As journalists, there are few things more valuable in life than people who are willing to talk. Anyone who has met English Apples & Pears (EAP) chief executive Adrian Barlow will agree that he certainly fits into that category. He has a wealth of knowledge on a vast array of subjects and his interests have branched out from English top fruit to encompass British asparagus, English stonefruit and the vice-presidency of the Fresh Produce Consortium, making him able to speak for a number of diverse sectors.

When we meet, he has his EAP hat on, preparing for the glitzy launch of the English apple season at the National Theatre in London, which will later see senior buyers from the major retailers meet representatives from all levels of the supply chain and the media. Between breathless interviews, an upmarket salad lunch is brought to the apple figurehead and I wonder when he gets time to stop.

Few will have attended an event in Kent and further afield in the last decade without seeing the familiar apple and pear tie and warm welcome of the hard-working trade representative but prior to this, the 68-year-old has had a long and intriguing career across a range of industries.

Born in West Sussex, Barlow describes a childhood in which he gained a “natural affinity with farming” and caused his parents hell by disappearing frequently in an area heavily populated by farm machinery. Despite many of the stereotypical criticisms maligned towards public school upbringings, Barlow vehemently defends Dulwich College, where he describes a “cosmopolitan atmosphere” that provided a high standard of education to boys from widely varying backgrounds and nationalities, most of whom had obtained scholarships. From there, Barlow defied the family trade (his father and uncle worked for the Bank of England) to do a diploma in agriculture at Writtle College.

At this juncture, Barlow’s life and career took a defining turn. Since gaining independence in 1962, the African nation of Uganda was on an agriculture drive and through farm managers, co-operatives were set up to help subsistence farms to develop. Attracted by the idea of another culture and the potential to save capital for his own farm, Barlow began a three-year spell based first in Gulu in the north before moving to Mbale in the south. “One or two other students from Writtle had gone to Africa,” he explains. “I thought it would be good to live in a completely different culture and see the problem of increasing the performance of crops in difficult circumstances.

“We needed to persuade subsistence farmers that they should grow more than they themselves required. A new system called Group Farms was introduced with the objective of replacing small-scale subsistence farming with larger and more economic production. The government would clear an area previously occupied by farmers who had operated as a co-operative. The co-op was offered a loan to pay the costs of cultivations with machinery, which was repaid once the crops were sold. Unfortunately, too many farmers began to market their crops outside the co-op to avoid deductions necessary to repay the government loans. The non-repayment then prevented further loans.

“Persuading subsistence farmers to plant modern crops and varieties rather than low-yielding traditional crops was of critical importance. I see my greatest achievements as introducing haricot beans to a farm north of Mbale and introducing oxen to a farm in the east.”

In a colourful three years that saw Barlow gain “enormous emotional attachment” to the people, see the varied wildlife of the Central African country and climb Mount Kilimanjaro on the way home, he met his wife, Christine. They met first during a visit to Kidepo Game Park in Karamoja and married in Africa.

One of Barlow’s most vivid memories of his time in Uganda occurred when he was in Gulu. “One night, I woke up with what I thought was a touch of malaria and it felt as if the whole ground was shaking - I saw a chair moving along the floor and thought I was delirious. It later transpired there had been an earthquake 250 miles away that had killed 117 people.

“Another time there was a violent storm in the night during which three to four inches of rain fell in half an hour. A local villager knocked on my door and asked for help. We went to the village where there were smouldering thatched huts that had been hit by lightning. I drove some of the injured to hospital in Gulu 20 miles away, it was a very unpleasant experience.”

Life became more serene for Adrian and Christine on their return to the UK. Running a dairy farm in Devon for three years, Barlow found himself in an industry suffering from reduced profitability and with little prospect of expansion he sold up, made a profit and joined Schweppes in 1971 as a sales rep in Surrey.

He is very complimentary about the quality of the training and development he received and Barlow rapidly rose to become UK Licensed Sales Representative of the Year in 1973. He was then promoted to various sales management and marketing positions and temporarily became a Yorkshireman, working out of Leeds. In a typically assertive stance, Barlow became concerned that the company, now the drinks division within the Cadbury Schweppes Group, was not investing sufficiently due to demands from other subsidiary companies. He headed for Rufflette Ltd, the leading manufacturer of curtain tapes and a subsidiary of Thomas French, as UK sales manager. Again, showing a versatility in his career, Barlow joined Connecticut-based company Whitecroft Scovill in 1986 as sales and marketing director, a position which involved travelling throughout the world.

His return to rural business came in 1990 when he joined what was then Home Grown Fruits (and since became the English Fruit Company and then Fruition) before setting up alone as a consultant in 1999. He has roles representing dessert apples, asparagus and latterly stonefruit. In 2007, he took over the successful Bramley Campaign from Ian Mitchell and recently became the vice-president of the Fresh Produce Consortium, having been a director for 13 years.

Barlow has seen considerable change at policy level in his time in the trade and he believes DEFRA under the leadership of Hilary Benn underwent a huge change. “After a decade of scares over food safety, the government appeared to feel that agriculture and horticulture were nuisances and that there was little justification for home production if products were available from abroad. You have to give a lot of credit to Benn who, urged on by the then opposition, championed the importance of increasing UK production due to concerns about food security and increased recognition of the value of British production. Too many people have become dislocated from the land and agriculture and there is a tendency for them to think it is easy to farm and that all growers make a lot of money, but that’s completely false. Meanwhile, increasingly the supermarkets have realised there is growing demand for produce grown in the UK and they should be developing long-term relationships with suppliers.”

Away from the trade, Barlow is a big cricket fan, counting Cambridge University captain David Sheppard as a childhood hero. He tries to visit the cricket-mad Caribbean every year, where he also enjoys wind surfing. Barlow talks with immense pride about his daughter, Rachel, and son Richard, who inherited the cricketing bug and was a fine player as well as a coach in South Africa before joining Diageo where he is a marketing manager at Guinness.

Before Barlow departs for yet more interviews and further preparations for the British apple industry’s big night, one final question. Why work so hard on so many projects? “There are so many people who do not like their jobs and I am very fortunate to really enjoy most of what I do,” he says. “I do not feel the pressure of having different roles. I can focus on what needs to be done and good results give me a great deal of motivation.”

COME DINE WITH ME

FPJ asked Adrian Barlow for his dream dinner company. Here’s the lowdown on his two favourite guests…

Artie Shaw

b. 23/05/1910 d. 30/12/2004

Shaw was an American jazz clarinettist and composer, lighting up the New York big band scene and working with the likes of Billie Holiday and Duke Ellington. The eight-times married Oscar-nominee is also the author of both fiction and non-fiction writings.

Barlow’s verdict: “Shaw was always looking for perfection and was incredibly innovative. He taught himself to read music and to play the clarinet, becoming probably the finest clarinettist of the twentieth century.”

Enoch Powell,

b. 16/06/1912 d. 08/02/1998

Powell served as a Conservative Party MP from 1950-1974 and was sacked from the shadow cabinet after his controversial Rivers of Blood speech in 1968. Pre-politics, Powell was a classical scholar in Ancient Greek at Sydney University before working in intelligence in WWII and becoming the youngest Brigadier in the army.

Barlow’s verdict: “He was a highly intelligent man of great integrity, combining an extraordinary breadth of knowledge with remarkable intellect. I think a conversation with him would be fascinating.”

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