Vegetables are a key driver of Cornwall’s thriving horticultural industry thanks to the area’s mild climate, which allows winter production of vegetables when other parts of the country are too cold to be relied on for continuous supply.
Cornish growers produce some 63,000 tonnes of potatoes a year and one of the area’s most significant lines is early potatoes, which come on stream in mid-April. Cornwall also produces second early or maincrop potatoes and then salad potatoes for a short window in mid-summer. The total value of potato production in Cornwall is just under £11 million.
Most other vegetables are grown in the west of Cornwall. A wide range of lines are produced, mainly for the local market, such as cabbage, carrots, early parsnips, swede, asparagus and courgettes. But cauliflower and spring greens are the area’s two core vegetable lines. These, together with other winter and summer brassicas, are grown on nearly 4,000 hectares across the county, with cauliflower making up the lion’s share of production. As Lincolnshire cauliflower peters out in November, Cornwall, with its maritime climate, becomes the main supply channel for cauliflower and greens suppliers through to spring.
However, weather conditions over the last few weeks have presented some problems for growers. Both Cornish and Kentish cauliflower has been short since the unseasonably mild temperatures brought December and January varieties forward, and the cold weather slowed things down, particularly over Christmas. This has left early January’s supply very short, with wholesale prices as high as 100p a head after Christmas, although the disruption does not compare to weather-related setbacks of 2005-06, which saw many suppliers struggle to meet supermarket programmes.
According to Alasdair MacLennan at Southern England Farms (SEF), based near Hayle, this season’s problems can be traced back to the drought experienced last July. “Last winter was a season of short supply largely related to cold weather. This winter the supply situation has been far better, though the hot, dry summer caused problems with the establishment of newly planted crops and has disrupted supply in some varieties this winter as a result.”
Nigel Clare, joint managing director of vegetable supplier Marshalls, which works with a group of dedicated growers producing cauliflower, spring greens, pointed cabbage and both conventional and organic leeks on a land base in excess of 1,400 acres across the county, paints a similar picture: “Cauliflower this year has seen a strange supply pattern. We have had a high percentage of growers running early and similar numbers running late due to planting issues, varietal choice and climatic conditions, which I must say we have not experienced for a while. Spring green volumes this year have been good with a slight problem in supply due to an overlap with Lincolnshire but this has now rectified itself and at present supply is strong. With a mild start to 2007, I am a little concerned with how well Lincolnshire over-wintered crops are looking and this does give me cause for concern for the end of the Cornish season, where we could see an overlap in production.”
Ellis Luckhurst, a Truro-based independent technical advisor and agronomist, and an agent for seed specialist Clause Tezier, explains that the recent erratic and mild weather - 12°C last week - has had a marked effect on the quality of cauliflower. “This wind is not helping anything. We’ve had 70-80mph gusts yesterday, and more like that before Christmas, there has been quite a lot of damage done, which is not helping,” he says.
“It’s been a difficult season for cauliflower. [The mild weather] has affected quality and varieties are not performing as well as they normally do. Winter cauliflower needs some cold weather to get it growing properly, and we’ve not had any this year. It’s not been disastrous, but the quality and yield was not quite as good as you would expect from a winter cauliflower crop.”
How the rest of the season pans out is largely going to be dictated by the weather, according to growers.
If it stays mild, varieties will move forward and Cornwall will finish the season early with relatively good continuity of supply. If there is a cold spell, which growers think could happen in February, crops could stop growing and cauliflower will be short. Recent forecasts suggest stormy intervals this week, with high winds and torrential rain hitting the Southwest, Wales and the Midlands, but the long-term outlook is more settled, with further mild weather to come. However, based on forecasts, Clare thinks the shortage of cauliflower is likely to continue through to February.
While the jury is still out on whether global warming is taking place, there is no disputing the weird weather patterns experienced in Europe over the last 12 months, and the UK has been hard hit. The summer heatwave is still having knock-on effects on the quality and availability of many crops across the UK. More recently, it has been so mild that daffodils have been blooming months ahead of season and leaves are staying on trees longer than usual. As has been seen in Cornwall in recent weeks, the unseasonable temperatures, coupled with unpredictable cold snaps, has been making scheduling of crops hard to predict. Varieties that would have worked two years ago are starting to become unstable, and varieties traditionally reaped in November and December are harder hit than those coming in after the New Year, according to growers. “I’m not sure whether it is global warming or simply cyclical weather patterns over time, but erratic weather suits nobody - except perhaps those marketing through the auctions - and the extremes seen in recent seasons are equally unwelcome,” MacLennan says.
