Chapter 1: What is Fiona Delaney's first food memory and its significance?
Welcome back to the Bites and Bites podcast. I'm your host, Kristin King, and happy new year. This episode is a special one, and I know I say that quite frequently, but I really do mean it this time. It's the final episode of season two, and I chose it with a lot of intentionality because sometimes the best way to close a year isn't by speeding up, it's by slowing down.
Today's conversation is with Fiona Delaney, founder of Origin Chain Network and someone whose way of thinking and storytelling really stays with you. Fiona doesn't just talk about food and technology. She talks about the land, memory, community, and what happens when systems grow so large that we forget the people inside them.
This episode weeds together so many of the questions we've been circling all season about food systems, technology, trust, and the stories we tell ourselves about how it all works. Whether you've listened to every episode this year, or you're just finding the podcast now, this conversation gives you a moment to pause and reflect.
Season three is coming, and I'm generally excited about where we're headed to next. But first, settle in. I think you're really going to enjoy this one. I love when I start our interview with someone and I didn't hit record and they've said some glorious gem things already and I'm like, oh crap, so here we are.
But we're gonna quickly start and then hopefully we can get back to those gem moments and I'm sure we will.
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Chapter 2: How does the 'Salmon of Knowledge' relate to Irish storytelling?
Favorite food and favorite food memory, they do not need to be the same thing. Favorite food? I don't know. I can't pick. Do you have a favorite food fixation currently?
Are you stuck on something at the moment? Things like seeds, nuts, seeds. Yeah. Anything that is giving me more bang for my buck in terms of nutrition and omega-3 and that sort of thing. I'm like super into trying to find natural ways to supplement the supplements.
or avoid the supplements so maybe that intelligent micro nutrition not that I'm hugely intelligent but I'm curious about it and exploring it so maybe that's my food fixation right now my favorite food memory though is and I bet if you have like a farming community or an outdoorsy community that listens to your podcast my favorite food memory ever is going fishing with my dad
Like I was really young. Well, he was kind of young, too, then, I guess. And it was my first time going fishing with him and, you know, digging up worms and trudging the fields and heading down to the river and finding a good spot and all that kind of stuff and casting my little worm into the river and catching a trout. Wow.
Chapter 3: What challenges do farmers face in the modern food system?
And yeah. And I reeled it in myself. I think I was maybe five. Wow. And treading back up the fields, my dad having like killed the fish, which was a little bit traumatic. But anyway, brought it home and my mom, my dad had caught some fish as well. And we brought the fish home and my mom cooked them for breakfast.
And I can just remember the taste of the crispy skin and the beautiful, beautiful taste. tasty flesh and just licking my fingers and being so proud that I had like that this was what fish that you catch yourself tastes like the freshness the crisp and then your mom cooks it with love and you're like I'm just I'm the eldest so I was like providing for my siblings I felt very hungry to be honest
That is my favorite ever food memory. And I don't know if you know this. Well, I'm Irish and we have this old myth, which is about the salmon of knowledge. And you can Google it if you want to. But anyway, so there's this powerful story about, you know, like a warrior who comes to know it all, all the knowledge in the world because he ate his fish. Not his fish, actually.
Chapter 4: Why is trust important in agricultural communities?
It was his boss's fish. He was cooking it for his boss and burnt his finger and kind of, you know, put his thumb in his mouth. And that's why he got all the knowledge and his boss didn't. So there's all this little trickster fish lore that I kind of love. And obviously, I see myself as a bit of a warrior or a bit of a pioneer.
It was probably a better way of saying I'm not so much of a fighter, but...
You have to love all of the wisdom fables from Irish culture because there's one for everything, I swear. And you'll be having a conversation. It's like, yes, that reminds me of this. And the fable comes on and you're like, wow. Who's ever thought about the swans? The children of Lear. Boy, it's amazing. I love it. And it's such an amazing part of the culture, the storytelling.
Chapter 5: How have local food systems changed over time?
It's just, it comes across in the music. It comes across in everything really. And it's there.
Go ahead and introduce yourself. Yeah, one bit down. So yeah, my name's Fiona Delaney. I am a family lady. I have two teenage boys, come from a pretty big Irish family, very, very close, very close to the land. My father grew up in Dublin, but his parents were both from different parts of the country and his father was from County Kerry.
