Farmers fear for future as 'crunch point' hits

Phil Le Maistre said he was concerned about rising costs and a lack of people working in the farming industry

Jersey farmers have said they are worried about the future of the industry ahead of an annual conference later.

The conference, arranged by the arms-length organisation Farm Jersey, is set to discuss the challenges facing the sector.

Phil Le Maistre, from Master Farms, said he was concerned about increasing costs and the lack of people working in agriculture.

He said he was saddened by the state of the industry as the number of farmers in the island declined.

'Real concern'

He said: "Nowadays, there's less than 12 dairy farms, there's a similar amount of potato growers.

"We've got amazing soil, we've got an amazing climate to grow produce, to rear livestock, but less and less people are doing it."

Mr Le Maistre said a government plan to increase the minimum wage in 2025 was a "real concern" for the business.

He said Jersey farms would never be able to grow food cheaper than other jurisdictions so they needed more government support.

"We cut back last year on certain vegetables just because of the cost of growing them and we will have to keep doing that if we don't get more support," he said.

Christine Hellio said she was concerned about food security in the island

Vegetable farmer Christine Hellio said she was concerned about food security for the island.

"The average age of a farmer worldwide is 64," she said.

"Years ago it used be 20s and 30s, the amount of farmers is reducing vastly... we should really be looking at that, where is our food going to come from?"

Small-scale farmer Oliver Griggs said he believed there was "big change" coming for farming in Jersey.

"We've been going down one path for the last 30 years, and that's the path of scale... I think we're at a point in time where these systems have reached a bit of a crunch point, we're no longer able to afford all this cheap food that we were promised," he said.

He said he and other young farmers were already "doing something different" by using a style of regenerative farming that looks after the land and puts the customer at the centre.

Oliver Griggs said "big change" was coming to farming in Jersey

John Garton, who organised the conference, said regenerative farming would be a key focus for this year's event.

He said financial support from the government had increased in the last few years and farming now depended on more regenerative techniques.

"It's not just sustainable, I always think sustainable is sort of keeping things as they are whereas regenerative is improving what we have," he said.