The event held at Sefter Farm, Pagham near Chichester was mainly for the local community, and the response was such that farm director Nathan Dellicott hopes the event will be repeated on a larger scale next year.
This was exactly the same pattern, which turned the Isle of Wight Garlic Festival launched many years ago into a national event becoming a major source of promotion for the niche industry.
Good news for Barfoot's is that sweetcorn demand is booming. Graham Young, managing director reveals that apart from the crop being two and a half week early, quality has been superb. New Supasweet varieties now bred into a third generation, are sweeter and have a longer shelf-life.
Young also maintains that improved methods of presentation, stripping off the husk and presenting cobs in both twin-packs and as portion-sized kebabs has increased its appeal.
He believes that this style of convenient packaging - and there are more in the pipeline at Barfoots inside their new packhouse open last year and now filled to bursting point, - have contributed to a general uplift in sales making corn more popular. "We are really seeing growth on the market," he said.
The company is a major supplier to UK supermarkets, with 1,500 acres on three sites in West Sussex, Hampshire and on the Isle of Wight giving it around 60 per cent of the total UK crop.
The rest of the year it links with growers' world-wide to provide out of season continuity and organises its own marketing conference to exchange ideas and new cultural procedures.
