The Food Chain Centre (FCC) said its five-year pilot programme to test a variety of business methods to boost profitability for UK farmers and growers has saved the sector £14.4 million.

FCC chairman Joanne Denney-Finch said: “This [evaluation] has involved almost 2,000 farm businesses and more than 120 other food companies. The results show the tremendous capacity of the industry to profit from working more effectively together.

“The real value is not for these participants, but in demonstrating the potential returns for farm businesses of the work we have undertaken in applying marketing, lean thinking and benchmarking,” she added.

The project had a budget of £5.3m, with grants making up £3.8m and some £1.5m in resources provided by IGD and Defra.

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