Myself and my cousin, Brendan, have taken over that farm and we are He lives down there and he runs a tourism business like Seaweed Baths, which is... That's interesting. Seaweed Baths for anybody who's going to be in County Kerry. Okay. And yeah, so we are looking at rewilding, so it's wetlands, it's converting back to wetlands. My grandmother was from County Roscommon, very, very rural area.
Chapter 6: What complexities do people face in understanding food sourcing?
It's quite one of the lowest populations in Ireland. And then on my mom's side, she grew up on a farm in the Midlands in County Tipperary. And she was the youngest of nine. So there's a whole load of us. And we, I guess we, the extended we, we all, like my mom's siblings, traveled all over the world. Her father passed away when she was quite young. So one of her sisters ended up in South Africa.
Another brother was in Australia. Another brother was in Canada. Some of their kids are in the US, Canada, Australia, Singapore, I think. I mean, really all over the world. So I have this cousin's WhatsApp group. And every time somebody has a birthday, it's all the timeline of all around the world. Hey, happy birthday, happy birthday. That's great.
Chapter 7: How does technology impact the future of agriculture?
So all of that closeness to the land, closeness to your family really means a lot to me and has really guided me throughout my life. One of my mom's elder brothers lived with us when we were growing up. I grew up outside of Dublin in the countryside and my uncle Tommy taught me how to grow food, you know, potatoes, carrots. We had an orchard, all that kind of stuff.
So I literally grew up on food from the dirt. Pulling fish, fruiting fish. Yeah, yeah. You know, and still to this day, while I live in the city center, I live in a townhouse. I've got a front and back garden. We grow like, you know, loads of herbs, loads of fruit. Sometimes we grow vegetable if we feel like it, like winter brassicas, that kind of thing.
Really, when the kids were younger, it was to... Because I really loved it, like showing them where food comes from, demystifying that. All the strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, blackcurrants, gooseberries. The kids, when they were fruiting, like all the boys would just like run outside and their friends would come around just to...
Chapter 8: What lessons can we learn from the stories we tell about food?
pick all the fruit, all that kind of stuff. And I love that. I really love that. And then, of course, they turned into teenagers and now they're just online. It's too cool.
Too cool to be out in the garden. No, I get it. Yeah, yeah. But you know what? They'll appreciate it when they get older because they'll go back to it, I'm sure. I think...
That's tough. I don't know. I do my best. I've got strong values. Really, as in, like, where do I come from? I kind of feel like I come from the land. Landscape, I think, makes a person. It helps form your mind. I love living in the city. I don't regret at all moving out of the countryside and into the city. I'm a city girl. I love... The busyness. I love the facilities.
I love all the art galleries, the activities and proximity to knowledge bases or communities like hacker communities or meetups or, you know, all of that kind of stuff. So all of that, I love all that. Trying to balance now, you know, being an entrepreneur, being a mom, I'm sort of uncompromising, but I take a farmer's attitude to it. Get up early.
Maybe if you have to snooze in the middle of the day, go back out later and milk the cows. So I just, I take it as a sort of a 24-7 type thing. Not always sure that's the healthiest way, but I'm just doing my best. So I'm a software engineer. So I set up my agri-food company called Origin Chain Networks in about 2017, I think. Ultimately, we incorporated in 2019.
Agri-blockchain, trying to fill that niche with kind of public admin adjacent data sharing. We picked a very bottom-up type of business model, working with farmers, trying to facilitate them
in digital transformation understanding that farm data both data about actions that they took or decisions that they made lead into actions that they didn't take which you know sometimes that is like yeah official for your carbon footprint and those sort of environmental type things and exploring with them how to do that in a meaningful way that would
build either new revenue streams or build reputation for them so hence the blockchain piece around reputation and trust got to work with so many amazing people the market didn't move the way I thought it would you know I get it things were way slower public amend stuff public
sector adjacent stuff moves way more slowly than i think anybody coming from a pure tech background really can can understand and then of course in ireland but ireland is not the only country before the farm gate like before your food leaves the farm gate that side of things are something of a mystery to supply chain transparency everything that happens after the supply
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