States must do more to support organic

Saturday 15 April 2017

Islanders must keep pressure on the government to support organic or risk it getting wiped out completely, Jersey’s longest-running organic farmer has said.

Jersey risked losing one of its few remaining organic farms when farmer of more than 30 years Brian Adair announced he would be stepping down from Greenacres Farm in October last year.

A successful social media campaign galvanised the support of an 800-strong community to find the Sion-based farm a worthy new owner – announced this week as Michael Greenwood - but now Mr Adair is calling on organic lovers to use that same drive to push for the support of the government, who he says have been largely unsupportive of the chemical-free farming scene.

On-island organic farmers have struggled with rising costs and low returns for a number of years. While the States agreed to one-off pay-outs in 2014 and 2015 of £12.59 per vergée of organic certified agricultural land, it was described at the time as “too little too late”.

Mr Adair says that more needs to be done to nurture the community, whose vraic and ‘green manure’-enriched plots are in themselves a solution to some of the alleged ills of commercial agriculture, which a Scrutiny report concluded were largely to blame for high nitrate levels in Jersey’s water.

Mr Adair told Express: “Our government and our Environment Department have got their Rural Economy Strategy, which is supposedly based on all of these fine environmental principles. But then you see only one and a half pages about organic in there… but nothing about how to make it happen. The point is that organic agriculture delivers the environmental goods. People don’t want chemicals in their food, they want a natural environment. With this whole water situation, they’re waking up.”

He added that he was “disappointed” that no support was given when he offered up a detailed proposal to create an organic therapeutic work farm to Environment, Education and Health and Social Services Departments and the Jersey Employment trust in 2012.

“The farm would have carried on what it does growing organic vegetables on a small scale, but with emphasis on people with anxiety problems, people who don’t fit into school. There isn’t really anything like this.

“I said, ‘I really believe in this, I see how it’s helped people on the farm and I’d like to run it with you, but I can’t fund it. This is where I come to your expertise as a service provider.’ Unfortunately, the powers that be weren’t interested enough,” he said. 

Outgoing Mr Adair is now putting his faith in citizens to take up the torch:

“I would like to see more concerned citizens getting together and saying ‘we want this’ because government is just there on the behest of citizens. We’re taxpayers and they’re just meant to represent us and do their job.

“This is our environment, our food, our health, this is important to us and slowly the industry, the governments will yield almost begrudgingly… They will see to that and change things.”

Despite this outgoing battlecry, Mr Adair is hopeful for the future of the farm with Mr Greenwood - a previously conventional farmer with a “passion” to keep Greenacres chemical-free - at the helm:

“Michael’s got organic between the ears. I can tell that he really feels for it… He has been a grower all his life in Jersey so his fingers are very green. I will be there and I’ll support him wherever I can.”