00:00Hi, I'm Sarah Comish and I'm the General Secretary at the Manx National Farmers Union.
00:04And this year we decided to raise a little bit more awareness about food security on the Isle of Man
00:10and the fact that local produce that's available on the Isle of Man, the availability has been declining.
00:17And it was mentioned back in November in Tynwall that our food security now is at 6% of local produce is being utilised on the island.
00:28So that basically means that of all the produce that is sold on the island, only 6% of that is local.
00:36So we're almost 100% dependent on import, which was quite a shocking figure.
00:41We were quite surprised that there wasn't a little bit more alarm within Tynwall about that figure.
00:46So what I thought was, we'll try and engage a little bit with the public on this,
00:50because a lot of people probably aren't aware of this.
00:52And we thought, well, how can we engage with people and lobby effectively to get a little bit more local produce on the shelves?
01:01And also within government procurement so that they take a little bit more responsibility,
01:07because government is one of the biggest feeders of people on the island.
01:11So we started our petition.
01:13We started it at the Southern Show.
01:15We launched it there.
01:16We've got a huge amount of signatures there.
01:18It is also online, so if you go on our Manx Farming and Food Matters Facebook page,
01:24you can find it there.
01:26And we're getting some more signatures here at the Royal Show.
01:29Yeah, I think this is based on a statement that the Defer Minister made in Timberwolves last November,
01:34and we're all pretty horrified to hear that only 6% of the food consumed in the Isle of Man is locally produced.
01:40And I think that's really quite worrying, to be fair, and leaves us very vulnerable as a nation.
01:45And how has the public reacted to that?
01:47Because I've noticed when I've spoke to people, they've said, that's really concerning.
01:50It's almost an eye-opener.
01:51Yeah, absolutely.
01:52We've had a tremendous response sent at the Southern Show and the petitions online.
01:55And really, it's just to try and get the public back in to pressure the supermarkets,
02:00to stock more local produce.
02:01Because I'm not saying whilst we could feed 100% of what's consumed on the Isle of Man,
02:05we could do a massive amount better than just 6%.
02:07But we've got to be able to get shelf space for that product.
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