates the Leader programme throughout the county.
WDP has encouraged every village to form its own enterprise and development co-ops. "If they're properly structured and organised, it's much easier for us to fund them," said Mr Jimmy Taaffe, manager of WDP.
He pointed out that the thrust of the EU programme is to promote transnational links and partnerships, to facilitate the transfer of experience and strengthen diversification away from the traditional farming activities of beef and milk, for which subsidies and support funds are drying up.
"Increasingly, we have to find European partners in order to gain funding approval," Mr Taaffe pointed out. He said that former pasture land was ideal for planting the tulip bulbs, especially in tillage areas.
From his 20 years' experience, Mr Leahy insists that Ireland can produce as good a tulip bulb as the Netherlands, or better. The intensive nature of the Dutch industry, and its limited land resources, have resulted in significant plant disease problems there.
The seed bulbs are planted in the Waterford fields in November and the crop harvested around July. The bulbs must then be dried and graded in a special facility which is accessible to all the growers.
Following this process, the bulbs are exported to Holland and the US via a UK processor co-op which controls the marketing and distribution.
A major advantage for the farmers involved is that they have a guaranteed sale for the bulbs. The price paid depends on the grade produced.
After the bulbs are planted there is little work involved.
The tulips for Amsterdam are just one example of the new directions opening up for local development in the Information Age.