On a school trip to a farm, a little boy asked the farmer if he could show them the cows that made chocolate-flavoured milk.
These are questions Maltese farmers often have to deal with and not just from children.
Adults too have been known to ask for “potatoes that grow on trees”, according to a horticulturist at the Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology.
“We are so cut off from nature that we have lost all track of the farm-to-fork cycle,” horticulture lecturer Malcolm Borg, 24, said.
In an attempt to bring people closer to the “stable to the table” concept, the Agribusiness Centre will this weekend be setting up a stall where visitors can buya ftira and trace the origin of all the ingredients.
From meat to wheat, visitors will be able to go out in the fields and in the stables to see where the products came from.
“It is important that people know where their food is coming from because we only get to see it at its final stage on supermarket shelves,” said Mr Borg, who has a background of family farming.
He said the end source is always agriculture.
“All the people in the world depend on a small group of people – farmers. We can do without, say, hairdressers, but we cannot do without farmers. Unfortunately, the number of Maltese full-time farmers is dwindling considerably.”
According to figures by the National Statistics Office, only 11 per cent of the farmers are full-time, the rest being part-time.
The future does not augur well: at Mcast there are only about 10 horticulture students.
“The future of farmers is a time bomb waiting to explode. One day, we’re going to wonder who’s going to grow our crops,” Mr Borg said.
Living off the land is not easy. Farmers have to wake up at 4 a.m. and work straight through to 8 p.m. and are totally dependent on the natural elements.
Mcast student Damien Vella, 17, of Mellieħa, lives and breathes the hardships first hand on his family farms.
“The major problem nowadays is competing with the foreign market. Foreign products are much cheaper but people do not realise that the quality of the Maltese product is by far more superior,” he said, adding that, due to the economies of scale, the Maltese farmer could not make his products cheaper.
Fellow student Stephen Bonello, 17, of Rabat, who also comes from a family of farmers, said people now bought their products on aesthetics.
“It’s not the look that counts, it’s the taste. It is unnatural for a product to look like plastic.”
Mr Borg warned of the preservatives sprayed on foreign fruit and vegetables with a high carbon footprint to retain their pristine look.
“Most of these additives don’t wash off even when rinsed with water. We are gradually starting to depend on foreign products when the Maltese product is fresher.”
When asked why there was lack of organic farming in Malta, Mr Borg explained that the yield of organic farming was small.
However, he insisted that Maltese farmers did not tend to use more pesticide than necessary because of the expense.
In the past, the farmer was the peasant of society, now he had to be the scientist, Mr Borg said:
“We are changing the paradigm of farming and constantly trying to improve.”
The most important thing is that we acknowledge the true origins of our table food, he said, joking that so far, he “hasn’t come across any cows that give chocolate-flavoured milk”.
The farm-to-fork can be experienced at the Mcast Agribusiness Institute Open Weekend today and tomorrow. For information, phone 2125 7006.