Ireland

The Living Lab

As reported by the Irish Farmers Association in 2019, of the 137 500 farms in Ireland, 12% are in female ownership while 4% have joint male/female owners.

In Ireland, women are more likely to access land ownership through marriage rather than inheritance. Joint Farming Ventures (JFT), through which women can access co-management, if not co-ownership of land, are studied as a potential way for rural women to develop a leadership position on farms.

A positive income stream developed for rural women innovators is the ACORNS programme (Accelerating the Creation of Rural Nascent Start-ups), funded by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine through the Rural Innovation and Development Fund since 2014.

Rural women have reported several drivers to becoming innovators including the need to contribute to the sustainability of family farms; environmental values; the desire to develop a potentially profitable business idea conceptualised during “off-farm” work and business education.

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Meet our women innovators

Karen & Natalie Keane

Chocolatier

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Karen & Natalie Keane
Chocolatier

Started in 2014 from a home kitchen in Wexford, Ireland. We are now a team of 14 people proudly producing some of the best chocolate in Ireland from a 3500 sq ft unit in Gorey, Co, Wexford. We make beautiful, joyful, and thoughtful things happen with the world’s most sustainable chocolate. Bean and Goose is a High Potential Start Up Company & has investment from Enterprise Ireland & Leader Funding.


Gina Ryan

Food farmer

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Gina Ryan
Food farmer

Gina started this business in 2022. She needed something that could fit around her family commitments, having a 3-year-old boy and 6-month-old baby girl and alongside an already established wellness business. She has passion for health and nutrition, and she wanted to help people  experience the fantastic benefits of microgreens. She could see these were very hard to source in Ireland.

Emer Lawrence

Vertical farming

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Emer Lawrence
Vertical farming

Emer is an aspiring entrepreneur interested the area of food production and security. She began exploring this interest in her third college year during Start-Up Labs, SETU’s entrepreneurial semester. This pursuit continued through her dissertation in her final year. Surprisingly, her research unveiled Ireland’s heavy reliance on imported produce, while neglecting its own horticulture industry. Recent efforts by the EU and Irish government to reverse this trend through incentives and grants are promising. She envision leveraging technology for a thriving sector. Employing methods like vertical soil-free farming with controlled lighting, irrigation, fermentation, and climate, our year-round commercial farm can defy seasonal constraints and the Irish weather.

Aileen Barron

Marketing

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Aileen Barron
Marketing

Aileen formed Green Acre Marketing over ten years ago. In that time the business has established itself as a leading marketing agency supporting the Irish agri sector. Green Acre Marketing provides expert-led marketing services to Irish agribusiness, in addition to supporting large international brands in both the UK and Europe.

Catherine Kinsella

Dairy producer

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Catherine Kinsella
Dairy producer

Her business is a small local dairy currently pasteurising milk and selling direct to consumer via self-vending machine in re fillable glass bottles. Their model is based around the circular economy where the consumer can access directly from the producer and where disposable packaging is eliminated. Their vending unit is mobile which means we move it on a daily schedule allowing easy access for their customers with minimum travel requirements. In addition to the milk, they provide syrups alongside to give customers the option of flavoured milk. 
Their vision is to extend our dairy product range to allow local access to a full suite of locally produced dairy products. 

Gail Daniels

Cow’s milk soap producer

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Gail Daniels
Cow’s milk soap producer

Bó Bar Soap is handmade cow’s milk soap using whole milk from our award-winning, grass fed, family-run dairy farm in South Kilkenny. All of our soaps are hand-made on our farm, using the traditional cold process method. Our packaging consists of cow print, fully natural, biodegradable and compostable food wrap from Paceprint.ie. All of our labels, thank you cards and business cards are printed by The FACTORY which offers Ireland’s most environmentally friendly printing service. The paper is either recycled or from sustainably managed forests.