Over the wall

A RURAL view

Building and the rural environment… what should be constructed where? How do we plan for an expanding population? What about the balance between countryside and town? Fields vs affordable housing? Young families being driven away from the Island because of a lack of somewhere to live?

These subjects have always been a hornet’s nest in Jersey, always contentious, often vituperative; they are ripe sources for allegations of ‘corruption in high places’, since any planning decision over a contentious issue inevitably means a loser, as well as a winner, leaving room for disappointment and bitterness, despite the transparent fairness of the modern Planning appeals process.

Little wonder that so many States Members steer clear of Planning issues with a barge-pole.

The fundamental question is: how can we balance housing needs against the preservation of farming land and the rural environment? It is the Island’s green backdrop that makes Jersey a familiar, beloved and recognisable home for its population.

Fundamentally, it is probably an unsolvable question, but all credit to the Housing Minister, Deputy Russell Labey, who is interviewed in this issue of RURAL, for squaring up to the problem. As he says in the interview on page 18, he comes from farming stock on both sides of his family and ‘every time a field goes for development, it hurts.’ The development of agricultural land is of two sorts, of course: fields being rezoned for what its advocates say would be much-needed affordable housing, and fields being transformed effectively into extended gardens for the inhabitants of adjacent large houses.

Typically, a traditional Jersey farmhouse may have retained some of its home fields and pasture, even though the house and land may have been sold in recent decades to a family with no farming interest and who converted it into a very pleasant and valuable - perhaps even a luxurious - private property. The adjacent farmland will have been rented out, but perhaps new owners do not want cows and potatoes as their close neighbours. When the lease comes up for renewal, the tenant farming business is unable to continue its tenancy.

Agricultural control laws prevent the land from becoming simply a blatant extension to a garden. But there are too many loopholes, such as converting the land to equine use… the sight of horses peacefully grazing is undeniably charming, but it has been years since a horse in Jersey last pulled a plough as part of mainstream farming. The land has ceased to have any agricultural use and is now used for pleasure or hobby instead.

The planting of orchards is often commendable - a reversion on a small-scale to Jersey’s historic rural landscape. But when the trees are used simply as a screen to thwart the intrusive gaze of passers-by, the planting of trees on agricultural land seems rather less commendable. This loss of productive agricultural land is a worrying trend in itself, especially at a time when there are so many snakes in the grass: the effects of Brexit, Covid, and climate change to name some of the principal ones. The negative effects on the Island’s imported food supplies potentially have both political and environmental causes. ‘Local food for local people’ has become a mantra of our times.

But we will hardly provide that if we smother the Island in concrete and building development. If we want farmers and growers not to use pesticides for eelworm etc, then fields need to be left fallow for a few years. For that we need all the fields available. Farmers would like to rotate, but there is hardly enough space to do that as it is, let alone if there is further pressure on the agricultural land bank.

It is evidently a sign of the times that Jersey farmers are no longer celebrated or appreciated as food producers and stewards of the countryside as once they were.

Ironic, really, that this has happened at the same time as local farmers and local farming are needed now, more than ever.

All this leads to the more general and underlying theme of the future of farming in Jersey and to what extent there should be quite such emphasis on supplying food for export rather than for local consumption… but that, as a wise man once wrote, is another story.

In the meantime, land controls need to be tightened up so as to ensure they are doing the job they need to do - to ensure that agricultural land stays in agriculture.