In England and Wales, growers have broadly welcomed the ideas, while their Scottish, French, Italian and especially their Spanish counterparts have been more critical.

“In England and Wales will be supporting the passage of this proposal right through,” said National Farmers Union chief horticultural policy adviser Phil Hudson. “We are particularly pleased about the promotion of fruit and vegetables to under 18s. This is really good news and supports a lot of the work that has been going on in the UK already. It seems the Commission is really intent on increasing the amount of fresh produce that is consumed in the EU. Also the flexibility being proposed for producer organisations (POs) is positive news for growers and the POs”

And the Fresh Produce Consortium’s Nigel Jenney said: “The simplification of management of POs is useful as is the acknowledgement by the EU that fresh produce can make a major contribution to improving health, but relative to the overall cost of the CMO, the monies for promotion are modest.”

Meanwhile, the Spanish have rejected some of the measures as “negative’ for their sector, particularly the absence of any crisis management system, lack of sufficient funding for operational programmes and the incompatibility of the proposed system with the decoupled single-farm payments established under reform of the Common Agricultural Policy. “This will create serious discrimination among producers in the same sector as traditional growers with no support will be working alongside new entrants who do have support,” said a spokeswoman. “This could seriously distort the market for fresh produce in the EU.”

Hudson said this issue was unlikely to arise in the UK as heavy investment required to grow most specialist crops to market specifications under the UK climate and the fact that Defra adopted a regional model for paying support rather than a sectorial one make the UK situation very different from the Spanish.

But in France, the federations of fruit, vegetable, potato and mushroom growers grouped under the national body FNSEA have said the proposal is “not yet ripe” and “incomplete” and should be reviewed. “We expect real measures to manage the marketplace and bring stability to the different sectors,” said an FNSEA spokesman.

And in Italy, growers’ association Coldiretti has said the proposals are a “good base for negotiation.” But it is concerned with regard to greater transparency in terms of product origin. “Transparency of information should be extended also to processed products, such as tomato products, so that the same rules on region or country of origin apply to processed goods as they do to fresh produce,” said a spokesman. “This has already been requested in the European Parliament.”

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