JERSEY will lose the skills needed to use its ‘very fertile’ land for growing food and risks becoming dangerously reliant on imports unless farmers are better supported, according to a States Member.
Deputy Steve Luce’s comments follow the announcement earlier this year by Charlie Gallichan, of Woodside Farms, that his company was very likely to stop supplying the Island and may instead focus on medicinal-cannabis farming. It currently provides 80% of locally grown vegetables.
All of the Island’s farmers have been hit by rising costs, including the soaring price of fertiliser, owing to supply-chain disruption caused by Brexit, Covid-19 and the war in Ukraine.
Deputy Luce, an ex-farmer and former Environment Minister, believes Mr Gallichan’s decision could remove the vast majority of local vegetables from shelves ‘within months’, which would leave supplies vulnerable if sailings were cancelled.
He added: ‘Jersey has not had the ability to supply enough food for its own population for a while. It’s a struggle to supply enough calories to support a population of more than 100,000 and that’s a real concern.
‘Most of our food comes in by ferry and if there are delays, we end up with gaps on the shelves pretty quickly. We have been able to turn to local produce to address that and we are going to lose that.’
Deputy Luce, secretary of the Progress Party, said that a longer-term concern was that the Island could lose its growing expertise altogether.
‘I’ve always said that if we don’t support the growers, then they will gradually leave the industry.
‘It’s an expensive job to grow a variety of vegetables here because they don’t have the economies of scale to compete with the large farms in the UK or Europe. It just costs a lot more to grow a single field of carrots or calabrese and it’s only the big farms that survive nowadays.
‘If we keep losing growers, we are going to end up with no one who has the knowledge to mass-produce vegetables in the Island. We have plenty of very fertile land in Jersey and can grow anything here but we just won’t have anyone capable of doing it,’ he said.
He added that he would continue to campaign for better support for farmers as the Island headed towards the general election in June.
Mark Crean, chief retail officer at the Channel Islands Co-operative Society, said that it would continue to work with local growers if Woodside stopped producing vegetables.
He said: ‘The society has always been, and remains, a passionate supporter of local growers and manufacturers. We have an excellent partnership with Woodside and are one of their biggest customers.
‘We remain committed both to trading locally and to providing the best levels of price and quality to our members.’
