The fresh produce industry needs a unified, clear and simple message to convince not only the next generation of consumers, but the parents feeding them, that eating fruit and vegetables is the key to a healthier future.
Some 90 delegates, including former deputy Prime Minister and Tory politician Lord Heseltine, discussed how best to promote the industry at the Horticultural Development Company/Stockbridge Technology Centre (STC) Spring Conference, in Selby on Monday.
Heseltine rallied debate: “Will all this make a difference? Sadly, I don’t think it will. No private sector body of the right kind of size [to influence change in human behaviour] can agree or get the money together. It is spitting in the wind. So it is over to the government… but the politics of it is a nightmare.”
However, Select Lincolnshire’s Mark Tinsley retaliated: “As a group of people we have more to offer than any other industry, despite the greenhouse gas emissions we produce. We have to approach consumers at primary school level and the fact that the government in this country hasn’t supported the Food Dudes campaign as Ireland has [by rolling the scheme out to all schools] is a scandal.”
The 5 A DAY campaign, Eat in Colour and schemes such as Food Dudes were all praised at the conference, but the issue of how far into society they reach was questioned. The need for the industry to work together to create one PR campaign rather than work in isolation was put forward as an answer to large fast food or processed food industries, which have multi-million pound budgets.
STC’s Graham Ward said: “It is fresh produce that we are promoting, regardless of where it comes from... We need to make the single argument first and then promote the individual credentials.”
