FARMER Alan Le Patourel (pictured) is predicting rising fuel costs will force people to change the way they live and eat.
‘In the last 10 years people have had an easy life. They could travel where they wanted and eat what they wanted. Now they are going to have to make choices,’ he said.
‘Everyone is suffering and people will have to get used to it. We can’t just shut up shop, we have to keep going.’
He warned that higher food prices were inevitable. ‘The increased cost of diesel was affecting cattle feed prices as well as transport and that was damaging farmers’ profits.
‘The price of cattle feed is going up which is tied to world wheat prices,’ he said.
Overseas farmers are using bio-diesel rather then fossil fuels to harvest their cereal crops. That meant that cereal seeds used for cattle feed were becoming more expensive.
As a result, farmers might have to put up the price of their produce to deal with mounting cost pressures.
He said that there had been a 75 to 80% increase in the price of diesel and farmers were trying to cope with it the best they could.
Although the cost of local produce might rise, it would not be priced out of people’s pockets.
‘If it was a local thing we would be in big trouble, but it is affecting the worldwide market,’ said Mr Le Patourel.
Robert Waters, of La Petite Croute Farm, said that if cattle feed prices continued to rise, Guernsey farmers might have to think about changing the way they operated.
‘It’s something we can’t predict. If the price of feed goes through the roof, we may have to think about the possibility of growing our own cereal,’ he said.
Article posted on 5th July, 2008 - 9.29am
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