Struggling farms provide little of our daily food staples

It said farming was in danger of becoming “obsolete” if action was not taken to inject new resources into the industry.

Bermuda’s farms provide very little of the meat, dairy and fruit and veg we eat daily. Here’s where all of our food really comes from.

Meat

Most comes across the Atlantic from the U.S.

Pork chops tend to originate in the pig farms of Virginia and chicken from the hen houses of Arizona.

Most of the beef, be it mince or steak, comes out of the cattle ranches that dot the American plains.

British lamb chops tend to hit the shelves on Friday mornings — hot off the Thursday evening British Airways flight.

Danish bacon brought across the seas from Europe is also on offer at most of the bigger stores.

Fruit and vegetables

The potatoes accompanying your dish are likely to have come from Prince Edward Island in East Canada or Idaho in the U.S.

The tubers will be stored in huge darkened storehouses until they are shipped out to Bermuda.

The embargo on carrots and corn means these veggies tend to be homegrown, but our peppers come from Israel.

Our fruit tends to come from exotic locations, too.

Our pineapples are from Hawaii, while the fruit-pickers of California give us strawberries.

Grapes, nectarines, plums  and apricots are shipped in from Chile, mangoes come from Haiti and Clementines are brought in from Spain.

Dairy

Many of the cheeses and yoghurts you find originate in dairies in England, France and Denmark, such as Brie and Danish Blue.

Yoghurts come from as far afield as Germany and the U.K.

Most of our milk comes fresh from Bermudian dairy farms scattered across the island.

But although some eggs are also home-grown, most come from chickens on the east coast of America.

Well-travelled foods

English favourite Marmite does not hail from the U.K. but is actually brought in from Australia. Many pesto sauces and pasta come from northern Italy. You can even pick up San Benedetto water, which originates in Rome.

Many tea bags have their roots in India, while pepper sauces and ginger beer — Bermuda favourites — are shipped the short distance from the West Indies.

Bermuda’s own

The island’s bananas and oranges fill supermarket shelves for most of the year, as does Bermudian honey.

Fruit and vegetables such as potatoes, tomatoes and onions are also plentiful at the right time of the year.

Zach Moniz, manager of Lindo’s supermarket, said the group gets its food from the three main freightliners that service Bermuda.

It also receives regular deliveries from the BA flight on Thursdays.

Mr. Moniz said: “The bulk items we get in are mainly from different parts of America but the high-end, more specialised items tend to come from Europe.

“If anything was to go wrong at Port Elizabeth in New Jersey, where most of the food comes here from, we would have some pretty big problems very soon.

“The importation of foods and the port service this end is absolutely vital to an island like Bermuda.

“We have food coming in from all over the world — it is a major operation catering for everyone’s needs.”