“We are seeing changes that are giving us issues with over-supply at times due to changing weather patterns,” says Clare. “For example, this December we were still harvesting Lincolnshire spring greens that would normally not be on harvest in December, so this of course clashes with Cornish production and thus gives us more volume than predicted for this period.”
Weather aside, the market for Cornish cauliflower and spring greens appears to be strengthening year on year. Growing and harvesting techniques have little changed for most growers, but break throughs in varietal development have seen new hybrid cauliflower varieties replacing some of the more traditional ones.
“We are looking for a different product - the perfect product,” says Luckhurst. “It needs to have disease-free leaves and leaf protection against any frosts we might get.
“We’re trying to use fewer chemicals but more cleverly applied. We’re using a chemical called Perlka, a fertiliser, which also has had an effect on reducing club root. This means we can use short rotations, which helps with the pressure on land.”
Luckhurst says this is an increasingly important issue for growers in Cornwall. “We’ve got limited land availability in Cornwall for cauliflower and there’s a lot of pressure on that because the area has increased recently. I think it will keep increasing - by around five to 10 per cent a year, if possible, for winter cauliflower. Certainly, the market is there for it.”
Spring greens are still enjoying steady levels of production, despite predictions in years past that other crops would replace them.
SEF is working on several innovations for early and late production of crops and the use of overwintering, polythene and fleece crop covers and specially selected varieties for late and early vegetables. MacLennan predicts the volatile nature of the industry will see further consolidation in the future. “Production may stay the same or increase but it will be in fewer hands as growers continue to leave the industry due to poor and unpredictable returns. I would anticipate that a wider range of vegetable will be grown at scale in Cornwall in the future,” he says.
Clare agrees that sensible prices are needed to give returns for investment and the growers’ future. He also thinks that the production of organic vegetables is working well from the Southwest: “We see this as a viable production area for organics,” he says.
Another potential boost for Cornwall is the recent retail interest in provenance and sourcing produce for stores locally. A least three major retailers now offer a “local” brand in Cornwall, according to MacLennan. While still in its infancy, it could have an effect on production in future, he says. “The number of local stores is not great so [there has been] no major impact on production yet but it is early days and something that we fully support.”
“I think Cornwall is in a fortunate position with the local situation with the supermarkets,” says Luckhurst. “The advantage for Cornwall is that in the summer we can start to grow some crops for the local market, and although we don’t have a huge population, we do have quite a high tourist population so sales tend to be fairly high in Cornish supermarkets. If Cornwall gets into growing for Cornish markets in the summer, that could boost production.”
POT-LUCKY TO BE IN THE SOUTH WEST
Potfresh, a wholesale and prepared fruit and vegetable supplier based in Cornwall, says its location gives it a marked advantage in supplying customers with the freshest produce possible.
Directors Christina Storr and Jonathan Schraibman founded the company in 1990, and started out selling prepared fruit and vegetables to local outlets. Over the years, Potfresh has grown to become the largest prepared vegetable supplier in the county.
The Truro-based company sells a range of wholesale and prepared fruit and vegetables to the catering trade, including ready-meal suppliers, bakeries, prepared vegetable suppliers, secondary wholesalers, and smaller customers such as hotels, restaurants, tourist attractions and pubs.
It supplies anything from cauliflower and broccoli florettes to chateau potatoes and wholesale vegetables.
At least 30 per cent of the produce used by the company is locally procured, although this depends on seasonality, and can rise to more than 50 per cent at certain times of year. It sources several of the company’s bulk items from local growers, according to David Bickerton, operations manager. He says that Potfresh’s location gives the business a distinct advantage: “First and foremost, we always use local produce - we can get it at the most competitive prices. It’s very important that we use local produce because we’re guaranteeing our customers that we’re getting produce to them as fresh as we can get it. Sometimes the cauliflower can be picked from the field and we’ll have it an hour later ready for preparation.”
More recently, Potfresh has started exporting Cornish vegetables to Spain. Bickerton explains: “It’s something we’ve recently got into, but it’s a big market. Two of the directors work out in Spain for most of the year, and we ship some Cornish vegetables to them and pick up salad items in Spain, like peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers - it’s a two-way system.”
He says the Cornish vegetable industry has made some positive moves in recent years, and has gained from increased retail interest on the back of the trend for food provenance: “I think Cornish production has become a lot more professional. More people are tapping into the Cornish growers and lot of the supermarkets are making the most of what is grown in Cornwall.”
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