The UK salads industry has always been good at fighting its corner. Even with the mighty Dutch and climatically blessed Spanish not far away, home-grown production still holds strong. It helps, of course, that the British public are loyal. Regional sourcing is in vogue, and tomatoes in particular are something that consumers regard as British and expect them to be so.
“Regionality is the new organics” is how Worcestershire-based Evesham Vale Growers’ David Shepherd puts it. “British, regionality, provenance - they’re all issues that are becoming more and more important. You just have to look at the climatic problems happening across the globe to realise that food security is going to be critical. ”
Evesham Vale Growers is just seeing the first of its second-year production tomato harvest from its new glasshouse facility that was three years in the making due to planning permission issues. The grower group now has 56 acres of tomato production under glass in the UK, bringing the regional offer to the likes of the big five.
Small volumes of on-the-vine product started to come through 10 days ago, says Shepherd, with momentum building up until the end of April when peak production will hit. “It was a very cold winter,” he says. “We had a lot of snow. We had to heat the glasshouses even though there was no crop inside just to melt the snow. If we hadn’t then the snow would have been too heavy for the glass and possibly cracked it. That was a cost that we hadn’t foreseen. But the seasons are now moving quickly. Spring is here.”
Gerry Hayman, chairman of the British Tomato Growers’ Association (TGA), is optimistic as well. “Crops are looking very good after poor winter light levels, as last year,” he says. “The sun has now got its hat on though. There have not been the supply problems with import volumes from southern Europe that have been caused by bad weather there in the past two or three years, so I don’t expect we will see the shortages and high prices on the wholesale markets that we saw last spring.
“We produce the best tomatoes money can buy, whether we are talking flavour, nutritional value, product range, provenance or food safety. If there is no future in doing that, then we have even more problems as a society than I thought. Good, safe food is never going to go out of fashion.”
The start of the UK cucumber season has been dogged by an extended Spanish season. Due to late planning brought on by previously cold winters and high light levels at the beginning of the year, the Spanish salad offer has continued for longer than usual, affecting the price that new-season cucumbers command in UK supermarkets.
“Prices are about a third lower than normal,” shares Brian Hibberd of Abbey View Produce, an Essex-based cucumber and pepper grower. “Demand is generally lower at the start, but when the clocks go back, a buzz is created for salads and people start eating them again. The English new crop is well coveted and consumers will see and taste the difference.”
Hibberd picked his first cucumber crop on 10 February and says that yield may be down overall this year due to non-conducive weather that will lead to smaller cucumbers and less fruit per stem. “A lot of growers have been waiting for the yield rather than pruning, so this could lead to a shortage at first as well,” he adds.
Lincolnshire leafy salad grower JEPCO’s sales director, Stuart Piccaver, makes the point that the UK weather is not just changeable, but going from one extreme to the other. This March will be the driest on record since 1976 if the rain holds off as the forecast predicts and although outdoor leafy salad planting went well because of this, Piccaver sees challenges ahead. “We have had 0.4ml of rainfall this March so far,” he explains. “And after a really wet February we were very worried that planting would be dire in March, but it was not an issue. Depending on crops and sites, outdoor UK lettuce should be available around the last week of April, early May. We are on track and although February was dull and plants were a little small, the crops have perked up.”
At Thanet Earth, the Kent-based project is spurring on the UK salad industry. The campaign is running pretty much to plan so far this year. “It’s still early to say how the season will go, but it will undoubtedly be very affected by the weather and seasonal demand,” says Judy Whittaker, communications manager at the Fresca Group. “Our light figures for February showed it to be a very dull month and that has slowed our yield down a little on where we’d ideally like to be, but recent days have been good and we remain very positive. We have enjoyed production in advance of Dutch volumes arriving on the market but we expect another competitive year.”
Others are likely to look to replicate what Fresca Group is doing at Thanet Earth, says Whittaker. But she’s quick to add that it’s a long process: “It’s not a simple project type and there’s no easy win. We certainly have sufficient crops at Thanet Earth to keep ourselves busy and we’re not currently looking for further salad glass opportunities as a grower. There’s plenty of market room for more UK growers though and we would welcome industry growth to help build more of a pride and reputation back into the salads side of UK growing. At the moment, some 80 per cent of tomatoes consumed in the UK are imported - you’d have to find some serious industry investment to make a hole in that figure and whilst self-sufficiency makes for an interesting debate and does throw a spotlight on the issues, it’s a practical impossibility at present with most products.”
The tomato production arm of Thanet Earth, Red Star, has become a member of the TGA recently and Hayman believes that there are various growing models that will play out a part in future UK salad production. “The cluster development around a hub is a great model but personally I see an alternative of the hub being a central energy facility being even more promising for the future,” he shares. “The British Sugar/Cornerways Nursery model, tapping into energy and CO2 streams from the refinery, is a fantastic example. On a smaller scale, John and Caroline Jones’ development on their Hertfordshire site, generating heat, electricity and CO2 from the anaerobic digestion of waste fruit and veg is a spectacular achievement, through their own personal effort and commitment.
“We have a steady stream of energy development agencies and companies contacting us and seeking grower partners for joint developments but they are often not well informed about our industry and its requirements. The capital costs of glasshouse development on a green field site, the minimum scale needed for a standalone production and marketing operation, ownership of the land and the production facility, marketing arrangements and the cost, if any, of the energy (and CO2) required, are all critical factors. Even at today’s eye-watering energy costs, a 50 per cent reduction in these would be wiped out by a 10 per cent reduction in yield or income and the skilled management and staff needed to achieve ‘only the best will do’ results, don’t grow on trees.
“One fact of modern life is that we have fewer, larger production units throughout the food industry, whether we are talking cows or cucumbers. The planning process is often obstructive at best when it comes to glasshouse development, and we need a more co-ordinated and structured approach if we are going to get within a country mile of the Food 2030 objectives and realise our opportunities, particularly with joint ventures on energy.
“Technically, it is possible for us to be self-sufficient in tomato production but the costs in carbon of winter lit production raise doubts in my mind. Why we continue to import inferior products in our home season is beyond me, however.”
Thanet Earth describes itself as “cautiously optimistic” about the future of UK salad production but reasons that the industry still suffers from a massive underinvestment. “It’s that which is restricting the growth of the market in the UK, as well as the ever-present competition from abroad of course,” says Whittaker. “The Thanet Earth model is one of the few in existence that works economically and practically against some of the European growing giants, but it’s been a difficult road to get as far as we have. We are under 50 per cent constructed at Thanet Earth so far - we have a further four greenhouses to go, but it’s funding availability that is impeding our ability to build and progress at present. We have demand from retailers for our products and could sell our crops many times over, and planning permission and infrastructure aren’t issues for us. Ironically, the growers are struggling to finance the initial investment in glass. There’s limited funding out there, but we need braver investors and access to cash to proceed.”
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