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AN ISLAND FARMER


Recently in Jersey, in the Channel Islands, we have had our four yearly elections for our government. All households in the island received the Vote.je candidates manifesto booklet.


It was very disappointing to see that very few of the candidates even mention the farming industry. As farmers and growers, perhaps we are to blame for not getting our message across; or perhaps our would-be politicians are not listening to us.


You see, the farming industry does give the Island a beautiful countryside, which is appreciated by locals and visitors alike. Jersey is a major UK tourist destination. We give you brown cows and green fields; fields of yellow daffodils and visitors marvelling at the world famous potatoes being grown by hand on steep slopes around the Island. I think some people also appreciate that farmers also provide and look after the hedgerows, banks and ditches for our varied wildlife to flourish. But the most important thing that farming does that no-one seems to mention, is that it produces food and food matters.


One of my abiding memories as a child growing up in a household that had lived through the German Occupation of 1940-1945 is that food should never be wasted. Throughout history, Jersey, like many other countries, has at times had food shortages. Indeed, the Jersey Farmers Union was formed in 1919 during the Spanish Flu pandemic because the States wished to stop the export of cattle to protect the Island’s food security; and the century before Jersey was subject to a number of so-called bread riots, when a shortage of wheat lead to a big rise in price. And don’t think this is all about history! Only a couple of Christmas’s ago, through bad weather, the Condor boat which brings much of the food to the Island missed a couple of days’ sailings. By the beginning of day three the supermarket shelves were looking a little bare but at least you could rely on Jersey milk, Jersey main crop potatoes and Jersey vegetables. It is frightening to think that, since I was born in 1954, the population of the Island has doubled but, more worryingly, the population of the world has more than doubled. In fact, I read recently that the population of the world by 2054 is expected to be 9.5 billion people, an increase of 350% in 100 years. It is thought that the world’s farmers will need to produce more food in the next 50 years than we have in the last 10,000 years. We have to do it with less land, less water and fewer inputs than ever before. Of course, Jersey is a perfect example of this, where growers are losing land for building and recreation and we are farming in a much more sustainable way with fewer chemicals and fewer artificial fertilisers being used and yet having to produce more.


34 | ADMISI - The Ghost In The Machine | May/June 2018


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