GUERNSEY Looking to the future with new beginnings By Fiona Sloan
WORLD FARMING Like Jersey, its sister island, which we looked at last month, Guernsey is part of the Channel Islands and is a British sovereign island about 20 miles off the Normandy coast of France. Its proximity to France has ensured that the island’s history is steeped in Norman tradition, which can still be seen today and a small number of the 65,000 residents still speak a version of Norman French known as Guernésiais, or Guernsey French, as their first language. It is a triangular shaped Island, rising to around 300 feet
in the south at its jagged coastal cliffs and has a typically mild island climate with little or no frost and a low rainfall of around 30-35 inches a year. Water is supplemented by the distillation of sea water, for irrigation of the 245 hectares of potatoes, vegetables and flowers, mostly grown under glass, at sea level, in the north of the island. Like Jersey, the land is measured in vergees (6.1 vergees to the hectare) and there are 2500 hectares of agricultural land with around 1600 used for the dairy industry and the rest for horses and other small enterprises.
In Guernsey only 20% of the farmland is owned by the people who farm it. Some 80% is rented from many different owners on an ‘annual’ tenancy, so farmers have little security and may gain or lose up to 10% of their land each year. Dairy farming is the main industry in Guernsey, together with tourism. There are about 1600 cows across 20 dairy farms, with the Guernsey breed having an average lactation of 6000 litres. The production from the island dairy herd has reduced significantly since the 1950s and is now only used for liquid milk
Guernsey cattle
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and dairy produce of cheese and cream for local consumption. Perhaps the best way to see the whole dairy system in action, but in miniature, is to take a ferry to the next-door island of Sark. A trust was set up to look at the possibility of establishing a self-contained dairy farm on Sark and offered the opportunity out to tender to any interested farmer. Following the application and interview process, Jason Salisbury and his young family from Suffolk, were chosen to take on the project as they thought the future
