Fit To Eat S2E23 Ólafur Dýrmundsson by Ivan Emke

Today we head to a land that experiences some of the same agricultural challenges that we do in Newfoundland and Labrador. But they have made some different choices. While we have rock, and sand - they have lava, and tephla. We both have peat. Their population is about two-thirds the population of our province. And while they are a country, with some freedoms reserved for countries, they are also connected to the EU Economic Zone, which places some limitations on markets. Oh, and one other difference – while our food self-sufficiency index is somewhere around 10 or 12 percent, they produce about 50 percent of their own food.

Of course, I’m talking about Iceland.

We have met Ólafur Dýrmundsson before on this show. Last time we chatted, I was at his small sheep farm near Selfoss in Iceland. In addition to farming and growing food, he worked for many years for the Farmer’s Association of Iceland, taught at the Agriculture University of Iceland, serves on international Slow Food committees, has briefed political parties on agricultural policy, written academic articles on agriculture production and policy and generally keeps on top of all things related to food in Iceland and beyond.

I chatted with him on Zoom, earlier this year. I started by asking him about how things were down on the farms of Iceland, since Covid-19 arrived. He talked about slaughterhouse concerns, the elaborate process of gathering sheep from the highlands in the fall, the country’s struggles with imports, and more, all of which have been increasingly complex with a pandemic waiting in the wings.