Inspirational ideas: European innovation prize for women farmers

The winner of the 2016 EUROPEAN INNOVATION PRIZE FOR WOMEN FARMERS awarded by Copa Cogeca was Margaret Farrelly.  Out of a necessity to supplement the family income, she started her business in 1987 with 150 hens, supplying eggs to a local packer.

And from these small beginnings, she has built the enterprise to encompass a free-range flock of over 160,000 hens, on 150 hectares of land, and her business has an annual turnover of €6.2 million.  Her company employs 33 people both full and part-time, and she works with 22 other Irish farmers, partnering with Scotland’s Rural College (SURC) to allow them to complete the Distance Learning HNC course in Poultry Production.

Margaret’s eggs - sold under the O’Eggs brand are free range and stand out on the shelves in their brightly coloured packaging, which makes them easy to distinguish as the only free range Irish eggs in the supermarkets.

She also invested in ‘Mega’ eggs - free range eggs that are naturally enriched with omega 3, selenium and Vitamin E via the hen’s diet.  After realising that there were sustainability issues around fish oil supplies - the normal source for omega 3, Margaret substituted linseed and seaweed in the feed, leading to free-range eggs that are suitable for vegetarians.

In 2009, Margaret identified a niche market for white eggs - and so invested in white hens.  Three years after that, she solved one of the problems of waste - as very small and very large eggs cannot be sold, by introducing bottles of pasteurised egg products to her range which are now stocked in most of Ireland’s main supermarket chains.

The "egg in a bottle" project came about after being accepted on to the cross-border Fusion programme which links companies in the South to academic knowledge providers in Northern Ireland. They were partnered with the University of Ulster Coleraine and were allocated a graduate who worked with them on developing the project.

The central philosophy of “doing things right” has been crucial to Margaret’s success.  By which she means being focussed on what the consumer wants - not compromising on quality, care and the ethos of looking after their chickens and ensuring they live a good, free-range life.

Because sustainability is key for Margaret, she developed the Origin Green Programme – a national sustainability programme with the Irish food board, and encourages people to visit her farm to see how transparent the procedures are for themselves. 

All of Margaret’s products and ideas are promoted via Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and she recounts her inspiring tale of entrepreneurship and innovation on television programmes too.

The Innovation Prize for Women Farmers and Special Achievement Award introduced by the Copa Women’s Committee in 2009 aims to highlight areas where women have shown their expertise in being innovative and underline the activities and benefits that women can bring to agriculture. It also aims to stimulate adoption of further innovative, competitive practices. The prize is awarded on the basis of criteria such as the use of new know-how, new methods or technologies in a given sector. The ceremony comes just before International Rural Women’s Day on October 16 which recognizes the role of rural women in enhancing agricultural and rural development, improving food security and eradicating rural poverty.

Website: www.oegg.ie