Greg Wilson is passionate about food security. Sit with him at Food Forest, the organic garden he started in his backyard in 2021, and he is happy to talk about the importance of having reliable access to affordable, nutritious food ― and the role he plays as a sustainable farmer in making that happen.

“Food security to me means sustainability, growing food in a way where we have no external inputs. I don't buy pesticides, herbicides or fungicides, so my costs related to food production are very minimal. I’m growing a healthier product ― because it is benefiting from the biological activity that it's designed to benefit from,” he explained.

People are invited to join Mr Wilson at Food Forest tomorrow, when he will talk about sustainable farming in the first in a series of environmental activities organised by the charity, Greenrock.

It’s an interest that likely stemmed from his upbringing. Mr Wilson’s great grandfather was a commercial farmer in Bermuda in the late 18th century; his grandfather farmed and he himself “grew up on a farm, basically”.

It was the same for most people when he was a child. “Maybe 50 or 60 years ago, everyone grew their own food in their yards. We never had a MarketPlace or Piggly Wiggly or any big stores back in the Fifties and Sixties. We produced our own food, in our own neighbourhoods, in our own backyards.”

Plants were grown, animals were kept and everything was shared with anyone who didn’t have. “We had food security,” Mr Wilson said.

In the 1950s, Bermuda had more than 3,000 acres of arable land. Today, the count sits in the area of 600 acres with “only maybe 200 to 300 of them actually farmed”.

The impact that has had is obvious to Mr Wilson, who operated the restaurant Greg’s Steakhouse for many years.

“I recognised then the quality of the food that we were receiving was substandard. The shelf life on it was very, very short, and the amount of spoilage and waste that happened was unprecedented,” he said.

In 2014 he shut the restaurant and went back to school so he could learn how to farm in “a holistic way”.

“I studied mycology, I studied soil science, and I learnt so much,” he said.

Fascinating to him was that food could be grown without “imported chemicals or pesticides or herbicides”.

“I’ve been on that journey ever since. That's how Food Forest started, with my niece and my son sitting around a dining room table saying, ‘Listen, we know we can grow food in a way that is sustainable, and how we do it is simply by using everything that we have here’.”

Food Forests serves 27 restaurants and hotels and sells its vegetables in Supermart and the Lindo’s grocery stores from May through December.

Its selling point: Bermuda-grown products that are full of nutrition and will last in the refrigerator for about two weeks.

To get the most out of the earth, Mr Wilson believes people should respect soil for what it is, “a living organism”.

“The traditional practices of farmers have been destructive,” he said. “When you take a tiller and you till it through the soil, you destroy that entire ecosystem, and then you are forced to use chemical fertilisers to force feed your plants to grow,” he said.

As such, plants don’t reap the benefit of “the bacteria and fungi” or the microarthropods and macroarthropods that convert organic matter into mineral nutrients that plants can easily absorb.

“As a result, what happens is the plants are sick. When a sick plant gets attacked by insects, the farmer has to come by and spray pesticides, and then fungicides ― all of these added layers have to be introduced because the system that is put in place by nature to grow food, has been destroyed,” he said.

“You don't need to spray fertilisers in a forest; the forest doesn't till the soil. When you spray those chemicals, the plant, because of its nature, it absorbs the chemicals and they become a part of the plant’s cellular structure and of course, when you eat these foods, those same chemicals ― even traces of them ― affect the human body the same way. The same microbiome that's in the soil, it's the same microbiome that's in our gut.”

The result is “an explosion of autoimmune diseases” which were not there 70-odd years ago when people farmed organically.

Mr Wilson is particularly thrilled that his message has been well received by young people.

“One of the first things I did was go into the school systems. I worked with Warwick Academy, with Somersfield, I’ve been to Sandys [Secondary Middle School], I've been to Port Royal, Dalton E Tucker … several schools.”

The farmer spent about a year teaching 10 and 11-year-old Warwick Academy students “all the secrets of the soil”.

“These kids did a phenomenal job, and they produced so much food that they started to sell their food every Monday afternoon.

“When the parents would come to pick the kids up from school, these kids were standing out there with their fresh grown vegetables and sell them to the parents ― so that they could buy more seed and buy more tools and complete their gardens,” he said.

“Many of them, even now, have home gardens. That is very rewarding to me, to witness that transition. The same thing at Somersfield, they're teaching the young kids how to grow food in a sustainable way and I think that's the future.

“If we can get the kids involved, if instead of being on the iPad they are in the garden and they're connected to the earth, they will benefit in the long run. These are life skills that they will never forget.”

• Join Greenrock and Food Forest tomorrow at 45 Middle Road, Sandys, near Maximart, from 1pm to 3pm. Admission is free for Greenrock members; $25 for non-members. Register here:https://t.ly/a_peh. For more information visit greenrock.org or call 747-7625. Follow @foodforestbda on Instagram or visit foodforestbda.com

Written by Heather Wood