We may live to regret paving over island’s farming land

Agricultural land is a priceless and irreplaceable resource that we cannot afford to throw away in order to satisfy short-sighted greed.

We depend on it to grow food.

Developed nations cannot expect to go on importing cheap food from Third World countries as, sooner rather than later, those countries will need it to feed their own burgeoning populations. Self-sufficiency may be forced upon us before the end of this century and concrete does not provide a fertile base for growing crops.

A fortnight ago BBC1 Channel Islands news featured a young Guernsey farmer who was moving to England. She couldn’t afford to acquire land in her native island because landowners valued it as potential building land. This young woman, surely, was of far greater value to the community than any number of estate agents.

When is building going to stop? When Guernsey becomes coast-to-coast bungaloid suburbia? Then what happens?

You want an ever-longer runway at the airport to land ever-larger aircraft. What for? To accommodate the airlines that can make greater profit thereby? Couldn’t smaller aircraft still make a reasonable profit?

Your heavy dependence on the finance industry is basically insecure. If the EU and the British government decided to curtail this industry’s activities it could relocate without compunction overnight to other ‘havens’ such as Singapore.

When your beautiful island has been transformed into Airstrip One surrounded by office blocks, what will happen to tourism? Who would choose to live there?

I have Guernsey friends who survived the German Occupation and who can remember the near famine they underwent towards the end of the war. I think they fully appreciate the fragility of survival.

Unless we curb our blind compulsion to have more and more of things that we don’t really need, our grandchildren and great-grandchildren may very well starve.

R.J. RAYMOND

Address withheld.