Allan Bean has seen it all: He is old enough to remember when Bermuda onions were a prized export, when farmers ensured Bermudians did not starve during the Second World War and the days when land was worked with a horse and plough.

Mr. Bean is Bermuda's most senior farmer. Now, the senior citizen wonders how long he can continue to survive in a profession where local farmers are squeezed for land and have little control over what they can charge for produce.

Most know him for his 'old time' Bermuda sweet potato and his dry pumpkin.

He holds nothing back when voicing his disappointment with Government, particularly the current one, which he says has ignored the concerns of farmers, saying: "Things have gone downhill faster in the last eight years".

"My father was a farmer and we didn't get hungry," he stated, "the only thing we had problems with was things like sugar, things like that which was imported.

"But because farmers were producing and everyone had their own gardens, pawpaws growing in their back yards, banana trees, we survived and never got hungry.

"But if a similar period like the Second World War happened today, the farmers would be looked upon to supply, but most of the farm land we had then is gone, they've got houses built on it. I think most people take farmers for granted."

He reflected: "The losses that farmers take every year is bad, pathetic and people don't realise it. But what hurts the most is what happens when farmers do get the chance to sell the stuff they've planted.

"They sell it at wholesale prices and if you go to the supermarket, the stores are making just as much as you – making more than you, the farmer.

"This is because they're charging 100 percent on what they pay for – that's hard on the farmers, it's a bitter taste really, they just put it on the shelf and that's it."

Mr. Bean, the father of five children and eight grandchildren, has worked his six acres of land, located off Rockaway Lane in Southampton, since taking it over from his own father in the 1970s.

Prior to that, as a boy living in Granaway Heights, he can remember being required to perform farm chores before going to school everyday. It was an experience which lead him to take an interest in farming, which runs deep into his family.

Mr. Bean currently sits on Government's Board of Agriculture and doesn't hide the fact that he is a PLP supporter.

Yet, he struggles to understand why Government has made many promises to the farming industry while delivering on few of them.

"I'm very disappointed in the Government today. The Government has assisted the farmers a great deal, but right now, for the last eight years, it's been the worst I've seen.

"To me, the Government has shown no interest at all, very little interest, in farmers. This has been for eight years. It started deteriorating before that, but the last eight years have been the worse.

"I'm fed up. I've been farming for a long time, all my life and I've seen things go down hill extra fast during the past eight years. I've tried to get an audience, get some interest by the Ministers.

"I've tried to get the interest of the last four Environment Ministers, they showed little interest. When Neletha Butterfield was the Minister of Environment, I took her my concerns, afterwards, she apologised to me saying she was too busy."

Mr. Bean has also operated his own fishing business for many years, called Bean's Enterprises, but recently handed it over to his eldest son.

And a few weeks from now, he's scheduled to fly to the Johns Hopkins medical facility to undergo treatment for a heart ailment. His health, he explains, is much like his equipment; outdated and in need of repair.

In his daily routine, he's unable to do little manual labour due to his condition and relies upon his only employee who hails from Bangladesh, whom he describes as his "right arm."

He said of his trusty employee of two years: "I taught him about farming, he never knew how to work. When he came to Bermuda, his knowledge of farming was very limited and now I've taught him everything he knows.

"He can do everything besides running the tractors, I'm trying to teach him how to run them now. Right now he's pulling the weeds out of the onions and helping me to plant some potatoes."

His farm, which is leased, consists of five gardens. On one, he's currently planting broccoli, carrots, sweet potatoes, collard and mustard greens, romaine lettuce and beets.

Another currently is fallow, while one has predominately potatoes and a small section of Bermuda onions. The largest garden is two and a half acres and consists of corn, pumpkin, sweet potatoes, cantaloupe, tomatoes, lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage.

"A lot of people think that farmers own the land that they work, most actually lease it. This land I have now, my father had it before me. I've had it since 1976, when my father took sick and eventually died.

"I've been farming on my own since the 1950s, but I've been farming all of my life – I worked as a farm labourer when I was a young boy. My father didn't have any machines or tractors in those days, everything was by horse."

He proudly told of a time when his uncles and aunts grew onions that would be exported, giving way to the term 'Bermuda onion' which was known and favoured around the world.

"My uncles and aunts used to work the same farm, particularly onions which was exported out of Bermuda. My auntie would grow them and immediately box them for shipment."

Once a week, Mr. Bean sells his vegetables at the Victoria Market in Hamilton. "It has about a dozen stalls in it and it's like the Farmer's Market at Bull's Head," he added.

"People also sell jewellery, clothes and baked goods."

But he sells most of his vegetables to supermarkets and restaurants.

Mr. Bean believes Bermudians have become less self-sufficient over the years, with many nowadays not even knowing what farmers do.

When asked what percentage of vegetables found in people's dinner plates originate locally, he stated: "It depends. The stores use local produce when it's on the market. At certain times of the year, we get sufficient local produce and an embargo is imposed on the foreign produce so that local farmers have a chance to sell what they've grown.

"Most of the fresh vegetables you see today in the market are freshly grown, by the farmers. It's a system which has been in place for years. Government made it like that so local farmers got a better chance to sell their stuff and it stopped the imported produce coming in, although the system is not working like it should at the moment."

One problem now is with broccoli. A broccoli infestation called 'black rot' is affecting the Island and has caused hundreds of pounds of broccoli to be thrown away within the past four weeks, he noted.

He said the infection has not heavily affected his own broccoli crop, just a small percentage. And because he carefully manages how much broccoli he grows, it is not a huge loss.