Being in the fresh produce industry is tough at the best of times. Those of us who are in it may whinge occasionally, but the commercial challenges are stimulating and modest rewards can be earned by keeping one’s business at the cutting edge of all the disciplines of production, finance, personnel, technical and marketing. Close attention to the finer details is also pretty important.

However, the last 18 months have been particularly fraught for many growers - and not just because most of the banks have stopped being banks. If you are a member of a producer organisation (PO), you will know what I mean.

POs were conceived and launched about 14 years ago by those faceless and unelected boffins in Brussels. At the time, my guess is that some of these characters had holidayed in a remote part of the southern Mediterranean and noticed what a struggle the local chaps had getting their barrows of tomatoes to market and what a good idea it would be to create a Fruit and Vegetable Aid Scheme to enable these poor souls to come together and buy a bigger barrow. A bit of a caricature, sure, but you get my drift.

When the scheme was launched all those years ago, these same bureaucrats must have gotten a huge shock when they came to realise that some very large, highly skilled and competent UK farmers, as well as even larger European growers, could participate in the scheme. Their angst must have must have risen to paranoia level when the amounts of money involved began to emerge - millions.

For British famers, the idea of a PO made a whole heap of sense. Here was an EU-backed scheme that fostered and facilitated farmer co-operation and generated meaningful supply side concentration. Given the degree of demand side concentration - i.e. big supermarket buying power - anything that could improve countervailing power and at the same time promote production and technical advancement among farmer members was most welcome.

In the ensuing years, more than 70 POs were established in the UK, involving large numbers of both fruit and vegetable growers. Positive strides were taken by all and the whole scheme was viewed as being something that was actually good to come out of Europe - even by arch-eurosceptics such as myself.

But anything that is too good to be true usually turns out to be so.

Over the years, those involved in POs have been subject to increasing degrees of scrutiny, bureaucracy, frustration, irritation and downright annoyance. As with any EU aid scheme, one should expect inspection. There are usually four basic-level Rural Payments Agency (RPA) inspections each year, followed by a second-level RPA inspection, then by a third-level deep scrutiny and, finally, you may get a visit from a completely different inspectorate from Brussels.

All this would not be so bad if those involved sang from the same hymn sheet and if the regulation interpretation from country to country was consistent. It would also be helpful if the various inspectors and RPA officials who ran them knew what they were doing and had built up years of experience and training - and had actually read the regulations.

Initially, the Fruit and Vegetable Aid Scheme was run by the Intervention Board in Reading. After about three or four years, DEFRA decided the management of the scheme should be moved to Northallerton. Very handy for us Yorkshiremen, but how many staff from Reading moved North to continue the vital administrative work? None.

Inexperienced staff did their very best to get up to speed with their new responsibility but what with the pressure of getting Single Farm Payments out and the introduction of short-term contract staff, it is no wonder the UK POs struggled to perform, both internally and in compliance with variations of interpretations of the regulations.

It was also at this time that Brussels decided to get tough with Britain - with both the RPA and the POs. Deep scrutiny visits followed and “de-recognising” of POs began. The RPA and DEFRA were also fined for their deemed maladministration of the scheme.

Against this background, POs were considered unsuitable, based on a now-revised interpretation of the regulations from the EU inspectors forced upon both the RPA and its inspectorate. Further “de-recognitions” followed, bringing survivor numbers down to the low 50s.

Just when we thought it couldn’t get any worse, the RPA function was moved once again - to Newcastle. How many of the experienced staff moved too? None, unless you include the poor soul who felt it his duty to commute up there every day.

In order to address common issues, the National Farmers’ Union formed a focus group and the RPA created an Experts Committee - a really useful forum for airing and solving problems, and certainly a step forward. Having said that, many of the fundamental issues remained - issues over regulation interpretation, complex compliance hurdles and RPA staff turnover, to mention just three.

Then in late 2009, the courts in Brussels found a French PO in serious breach of the regulations pertaining to “shared facilities”, emanating from a visit five years earlier. It is not necessary to explain the detail but, needless to say, the RPA immediately took the view that all UK POs could well be breaching the same regulation and proceeded to withhold payments from every one, pending a local review of the circumstances pertaining to each.

The financial impact on all POs as a result of this precipitative action was, and remains, severe. Staffing programmes, research and development activities, capital investment programmes and marketing strategies could not be suspended by POs, but funding them without long-term and budgeted-for EU support could not go on indefinitely - especially against a backdrop of enthusiastic indifference from the banking community.

To its credit, the RPA did act as quickly as it could to clarify the situation pertaining to each PO and its “shared facilities” - but at the time of writing, less than half (24) have had their payments reinstated (four months after being informed). As for the rest, some have been “de-recognised”, while others are busy providing further information and hanging on by a narrow financial thread.

Anecdotally, I can report that Northern Mushrooms Ltd, which built a new PO packhouse with the aid of EU support in 2002 and has been visited some 50 times by RPA officials over the years, was obliged to receive a visit from the “inspectors of shared facilities”, whose first question from Newcastle, as he sat in the PO packhouse conference room, was “does the facility still exist?”. You couldn’t make it up.

How many will actually survive their latest travails is not known - but the trend in PO numbers is certainly downward.

At the heart of this situation is the emerging belief that Brussels is not comfortable with the UK style of PO. It is also clear that the RPA - probably at DEFRA’s command - does not want to face further large fines from Europe.

While I cannot speak for every PO, there is a sentiment among many of “is it all worth the effort and angst?” and “what will be the next issue for us to fall foul of?”

What’s to be done? I believe we should be standing our ground, and firmly. I believe that Hilary Benn and then his highly probable Conservative successor in May should be staunchly behind us. If the boffins in Brussels continue to create mayhem for British POs, they should be made to understand that they are just boffins and not elected officers. British and other EU politicians should heed the calls of their electors from the farming community and ensure that the regulations meet the needs of the farmers, not the needs of boffins.

As for the RPA in Newcastle, who is to blame there? Well, you have to feel a tincture of pity for the high-turnover foot soldiers who do their best to interpret and apply the regulations pertaining to the Fruit and Vegetable Aid Scheme, but that sentiment should diminish the further up the management ladder one goes.

At a political level and the RPA top management level, the message must be made clear that they should be on our side. It’s time for spine. It’s time for the RPA to back its own judgement and interpretation of the regulations and to see to it that their opinions are carried in the European Parliament - put the boffins in their place. And it’s no good saying that they do their best - positive results are all that matter to British POs.

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