The future is uncertain for the remaining family farms in Bermuda. The number of farmers is dwindling and there are few signs that younger generations are interested in picking up the profession, a trend that is also evident in the United States.As farmer Carlos Amaral said: “You can’t classify farming as a job, it’s more of a lifestyle. You’re living in sync with what’s going on in the fields.”Mr Amaral, who runs Amaral Farms with his brother Tony, has young children and it remains to be seen whether they will want to keep up the family farming tradition. Amaral Farms is a second-generation farm, with Carlos and Tony Amaral succeeding their father Jose Amaral as owners.Mr Amaral said he has seen a decline in the number of farmers in Bermuda in his lifetime, and younger generations opting for other careers over farming is part of the cause.“It’s not deemed an important business or industry, and children born on a family farm kind of gravitate away from that operation,” he said. “It’s not the type of business or occupation that has a large draw. A lot of it has to do with the stigma of how people perceive it.”Mr Amaral himself didn’t originally intend to make a career out of agriculture. He said his father encouraged him to go to university, where he studied accounting. However, one internship convinced him he was in the wrong field.“Fifteen weeks of being indoors, I realised indoor work was not for me. I felt like I was in prison,” Mr Amaral said. “Luckily for me I grew up on a farm never realising that I actually enjoyed doing it.”Tom Wadson, of Wadson’s Farm, will be faced with securing the future of his farm in the near future. He would like to pass the business down to his children but realises it’s “not a perfect world” and they may pursue other careers.As for other potential future owners, Mr Wadson said he’s “actively seeking somebody”.“I’ve probably got ten more good years in me,” he said. “I’d really like to put a lot of energy into training and imparting my knowledge on a younger generation.”Mr Wadson, who started his farm on his own, acknowledged that farming is not an easy profession.“It’s a tough business, quite demanding. You’ve got to love it,” he said. “It’s a very complicated thing to put together with land and markets and equipment.”A number of factors have recently put pressure on local farmers, including contending with fairly harsh weather in the three years leading up to 2013, Mr Wadson added. Farmers are also not immune to the economic pressures Bermuda is currently facing.“Sadly, things are tight,” Mr Wadson said. “That’s probably had an impact.”Figures from the Department of Statistics 2012 Employment Brief indicate that tough economic circumstances have contributed to a dwindling farming community in Bermuda. Over the last five years, the number of skilled workers employed in agriculture and fisheries has dropped steadily. There were 968 skilled agriculture and fishing workers in 2008, but that figure had fallen to 819 by 2012, a drop of 149 people, or 18 percent.In order to keep the number of Bermuda farmers from shrinking further, “we definitely need young people coming along”, he added.“There are great opportunities for young people to get out and do this.”Both Mr Wadson and Mr Amaral said that while Bermuda cannot hope to support itself entirely with local agricultural production, Bermudian farms are still important.Local farms give people access to fresh, locally grown produce that has “gone from fields to retail outlets in a matter of hours”, Mr Amaral said.Mr Wadson said that many more delicate products like lettuce and basil do not ship well, losing nutritional value as they travel long distances.“Fresh is good. It clearly reflects in flavour and nutritional value,” he said. “It’s always good to be able to put a name or a face on that fresh produce, that’s one of the pleasures of doing this. It allows people to interact with the farmers, if they have questions they can ask.”Both farmers noted that a country must do something to provide food for itself, even if being totally independent of other food sources is out of the question.“Anybody will tell you of the old school, without agriculture a country is lost,” Mr Wadson said. “You’ve got to make some effort to feed yourself.”Mr Amaral expressed a similar idea. “You can’t put a price on producing something where we’re not depending on a cargo ship or a freight plane,” he said.“I know we have our limitations as an organisation on what we can grow, but to be totally dependent on the US to feed us is kind of ridiculous, it’s crazy. I know we would never be totally sulf-sustaining, but every little bit helps.”