The big four supermarkets have contributed to the long-term decline of UK fruit growers, according to a report in the Telegraph this week.

Referring to a report entitled ‘Primary Production and the Grocery Supply Chain’, a part of the latest update from the Competition Commission, due to be published next month, British fruit growers’ incomes fell by 20 percent between 1996 and 2005 as the supermarkets relied ever more on imported apples and pears. Consequently, the price of dessert apples fell by 33 percent, and the price of pears fell by 21.5 percent.

Over the same period, fruit agents saw their margins rise due to consolidation and the supermarkets’ preference for buying their produce from just one company, the paper reported.

Meanwhile, one in three UK apple and pear orchards have been turned over to other use during the past decade. Higher yields per hectare have limited the reduction in British apple production volumes to about 11 percent, wrote the Telegraph.

At the same time, apple and pear growers’ margins have fallen. In 1996, they received 35 percent of the retail price of their produce, compared to just over 25 percent now.

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