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From the BBC web site    jersey/content/articles/2008/07/29/rural_skills_feature.shtml

Back to rural basics

By Claire Peters

Forget learning how to use the latest technologies, now you can learn traditional rural ways and hark back to 'the good ol' days'. Islanders are being encouraged to learn new skills for an old tradition by the Royal Jersey Agriculture and Horticulture Society. This year marks the society’s 175th Anniversary, and they are planning to run a number of courses and activities which will teach “basic rural skills”. These skills include bread baking, vegetable growing, jam making and mushroom picking.

Lost Skills

Now's the time

She explained that for health reasons and the credit crunch it’s now more important than ever to grow your own, especially if it’s done organically. However, she admitted it could be very difficult for those living in urban areas to find the space to grow their spuds and strawberries. “We’re looking at ways of helping people do that,” she explained, “either through window boxes or giving people the knowledge to get on and tackle some of things that they want to do.”

Should Jersey have more allotments?

More allotments

The society’s president Stephen Le Feuvre explained he would back proposals made by Jersey’s Organic Association to provide allotments for those who didn’t have garden space. “It’s one of our embryonic policies at the moment, we’re just looking into it,” he said, “but it does fall in very neatly and nicely with the way we want to proceed forward.” He said it would be important for any sort of allotment scheme to be tightly controlled, but initial feedback suggests the take-up would be quite high

Andrew Casebow gave a short talk at the recent West Show entitled the effects in Jersey of Climate Change. He is an agriculture advisor to the States of Guernsey and was instrumental in the production of the Planet Guernsey booklet on climate change in that Bailiwick.

The presentation covered a number well known observations about climate changes in the past and the last warm period. He had some pictures form Guernsey of fossil cliffs and wave cut platforms that were formed on the coast at the last warm period.  He also pointed out than then flying over St Ouen's bay you can readily identify a raised beach about 18metres above present sea level that also dates from the last warm period.

The causes of global warming were outlined - Dr Casebow clearly belives there is a strong anthropocentric element. He pointed out that current predictions suggest the planet's population would be 9.2 billion by 2050 and peak at around 10.5 billion.  I was surprised to hear that locally our per capita CO2 emissions roughly match those of the USA rather than the lower UK levels. That's roughly twice the european average of 10 tonnes per year per person. 

One of the largest contributions to greenhouse gases is due to agriculture via our choice of diet.  As the world eats more meat and animal products the methane emission which are much more damaging than CO2 grow considerably. As the summers get drier the growth of grass in August and September slows and this in turn affects milk production in the islands.  We have seen a roughly 1 degree rise locally in the last 25 years, and each degree equates to roughly 90 kilometers latitude.  The current consensus is that a 2 degree increase in temeratures is inevitable, and 5 degrees is possible unless we take effective action. By the 2050 Jersey will be like the Dordogne!  (Unless I think the  North Atlantic Drift is switched off by melting Greenland ice sheet) His outline of Guernsey based on these data showing the northern half as an archipeligo of islets is impressive- I think this would be mirrored in the south, east and west coast of Jersey.

In Guernsey allotments have taken off big time as a contribution to reducing food miles, and there are plenty of takers.  Also he believes there is a real opportunity for a digester locally.  Dr Casebow gave us an example he knows of a German farmer who started  a digester to take the slurry from his 80 strong herd.  He made more money selling surplus energy than he did from his cows.  In Dr Casebow's view we have the technology we need, its the personal and political will power to make things change that is lacking.

At questions it was pointed out that we currently have a world food scare, with both wheat and rice stocks at extreme lows.  If we can barely feed the worlds current 6.7 billion, how can the population get to 10 billion?  Short term the risk is clearing of forests, which further exacerbates the cliamte change problem.  This problem of course relates back to the diet question, and the fact that a largely vegetarian diet can be grown on a smaller land area than a meat centric diet.  But then you have to factor in the fertilizer and pesticide productions impacts, and the problem quickly gets very complex to resolve.

It may seem that  having Jersey like the south of France is an inviting prosepct, but it has many implications.  What about all the refugees from the rest of the now uninhabitable parts of the tropical and sub-tropical regions?  And what about all the diseases and pest that are likely to migrate here as the temperatures rise, and frosts become very rare? And how will the changing fauna and flora interact, will the system even be stable?  I didn't point out to Dr Casebow the key factor that made that German famer's digester successful is the much higher feed in tariffs for 'green' electricity in Germany compared to Jersey or Guernsey.

Its exploring that complicated interdependence of energy, climate change and food production locally that got me started on this journal the first place.  Andrew's presentation only led me to conclude the discussion and planning needs to continue with even more urgency.  Given the audience for Dr Casebow was perhaps 1/3rd of that for the Jerriais singing just beforehand, I wonder whether the public of Jersey either have already got climate change sussed, or whether they haven't really understood  the severity of climate change implications for all our lives.

You can download the Planet Guernsey booklet at http://www.societe.org.gg/planetguernsey/