Posted 24th October 2025. Last updated 25th October 2025.

Opinion Article – The Royal gazette, Oct. 24th, 2025 – By Kim Smith, Executive Director of BEST

Last month I wrote an op-ed about the crisis facing Bermuda’s dairy industry. I asked for details about why exactly Bermuda’s largest dairy farm, Green Land, had been temporarily suspended. I highlighted animal welfare concerns about their cows kept on the site at the top of Store Hill and at Spittal Pond. I questioned successive governments’ lack of commitment and general oversight of our dairy industry. I asked where the promised Integrated Agriculture Strategy was, specifically the Dairy Strategy. And I criticised Green Land for bad management, resulting in the appalling stench of manure, and the liquid faecal slurry that has been pouring on to the Railway Trail, particularly in recent months.

The response from members of the public, especially those familiar with the farming and dairy industries, was gratitude for highlighting these issues and frustration that they had endured for so long without any meaningful action. The response from those in a position to answer my questions and solve the problems at Green Land, however, was complete silence.

This lack of transparency over an issue so vital to our public health and nutritional security is worrying.

One question that was answered, albeit indirectly, was who is paying to clean up the portion of the Railway Trail that runs alongside Green Land, where the manure pit has consistently overflowed. This liquid manure regularly pours down the hill, leeching nitrogen and E. coli into the environment and threatening the water lens and ocean at the bottom of Store Hill.

It turns out that we, Bermuda’s taxpayers, are paying and we know this because a contractor is being sought by the Government to install stone barriers and soakaways to capture and filter the run-off. While this may prevent the slurry from pouring on to a public park, it will not solve the unbearable smell and resulting air pollution, the root cause of which is more than just bad farm management and a lack of enforcement of the regulations. It is gross negligence.

Read more here: https://www.royalgazette.com/opinion-writer/opinion/article/20251024/kim-j-smith-how-we-make-milk-matters/