Damien O'Reilly
EU Affairs and Communication Manager, ICOS
Letter from Brussels - November 2024
I was a joint founder of ENAJ back in 2011 in Brussels. During the following two or three years, being part of the pioneering committee that got the Europe-wide organisation up and running, I had many trips to Brussels to meet with fellow co-founders. Had that not happened, it is doubtful I would have developed a fondness for this city – it made the leap of faith to come here in 2022 much easier.
The ENAJ is the umbrella organisation for 23 national guilds/associations including the Guild of Agricultural Journalists of Ireland. Core to its existence is in organising field trips to different countries for agriculture journalists in member countries. For instance, in Italy last month, over 40 journalists from 19 countries gathered for three days visiting farms in Umbria as part of the AGM programme.
Considering the pressure on agricultural journalism reflecting the changing landscape of the media and shrinking farm numbers across Europe, such a healthy turnout was heartening. Each year, the ENAJ management committee liaises with member guilds to organise three or four similar low budget trips where agricultural journalists are afforded the opportunity to visit another European country to find farming stories and engage in professional development workshops. What is always noticeable is the similarity of issues. Pressure on prices, attracting young people into farming, weather-related events and red tape and bureaucracy are issues not confined to the farmyards of Ireland.
Stepping down from the management committee also last month was Jef Verhaeren from Belgium. Without Jef’s initial enthusiasm, commitment and organisation the ENAJ would never have gotten off the ground. A veteran Belgian journalist who was once spokesman for the Belgian Minister for Agriculture back during the halcyon ‘MacSharry reform’ years, Jef was elected as the first president of ENAJ. We spent many long days and nights with our fellow inaugural committee members drafting a constitution, establishing a legal entity and devising a purpose for the organisation. Jef remained the patriarchal figure and European agricultural journalists owe him a debt of gratitude for that. Hundreds of journalists have had the opportunity to travel to other European countries over the past 13 years to gather stories and develop friendships and in the modern social media age, that is golden.
Protecting agricultural journalism has never been more important. Fewer people want to devote a career to writing about farming and fewer newspaper editors want to devote much working hours to it either. But without journalist expertise on farming matters, misinformation thrives. So, here is wishing ENAJ, under new president Yanne Boloh (France) and her committee including Rachel Martin of the Irish Examiner, ‘bonne chance’.